first 4 or 5 years I was surveying (before RTK market saturation) I did a LOT of houselot titles, not quite as many large boundaries.
the reliability of record distances and positions was generally, um, unreliable. basically a few tenths was the best you could count on.
the last couple of years bird-dogging corners is generally way easier, calced positions tend to yield discoveries on the order of <.1' more often than not, B&Ds of observed points are reliably falling on the sub-minute and sub-tenth scale.
I've found RTK (or RTN, I guess) to be an incredibly trustworthy tool when used properly. Kind of like a steel tape. I'll let the manufacturer worry about whether the alloy in the tape meets some manufacturing standards. If I can use a measuring instrument and get reliable, repeatable results that jive incredibly well with other users of similar measuring instruments, then that's where my area of concern ends.
Perhaps someday I'll have some kind of combination of interest and free time to get into all the meta-theoretical specs and issues of various measuring media, but I don't have either now. What I have is a lot of business, business that is being handled better with current RTN equipment and procedures than it ever would have been with two or three guys and a 3" gun way back when.
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> > So, Kris's RTK coordinates appear to have a standard error of about 0.09 ft. in N and in E values compared to yours?
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> Ahem! That's Kris', if you please.
Well the possessive of PROPER nouns ending in an "s", such as "Jesus" or "Judas" is formed by just adding an apostrophe, but how proper is "Kris"? :>
> > > >
> > >
> > > So, Kris's RTK coordinates appear to have a standard error of about 0.09 ft. in N and in E values compared to yours?
> >
> > Ahem! That's Kris', if you please.
>
> Well the possessive of PROPER nouns ending in an "s", such as "Jesus" or "Judas" is formed by just adding an apostrophe, but how proper is "Kris"? :>
According to my wife, not nearly enough. 🙂
William Strunk's "Elements of Style" prefers the 's on the end of proper nouns (that end in "s"). Some experts say pick a style and stay consistent. Maybe if you prefer static surveying you should add the apostrophe, and if you feel RTK is "good 'nuff for gubment work" you should drop the "s" kind of like coupling "proper surveying" with "proper grammar" vs. "informal surveying" with "informal grammar".
All true Kent...I won't argue that. But you can never exclude every uncertainty, and for the far majority of our surveys this is plenty accurate.
I feel the same way Tommy. Very amazing stuff.
If this argument comes up again, I'm going to start calling it the argument over whether it's the "bogus method" of GPS measuring.
That term may ring a bell for people who have been on the forums for a while, and this topic seems to come up just as often as that one.
> All true Kent...I won't argue that. But you can never exclude every uncertainty, and for the far majority of our surveys this is plenty accurate.
I think the better statement is that a professional surveyor can identify the various significant sources of the uncertainties in the positions of things as determined by his or her survey, can realistically model them, and can readily document that the survey does comply with a particular accuracy standard such as the ALTA/ACSM relative positional uncertainty standard.
I typically read these RTK threads to get a good chuckle more than anything, but the constant bashing of RTK by someone who clearly has no experience with it and knows little to nothing about it becomes tedious and tiresome at some point. RTK is a tool, like any other tool. A hammer, in the wrong hands, can be a dangerous thing, and so can a total station. Those of us who understand RTK and know how to use it understand both its limitations and how to verify the precision of measurements when necessary.
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