Hey, Dan, so good to hear from you! Dad is STILL fussing with his PC1600, and surveying, and filing plats.
He just turned 84.
He called me last night, to complain that his chain saw was not oiling well, and what should he do.
I hope I'm that mean at 84!
N
Great observation!
I had an old chief that would hold up a flagging roll to the windshield, if a drop hit inside the open circle, he'd declare "It's storming! Box it!
In the South Florida summer, that was usually right at 4:00 pm everyday.
:rain:
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> ....But he had no math skills past simple arithmetic. He used to check cuts and fills figured on a hand held calculator with a pencil and paper.
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> We kept a 12" square piece of plywood in the truck. This was placed on the ground when it began raining. Once someone could count 12 drops appearing on the plywood, we boxed it up. His reasoning: "That's one drop per square inch...."
I kind of disagree that surveyors are so much smarter today. I still know people that think that 12"X12" is 12 square inches.
I bet not many argued with him when he said it was time to pack it up.
I still check a lot of computer-derived curve information with my hand calculator; and I wonder if many people can run the hand-calcs on a piece of paper these days. I also know a lot of guys who couldn't calculate an arc-length without a computer program.
I will tell you this, that these days, if I have a guy that is good at finding section corner stones, I want that guy on my crew whether he can run the GPS machine and understand its use or not. I think I am saying that a crew should be used for the talents they do have, in addition to slowly teaching them about the ones they don't.
But here's to your old friend and his 12X12 plywood. i agree in general with the spirit of your post.
>I also know a lot of guys who couldn't calculate an arc-length without a computer program.
This brings up something I've noticed: Why do they still print the inside cover of field books with the same formulas that have been there for I don't know how many decades? Those formulas are for railroad curves(chord definition), which are distinctly the minority of what is done these days.
“In the South Florida summer, that was usually right at 4:00 pm everyday.”
In South Florida (West Palm Beach) at a Firm I worked for, we had a crew out on a “typical” day. It was storming to the west but still sunny and clear where the crew was.
The crew took a 200’ steel tape and were going to check a distance between two traverse points. Unfortunately Mother Nature was not on their side. A lighting bolt struck the tape killing the party chief and severely burning the IM.
As VP of the firm, I was the first to be notified by the sheriffs department of this tragedy. A call I’ll never forget. It happened in 1982.
Lightning in South Fl isn’t something to be ignored.
Y’all have a great week.
PS: Great post Paden!
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> This brings up something I've noticed: Why do they still print the inside cover of field books with the same formulas that have been there for I don't know how many decades? Those formulas are for railroad curves(chord definition), which are distinctly the minority of what is done these days.
Field books? They make field books?
They probably just haven't changed anything on them.
But, frankly, the formulas I need are the ones that I don't use every day. I don't need the formulas for a triangle or a simple-curve arc. I would need the formula for railroad curves. We may not ever stake railroads, but how many times do you have to run the curve information to retrace the right-of-way for a railroad adjoiner? You need to know that like you need to know other historical information like how they established highways or how they established PLSS corners.
