@mightymoe When you are 60 miles of Jeep Trail from the nearest pavement, ya don't have many choices. It beats sleeping under the truck when it rains too (been there, done that).
Good luck finding a young guy of the RTK generation that even knows how to run a traverse with a total station, much less compute it out by hand.
Eh, I could say the same thing about old school surveyors and mixed-data network adjustments...and I know several folks who "don't adjust traverses because it spreads the error around."
We're also the ones responsible for training and mentoring the RTK generation. If they don't know a fundamental skill, it's because they weren't taught, or weren't given the opportunity to hone that skill. I guess I'm part of that generation, and I was lucky to have a few good mentors along the way, but maybe for only 20-30% of my career.
If someone gets hired at more than an entry-level position, and their skill set isn't adequately reviewed during the interview process, that's a hiring manager problem. If there are identified skill gaps that aren't addressed, that's a supervisor problem. That's part of being a leader and manager. If the employee has been shown the way and refuses to follow, then it becomes an employee problem.
I'm not addressing you specifically, I know you mentor your people. It's much more of a problem at the larger firms, where professional development is just seen as eating into the bottom line.
@rover83?ÿ
Or mix and match.?ÿ We may run a traverse of sorts with some shots strictly being set up points to pull out the total station to get side shots into locations that simply are not "GPS-able".
Our state law is "Distance measurements shall refer to the horizontal plane." (whatever that is)?ÿ
The only other reference to the horizontal plane in our state law is the definition of the north and south state plane zones. (grid)?ÿ
So our law indicates that all measurements should be reduced to the defined plane (grid).?ÿ
Is it practiced? No. Never has been. Every surveyor creates their own horizontal plane on their own grid and of course it is assumed ground which is is not. When the chain was used plumbed at one end every break in the chain was a different horizontal plane. When the total station was used every instrument setup created a different horizontal plane. When GNSS was used every project defined a different horizontal plane. I'm not sure anyone can truly define ground. I know many have tried. Just to stir the pot a little wouldn't a true ground measurement be a non horizontal distance on the actual surface??ÿ?ÿ
One of the more ignorant notes I ever ran across on a plat was something to the effect that distances shown are relative to RTN datum. Huh??ÿ?ÿ
Going back into my hole. Carry on.?ÿ
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@rover83 Fifteen years ago 90% of my work was done with a total station. Now, maybe 10%. I see threads touting how well their GPS works in canopy and I have to wonder if they ever break out their total station, so I??m hardly surprised to run into guys that simply don??t have the skills to run a conventional traverse, much doing long hand comps. They??ve simply never had to. It takes more than a few hours of instruction to bring them up to speed. Reminds me of the time we went out to a job couple hours away and the data collector was left behind. My PC didn??t have a clue what to do. I booked the days work and reduced it in the truck with my HP48 and got it done. Mentoring only goes so far just as a one day seminar doesn??t qualify me as an expert in some subject.
At my first job, my work area was next to the owner's office. I may have learned more from overhearing conversations than from my own work.
I overheard one side of a telephone conversation, presumably a client, that went like this:
"When we set up the survey instrument, the top of the tripod is the plane that we are measuring distances in. Yes, the measured distance is different depending on elevation, but it is not a concern unless you are working on the side of a mountain."
Meh.?ÿ In boundary surveys of less than 1,000' I'll measure and report ground, surely off less than a few hundredths compared to grid.?ÿ On surveys involving (many) miles and or massive elevation changes it gets tricky (pesky fact that the Earth is a sphere) SPC/LDP is the way to go and my map is in SPC.?ÿ On those surveys on every sheet I'll provide a Grid to Ground correction factor and Grid North based on the center of each sheet so transit and tape folks can survey, sort of (if there's big elevation changes within a sheet the errors could be up to tenths).?ÿ On the rare high precision Statewide surveys I'll report Lat-Lon-El values with error estimates tied to a Datum and no Brg/Dist Station-Station values, it's geodetic.
I was a pure terrestrial theodolite/EDM surveyor in the seventies until I did a multi mile survey in Alaska in the AK3 SPC zone on the eastern edge with 6,000 vertical changes and the difference between ground to grid was 2'/mile depending on elevation.?ÿ Couldn't close the traverse using our terrestrial data but when converting to SPC it closed quite?ÿ well.?ÿ?ÿ
These days it's backwards, GPS provides XYZ geocentric and that's automagically converted to N-E-El to a datum which may or not be SPC.?ÿ Ground truth could be off by 0.1 foot (95% sigma) but that's good enough for boundaries, most construction, etc., so that's the industry standard.?ÿ But I'll assert when 0.01-0.02' accuracy in a few hundred feet is required a theodolite and tape is more accurate than GPS.?ÿ
Our state law is "Distance measurements shall refer to the horizontal plane." (whatever that is)?ÿ
Don't you think it is just a prohibition against slope distances?
The wording is weird, but that prohibition goes back to the original GLO instructions, and was probably reworded by someone who had no experience with SPC.
While you are right about multiple planes, it is rare to find a place in Iowa where it matters much for a parcel if you use the plane of the instrument or the plane of this or that monument.
Use Olde English and in that eponymous font too.
Might fool them into believing it's very olde and important.... ???? ???? ?????ÿ
This has been an interesting conversation to follow along it's different tangents.
I do have a question for the room, when utilizing an LDP or modified state plane coordinates, what is your allowable PPM to be acceptable to just call it a ground distance?
An LDP is defined for the area where I do 65% of my work. All my legal descriptions are written as ground distances with calls to monuments. I don't include all the meta data in my description, I think it's a waste of time and just adds confusion/more chances to screw it up.?ÿ I have no qualms about using the LDP up to 30 PPM. If I'm showing a distance of one mile off by 0.16', im still going to sleep just fine at night.?ÿ
What is are some thoughts from other on that?
They??ve simply never had to. It takes more than a few hours of instruction to bring them up to speed. Reminds me of the time we went out to a job couple hours away and the data collector was left behind. My PC didn??t have a clue what to do. I booked the days work and reduced it in the truck with my HP48 and got it done. Mentoring only goes so far just as a one day seminar doesn??t qualify me as an expert in some subject.
If we require our employees to be up to speed on something that they rarely do, that we got to spend many projects and hundreds/thousands of hours practicing, then perhaps we should allow that we had an advantage over them and shouldn't expect them to automatically know such things. Or at least acknowledge that the landscape of our profession has changed and adjustments might need to be made.
And if we desire them to know certain things, we should at the very least give them the same amount of time and practice that we had before holding them to our own personal standard.
@rover83 I couldn??t agree more, but don??t you think that with that sentiment we should be more forgiving of people who apparently have no issue mixing up grid and ground in legal descriptions and are off 6? in a mile since they obviously didn??t get the proper mentoring or experience to know any better?
I'm not convinced that there's a large enough percentage of clients taking deeds and following in our footsteps for grid ground to be an issue.?ÿ Of those clients who are capable of making sense of a description, I suspect that getting within five feet of their corner would be good enough.
I've had a great deal of positive feedback from sending GE kml files to clients so they can get within 10yards of their corner using their cell phone.?ÿ?ÿ
