If you know what a "beer leg" is
You might be old if you insist that you must convert azimuths to bearings first to calculate.
if you remember when in the office there was only one HP calculator and it was shared by all.
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You ARE old if your Boss sent you to a programming seminar for the HP9810a.
If while chaining around a curve, yelled back at the noobie rear chainman, "other side of the tape , DumAZZ!"
Slid your pocket knife between the tribrach and the bottom of the 3800 mount, so you could get that needed little smidgeon of vertical to get the shot...
if you ever used the tangent screw to optimize the signal return on the autoranger, before pressing the shoot button.
thought 5mm +5ppm was state of the art.
knew why lefties weren't allowed to throw the chain.
got mocked by the mossy-backs for having a gammon reel.
knew how to hang a plumb bob under an instrument without a reel or a slider.
calculated the misc chaining corrections for the offset curve you were about to run, and wrote them on a stake for your back pocket.
physically staked a section line crossing the centerline/staked line using straddles.
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That "technical term" was always part of the first unit of instruction when I taught students to set up a transit/total station.
We learned a green I-man this little piece of information while staking out cemetery plots...
We also used to have "beer hubs". We drove hubs using an 8lb sledge, with a windmill swing, if you missed you bought a case (and those not swinging the sledge could interrupt your concentration at any point). Fun times!
You might be old if you insist that you must convert azimuths to bearings first to calculate..
Why would anyone prefer bearings unless they were reading off a compass or brass transit marked that way?
I find azimuths much less prone to blunder.
Too easy... “I dunno why, but that’s the way we do it. Furthermore that’s the way we’ve ALWAYS dun it.”
Yeah, that’s a classic generational marker.
So I use bearings: N315-45-30E
it gets ‘em every time.
I was excited when my company bought a 3805 in 1977.
I might be old, because I just got a 3805 last year. Works great. A 3805 and T2, Giant 9 glass reflector, I??m set! Tested fine at 13,000 ft, but it was hazy.?ÿ
The outfit I was with had the 3805 and then traded it in on a 3810A. That was about the time my youngest was born (fall '76). They were tough and reliable...and heavy with all their junk and the "ton of glass" you had to lug around. They were a game-changer fer sure.
It took me a while to saddle up to surveying as a career since my father was a surveyor and I had been helping him since I was 9 or 10. I really didn't care much for being a field hand back then. During lean times I worked at a millworks and enjoyed that a lot more. I probably would have wound up making cabinets and furniture for the rest of my life but Hewlett-Packard saved me. The thought of measuring 5K feet without dropping a chain or setting out an entire subdivision from one set-up rekindled my "interest" in surveying.
The rest was history. But I still keep all my woodworking tools handy in case I decide to make a change. 😉
Your index finger and thumb used to have a permanent black ink stain from cleaning pens. You remember having a roll of toilet paper on your drafting table with a doodle paper for checking and starting your pens. You remember when all the offices had ash trays. ?ÿ
you remember when 99% of the door prize give-always at the annual conference were alcohol related.
you used to worry that if you didn??t sit for the test soon, you??d have a 5 digit license number.
you remember that getting a top mount edm was sweeeeet, because you didn??t have to switch out the theodolite for the edm. You remember when everything you used to set that was closer than 200ft considering slope, was set with the chain/tape and you had a pair of chaining clamps attached to the bottom of your plumb scabbard.
If you can raise one eyebrow, but not the other, (one separate from the other)
As a side effect, of peering through an optical survey instrument, for years.
I can still do this.
Nate
A lot only have one eyebrow...
I googled that. Found old guys, with bushy connected eyebrows.
Is that what you meant?
❗
Fun memories; I'll add to it:
- Gammon Reel
- Tack ball
- Rhodes Arc
- Right Angle Prism
- Backpack full of hubs and stakes
- Cloth tape
- Tree pencils, whose impressed markings would last for decades compared to a magic marker, gone in a year or so.
- Chaining clamps, mission critical for accurate distance, along with a temperature observation.
- .22 pistol to take grouse or porcupines?ÿ for dinner
- Camping out at remote sites for ten days (then 4 days off) with helicopter/boat insertion/extraction.
- Being able to throw a slope stake to the rodman 25-100' away up or downslope accurately.?ÿ It involved holding the stake laterally, putting a vicious overhand?ÿ spin on it so it whirred like a helicopter.?ÿ Points scored if you could hit him and if he had to deflect it instead of catching it, that's a beer.
- Booting the rod 1-3' in topo/slope staking surveys.
- Visual or verbal comms between the instrument man and the rodman/brushwhacker as to exactly which brush/tree was on line and had to be whacked vs. leave it be. Done well it's a real timesaver.
- Tellurometer CA-1000 observations.?ÿ We didn't have the parabolic antenna or extended range horn but still made 5-7 mile shots, +- a few feet.
- HP 3800 distance meter.?ÿ Boy, that thing was heavy, big, pricey and required dismounting the theodolite to get the shot,?ÿ but tightened up route surveys immensely.?ÿ
- The NGS big boys showed up with their Kern Mekometer and produced?ÿ mm accuracy where we could only get +-5mm or so.?ÿ Only saw it in use once, on an NGS baseline.
- Instrument mounted EDMs (clumsy), soon followed by through the 'scope EDMs,?ÿ with 10 second observation times but eliminated the tape at distances over 100'.?ÿ?ÿ
- Optical plummets, electronic angle readouts, vertical compensators, no need for exquisite care by the operator to produce high quality results.?ÿ
- Total Stations with targetless EDMs with subsecond?ÿ cycling and remote control robotics with active prisms which essentially eliminated the rodman's job, soon followed by ($$$$) laser scanners for rapid topo surveys.
In the latter stages, GPS popped up as an alternative to geodetic control colocation at a huge price point, then evolved into RTK with better accuracy/availability to where nowadays I only see solo GPS operators doing stakeout, boundary and topo.?ÿ Photogrammetry has evolved from massive control targetry surveying, to Airborne GPS and now low altitude drone surveying with minimal (or even no?) control, another lost market.
So my skills are now useless, except in severe sky occlusion sites, where out comes the terrestrial instrumentation.?ÿ Not a viable submarket to pursue.?ÿ Glad I'm retired and although I keep on top of the latest in GPS innovation it's only for amusement.?ÿ
The only discipline left in the LS's quiver is boundary surveying, which is less about absolute accuracy and more about careful review concerning the record, existing conditions and judgemental resolution of fact based conflicts.?ÿ Let it be; the measurers can take over construction and topo issues; we'll still be the arbitrators of where the boundary is in our privileged position as Licensed Surveyors.
Monobrow whith bushy ear hair too
Yup, there was only an HP9810A purchased ($$$$$) for a small engineering firm which the engineers hogged during the the day to do their calcs. We surveyors had to come in after hours to prep next day's data and as the junior member I ended up using it from 10:00PM TO 12:00AM for no pay. Much better than working from 4:30pm 'till bed manually at home.
The HP41C (HP41CX) changed that. I could do my stuff in the field and only require control/design changes/new stations by tape/card reader from the "mainframe" after consultation from the resident engineer, 5 minutes or less. My family appreciated that and so did I.
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knew why lefties weren't allowed to throw the chain.
I'm a leftie and learned how to throw a chain backwards (to me) so the righties could deploy it correctly.?ÿ I tire of left handed discrimination in the workplace concerning equipment, please accommodate us.?ÿ?ÿ
I wasn’t hating on the lefties. It was just a fact . The main problem was that if a leftie threw it and a rightie tried to lay it out - either unaware or without thinking- The swarm had already occurred and had to be dealt with. Also knew a couple of rightie curmudgeons who’d throw it left handed just to screw with people.
