A few weeks ago we started another high voltage project at the Belgian coast, a design will be made for a connection under the North sea to England. The landing zone has to be surveyed, it's a zone along the road with a cycle trail in the canopy, then traversing the road straight to the dunes and the beach.
We have two possible locations for traversing the road and the lightweight tram. It's one of the first jobs I did completely solo with our new equipment. We're often at the coast but are rarely surveying on the beach.
I start with a recon of the site and hammering the setup points to do a first RTK-GPS measurement, love our FlePos VRS-system.
It's one of these jobs not related to only roadwork.
A view on the dunes
the open fields
and the cycle trail
Second GPS measurement is done the next morning, I arrive at 7.30 and when climbing at dusk to the top of the dunes I was really faded, there was a guy waiting for me in his camping chair! Goosebumps!
He had his thermos of coffee and was slurping ...
after introducing myself he told me I was on their birding spot place. About 10 volunteers in total, some are there almost daily for the last 10 year, taking notes of all kind of migratory birds that flock to the south. He was a nurse, the next day another ITC-guy joined him. We had a short talk about ... birds and surveying and of course we took a look through each others binoculars, we had a laugh about me being paid for being there while they had to take a day off, they all wanted to be a surveyor for a day.
Well it was pretty tough, packed as a donkey running up these dunes ... I forgot how hard it was stepping into the loose sand dunes.
Once on the beach it went a lot faster
Once in the fields I switched to 'Integrated Surveying' again. I had one more setup to finish with a lot of detailed topo, some points out of sight then followed by the open fields with only some elevation shots, so at one point I continued with gps-only, leaving the totalstaton out of sight some 700m. behind me ... strange feeling.
A top heavy combination with the receiver on top of the prism, not for use all day long. It took me 2.5 hours to finish this side and I felt it on my forearm and back.
Hope to come back in a year of two for the as-built,
Christof.
> A few weeks ago we started another high voltage project at the Belgian coast, a design will be made for a connection under the North sea to England.
Great photos, Christ, but I'm curious about the nature of the project. Is this to be an electric transmission project from some windfarms (arrays of wind turbine generators) on the coast of Belgium?
On that beach it looks like a 100 meters grid would catch about everything.
You are correct that an IS rover with the MultiTrack 1000 and a GNSS reciever does get heavy by the end of the day!
Great photos....thanks for sharing them.
Kent,
we have the construction of a wind-farm on the Thornton sandbank off-shore,(C-Power farshore) but these cables are landing near Oostende. This project is about a connection with England, since the liberalization of the electric market over here a lot of new projects have started to make it possible to exchange power with the surrounding countries. If I did well understand it's about 2 cables of about 300mm (11.8 inch) of direct current.
chr.
Nice!
How long did it take to get those cycle trail shots? Did you double 'em? or just trust 'em?
Beautiful country!
:coffee:
What beautiful countryside!! Around here we do not have vistas like that. Mainly a bunch of cowsasses and kudzu.
Rick,
our standard measuretime for the station points is 15 sec (VRS-RTK), always at least 2 times with a delay of at least 4 hrs. Some of the points along the cycle path were not done by gps, but I try to hammer all my station points when I do the first gps, even when they're not gps-able. This way I don't have to run back and forth with nails and hammer when doing the totalstation work. I almost always put the receiver on the point for a picture, to find it back and to document later.
chr.
C-
TU
Derek
