paden cash, post: 388161, member: 20 wrote: I remember a section boundary that nobody was looking forward to. The section was split on a corner by an interstate highway and one side of the section required a 4 mile detour route just to get there. This was back in the day when we still "bounded" the section by either traversing through the corners or using a traverse point set nearby. The work was estimated to take three or four days.
Before we started I pulled the truck up into the pasture (just for a coffee moment) and somewhere near the center of section I noticed we were on a ridge and could probably see every corner of the section from one spot, even those on the opposite side of the interstate. I set up the HP and we shot the boundary from one spot. We even had time that afternoon to check a couple of distances between corners just to see how our 'stuff' smelled. It was all good.
That evening the boss asked me how we were getting along. I told him we were done with the boundary. He was skeptical, but after I showed him what we had done he was apparently ok with it. Things changed after that, too.
Same thing happened to me! But boss wanted redundancy. I said, how's this? I had taken a second older generation total station with me and set it 5' over from the first. The chainman rapped angles from both instruments as I walked the boundary and found the corners and other objects to be measured including strategically set control points. Things changed after that 🙂
Jp
Back in the "pioneer day" worked for an old timer PE/PLS who was transit and chain. He was doing more and more land development projects and we talked him into purchasing (maybe he leased it) a new TS.
He had a client who owned a development parcel adjacent to a S/D that had a street constructed that dead ended near his property line.
If this street did align, then they could use it as ingress/egress into the proposed development. The cogo of the plats foretold that if wouldn't align and fall off his property. The Old Timer was of the belief that you cut line along the p/l and got what you called a "hard distance" by chaining from point to point or clearing a base/traverse line at a minimum offset.
It was explained that taping the line was a no-go because of fences and landscaping and taping
through the existing backyards of the adjoiner also a no-go for the same reason. Running the line on the client's property would be 2 days work through second growth brush.
So we claimed to boss that by calc'ing the street corners on the p/l and using the new TS to traverse along the s/d streets that we could recover all corners by lunch.
We finished, called the boss and he showed up just after finishing calc'ing on a 41, the mystery corner. We turned the angle and it fell to a big debris pile that was dumped at the dead end. Started removing debris and got a buzz and dug down a few feet and found the corner.
Good news was that we showed how valuable the TS was as opposed to a transit/tape.
Bad news was that finding that the corner and then others did not align put a big nix on the client's plans for his development resulting in lost work for the boss.
In '95 I took a job with an office using an EDM and theodolite that could not communicate with a data collector. The good Lord blessed me with a boss willing to allow me to 'move them forward'. His old party chief had barely gotten past re-measuring half miles with a chain, let alone elevation work, or not writing everything down in a field book.
God bless the old PC because he was willing to learn, and was astonished at how well and fast we could lay out a curve after procuring a total station with TDS Survey Pro on a HP48. I ran the rod and had survey pro memorized so I could help him over the radio.
Fast forward six months and someone forgot to charge the batteries over night. However, I was able to fire up with old edm/theodolite and told the PC we could do a quick small site topo with it. He shook his head and said, "I don't go out without the TS/data collector, so I don't know how your gonna run the gun and hold the rod." 🙂
Steve
Kris Morgan, post: 388165, member: 29 wrote: dad bought a Trimble 4000 ssi. I was not allowed to ask questions about it or even think about touching it. Took an hour to set up
How do you spend an hour setting up a 4000SSi?
Jim Frame, post: 388186, member: 10 wrote: How do you spend an hour setting up a 4000SSi?
In the early days of it, the radio antenna was actually a telescoping TV antenna and a hole had to be dug and it secured in it with the 30' radio antenna up. Also, and in no small part, we were told what cables went where because we may mess it up rather than now people know the drill. It was a piece of gear that went out very seldom and most of us had forgot what we knew about it when we had to go with the GPS crew. It took MUCH longer to set up the 4000 than the 5700 did or even the R8 now.
I have had cable troubles, and battery fuse troubles, and rover not receiving from base radio, and bad base antenna that took a whole day to get it figured out what was wrong. No clue what I was doing, just starting at a spot, and walking my fingers along every inch of the equipment, checking each connection, all trying to figure why the damn thing wouldn't do what it was supposed to. This was back in the early days of the 4000 series, and poor cell phone signal, so I couldn't call for help either.
Kris Morgan, post: 388201, member: 29 wrote: In the early days of it, the radio antenna was actually a telescoping TV antenna and a hole had to be dug and it secured in it with the 30' radio antenna up. Also, and in no small part, we were told what cables went where because we may mess it up rather than now people know the drill. It was a piece of gear that went out very seldom and most of us had forgot what we knew about it when we had to go with the GPS crew. It took MUCH longer to set up the 4000 than the 5700 did or even the R8 now.
I didn't realize you were talking about RTK. I thought it was just a static setup, which only takes about 5 minutes if you're in a hurry.
Jim Frame, post: 388204, member: 10 wrote: I didn't realize you were talking about RTK. I thought it was just a static setup, which only takes about 5 minutes if you're in a hurry.
The 4000 receivers were also RTK, the 4400's I had looked pretty much like the 4000's, they took some time to set up, they had a huge antenna with a large ground plane attached to a L1L2. Probably it would take 15-20 minutes to set it all up at the base, then I would spend another 5-10 making sure the rover (another 4400 in a backback with a radio, batteries for the radio and the receiver, and wires leading up to the data collector and the antenna) would "talk" to the base. Always seemed to take time to get them going, sometimes they needed to be "cleaned". If they did you could spend another 10 minutes waiting for the new data to download,,,,,,,yeah lots of fun.
MightyMoe, post: 388215, member: 700 wrote: The 4000 receivers were also RTK, the 4400's I had looked pretty much like the 4000's, they took some time to set up, they had a huge antenna with a large ground plane attached to a L1L2. Probably it would take 15-20 minutes to set it all up at the base, then I would spend another 5-10 making sure the rover (another 4400 in a backback with a radio, batteries for the radio and the receiver, and wires leading up to the data collector and the antenna) would "talk" to the base. Always seemed to take time to get them going, sometimes they needed to be "cleaned". If they did you could spend another 10 minutes waiting for the new data to download,,,,,,,yeah lots of fun.
Yup. That's what I remember too!
At that time I was with Leica and we had the SR9500 receivers that had replaced the SR399; that was a good system for it's time, but heavy. Setup wasn't bad but you had to wire up the backpack with the receiver, Pac Crest radio, antenna, 8 lb. battery, and all the attendant cables. Even if you left what you could together that took a minute.
In the late 70s I was at an Engineering Company in Texarkana.
They had Wild T16 and another better Wild with a Distomatic mounted and either setup was very accurate and we always had excellent closures.
They never used the setup for any construction, period.
We built a shopping mall, dozens of other strip malls, roads, topos and upteen concrete streets with a transit and a rag tape and a dumpy level. :dizzy::skull::fever:
Carlson Surveyor1 changed all that especially when it was converted into SMI and TDS.
HP41GX with SMI was a game changer.
@mightymoe I am setting up a 4000SE with an L1/L2 antenna with a ground plane. I have setup the 4000 SE and it took about 25 minutes to get a good base mark location from 5 locked sats.It took 25 mins because i put the antenna on a small concrete column base to test out the 4000SE. LOL.
I still need to find a trimtalk 450 or 900 to for RTK to a DGPS xr pro tied to a TSC1. The trimtalks are available on ebay, but the cables are hard to find or hard to afford.
