Surveying is an Art

Case 1, Drawer 6, Page 45 MCR?

I was looking at that very map yesterday.

I have also seen that note on his maps in and around Fort Bragg.

Next week we are going to our Laughlin Ridge Repeater site, a fee parcel Cal Fire owns. Jim Conkright surveyed it and set the corners in 1976 but never filed the Record of Survey. Fortunately he left a file full of materials and two large maps depicting in great detail what he did and why.

Yes, C1 D6 P45. RE: 1976 pipes, it's better late than never, although we'd all know to call Grampa Dave if we found those pipes but no map.

The 1-1/2" iron pipe with cap at the NW corner may be off 6'. His calculations say S --- E from his control point (about 20') but it should've been S --- W, oops. I will find out if it is off that far. The other two he set (SW and SE) should be good. The pipe (found) at the NE corner was set by John Whelan (CDF Engineer) in 1949 as the point of beginning.

I was just talking with the San Joaquin County (CA) Surveyor about the "advertising" that most companies do when they put their company logo on a recorded map. It came up because as a courtesy, I'm finishing up a Record of Survey for a company that I used to work for. I had met with the county surveyor to clarify the last redline comments (some simple issues of verbiage) and he said it was a bit confusing that the logo on the map was for one company, but I worked for a different company.

But yeah, having your company name, address, and phone number all posted as a matter of public record is nice.

I remember our professor saying that Surveying 101 was "The Art of Surveying"

There is a freshly flagged trail down to the Northwest corner of our Laughlin Ridge repeater property. It was set by Conkright in 1976; a 1-1/2" iron pipe with CDF brass cap. This one and the southeast corner have a loose cap. I don't know what he set the caps with but whatever it iwas, it's gone.

We have Conkright's computations, all done by hand on traverse sheets.

At the northwest corner he wrote S -------------- E when it should've been S -------------- W from his control point (about 20' southerly). The pipe is set per the mistake; it should be about 5.5' westerly. I got an RTK shot on it, it shows about 0.2' off the mistake coordinate...the cap is loose and its under an oak tree. I'm surprised RTK fixed there, it's getting a lot better. If I didnt have Conkright's file I'd be really confused right now, probably blame it on RTK.

Yippee! I found Conkright's control point, a spike with a dimple 20' northerly from the NW Corner..

We cleared the brush out of there looking towards his backsight 1639' S 40 W which is a t-bar with bathey cap at an AT&T microwave tower. Thick oak brush has grown up at the backsight end but an inmate crew with chainsaws opened that up in 15 minutes.

We did some other GNSS ties today too.

Loose Cap

I haven't heard that expression since the 60's.:-P
Thanks for the memories,

Don

Ah, the inmate crew

The perfect employees.
And they come with their own supervisors.

Don

Loose Cap

Conkright was a good surveyor. He left a lot of documentation on what and why he did. And his points are right where he said they were set.

But he overthought the monument problem. These caps are designed to be driven into a 3/4" pipe. He cemented(?) them into 1-1/2" pipes which didn't work very well.

How do you get an inmate crew?

Something like Shawshank Redemption where prisoners are used as cheap/free labour?

I work for Cal Fire, they are a fire crew. In this case I know where to find them so I just go talk to the Fire Captain who is their boss. Something like this on a mountain top is fun for them so it's no problem getting them to come help us when we need it.