Transit Notes

Guilty as charged, your Honour 🙂

Steel tape (chain), plumb bob, and transit is as far back as I go.

I've turned left angles

I've used a Teledyne Gurley transit with a hanging plumb bob and a piece of plywood to block the wind, 200' super highway chains, wooden rod stackers, and hexagonal wooden range poles.

I would love to learn how to use a plane table. Talk about field-to-finish!

Other missed surveying adventures:

(1) Running a 15-20 mile traverse using sun shots to check orientation along the way.

(2) Using Polaris observations to layout a very long curved piece of railroad track.

(3) Retracing section lines in very rural areas.

(4) Running first order levels.

Thinking about the start of my career and wondering how many of us dinosaurs are left. How many have sharpened their 4h lead in the field with a sandpaper board while taking 100 scale transit notes in a field book? How many have made 10 scale plane table topo maps in the field as the survey was being made? I recall using my triangle to sweep the snow off my plane table. 

I really, really, really liked using a plane table, pobably why my back is now wore out 

I've been on the rod end of a few plane table stadia surveys, but never on the instrument end -- I was still too far down in the chain of command (i.e. right at the bottom) in those days.

I've been on the rod end of a few plane table stadia surveys, but never on the instrument end -- I was still too far down in the chain of command (i.e. right at the bottom) in those days.

The best part was at lunch or end of the day when we would stand around the table and revise the map by the seat of the pants comment from the rodman and fudge contours by eye. Or was is because I had a huge umbrella and the water cooler. 

@gordon-svedberg 

Very good comic.  To the point.

I started with chain, plumb bob and a transit that George Washington may have used when new.  The best practices available to us seem incredibly crude compared to what we do today.  However, we WERE WALKING  in the footsteps of those who had gone before us.  Helps to comprehend those egregious ERRORS the button pushers claim to have found and believe NEED TO BE FIXED.

I've turned left angles

I was explaining to a younger guy yesterday how with a theodolite that turns right/left and direct/reverse you can back site and turn bearings.