I'd say we are doing a much better job than we used to do.?ÿ We look at a much bigger picture.?ÿ I started in 1984 and we also used to almost always set the corners without coming back to the office first.?ÿ We also didn't look for as many corners then as we do today.?ÿ?ÿ
I'd say you hit the nail on the head. I started in 1982 and always say it might as well have been 1952. I worked for an old surveyor who had a Dumpy Level, 4 screw K&E transit with nonadjustable wooded legs, 100' steel tape, no reel. plumb bobs with no Gammon Reels, just hung the string around our necks, no radios just hand signals., dip needle, no metal detector. The guy was a mathematical wizard! Could do more math in his head than I could do with pencil and paper.
That being said, we now have the technology and equipment to go out and collect hundreds of points from a few setups. Take it back to the office, assess the data on our computers, create search ties, go back in the field and turn to our calculated corners.?ÿ Draw up?ÿ plats with a few key strokes on our CADD.?ÿ
Found in my old records of applications for registration to various states:
Date of first day of work on a survey crew... Monday, September 12, 1966
This was on a hand written note from my first employer. Williams and Works, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Not sure how or if this will appear but last month we closed a traverse to a hub and tack that we set in 1989. I find this type of thing to be the most rewarding part of my career.?ÿ?ÿ
I started surveying in August/September of 2000. Our crew chief at the time had a stroke in the office and forgot everything he knew (but lived to gripe about it). From that point on, another kid who had some construction background ran the gun and I was the rodman (though I had no idea what we were doing).
Fast forward a couple years and an instrument man who wasn't going to see crew chief in his current office came to our office (same company) and was made crew chief. He taught me SO much of how to survey, when to survey, what to survey and what it all meant. I even spent some weekend helping Holy Cow himself with some survey work. Talk about a learning experience! Holy Cow is VERY knowledgeable and showed me some sights in Kansas I didn't even know existed at the time. (I still remember setting that section corner just west of highway 59, south of my hometown a couple miles and the burial places of a historical figure and I still wonder why that poor chap was murdered at the age of 21).
Now, here we are, in Texas surveying for the largest surveying firm in the state. 900+ employees and over 150 field crews. Using all sorts of GPS, UAS, water craft, helicopters, planes, robotic total stations, scanners, (you name it we probably have two of them). My how time flies!
17.5 years have passed.
Hope Cemetery---permanent home to a doctor present with Lincoln after his ill-fated attendance at Ford's Theater and the young lad "assassinated" on Central Avenue one dark evening.
Will always remember pulling up to the stop sign by a different cemetery and you said, "Hey! ?ÿI think I've been here before." ?ÿNola with no connection to Nawlins.
Where am I?
Probably in the middle of a busy intersection
