SURVEYING IN CHINA interesting things i see

Hi,
Roads
I asked a few weeks ago if anyone had actually ever seen concrete roads built without rebar, as they are doing on this site in China.
Anyway they are constructing 100 metre sections with no rebar, just a 200 mm thick continuous slabs, with saw cuts after the pour, NO re bar, just dowel joints at the road intersection slabs.
Chinese survey gear
I myself am using a Leica TS 1 sec. series, R1000 ultra, and a Na2 level, I have been to the Chinese Leica retailer and the Leica repair centre for purchases and service. The Chinese government is all Leica and some Trimble, they are constructing many high speed elevated rails lines here.

I have also been to the PENTAX service centre with a contractors level, again they service Trimble gear as well.
The service technicians were all women, well trained in Germany and very helpful, also they have lots of mining underground, so specialist s geo tech gear here also.
I had an interesting visit to the Topcon agent, cum retailer, he has his calibrating instrument in the front of the shop, so as you walk past, from the sidewalk you can see the guy working on the instruments. I thought this would be distracting, but obviously not.

He sells many different instruments, the SOUTH level, as mentioned in this forum, seemed to work ok. The South NA2 COPY I saw was the same as one being used on my site by China steel, its micro readings matched what I got with my Leica invar rod. So maybe they are ok, but just not long lasting quality. They are a 10th of the Leica price. We were setting machinery, not doing level runs.
They also sell real Topcon gear, as well as copies of SOKKIA and Leica total stations, not branded as such, but same colours and design. They wanted $3,000 for a disto d8, the same as I have, which only cost me $1,000 in Australia. They don’t use field books,I brought over 20 of them, and gave them to my assistants, but have schoolbook type Chinese ones. They have lots of funny little laser units now, which seem to be the rage even in Australia, tradesman use and abuse them, no long levels and bobs anymore.
GIANT PLUMBOBS
I had the time last week to do some experimenting with the reflectorless features, checking the façade verticality compared with prism shots, etc. The reflectorless did not fare well, I would not use it for critical stuff, even the hard to reach, no other option situation, made me revert to my 80 kg plumbob hung over the side, for true readings, at 60 metres it only swayed once about 5 mm. We went around the whole job at the corners in 3 hours. I am aware of the precautions and limitations of reflectorless, read university test results etc.
It was so fast, it was worth the money, you just have to time the procedure as far as access to the edges and safety requirements go.
The Chinese surveyor who assisted me on this 1 billion dollar project said his boss has a collection of 26 oldinstruments, mostly old wild, so when I go to Shanghai I shall check them out.
Company supplied jiggers I have used.
On my first job in Taiwan, when I got to site they brought out a T2, because I had brought a 100 m band with brass markings at 2 m intervals, standardized, I thought I can make it work. Then they sent me a SET 3B which had dud batteries, it did the job in the end, slow but better than the band for long stuff.
I went to the second and third projects and they bought me a new SOKKIA set 610, it was a 20 sec. unit, but again they work for construction sites.
M y fourth job was in Fiji, they bought me a new NIKON 332 or something, it was great, I did a hugeresort with clusters of 2 storey bungalows, so you could shoot the whole control from the one hill, and even some of the dwellings, all the time while looking at the dolphins and the nice clean ocean because we were on the beach.
Then back in Brisbane, before this Beijing job, I did internal set out with a nice T1A, did what I needed, so its been enjoyable non the less.
ALL this with my trusty hp 48 g, I do have a Carlson explorer, but just didn’t need