"your bearings don't match"

There is no training, but if there was, the first lesson on the first day would be ,"
Bearings don't have to match".

Most of them have Geography degrees (which is way different than Geology).

They probably think COGO is a spring loaded stick you bounce around on.

They probably had an Algebra and Intro Statistics course. Any more and they would have most likely been majoring in something else......

But now that they work for the government, they know way more than the natural science majors.

It's Kafka's "The Castle" all over again......

"P&Z should contact the parties involved with the R/W dedication and have them fix their mistake!"

In all seriousness, while we all know that basis of bearings can vary, it wouldn't hurt to show a record/measured bearing on the right of way line to placate the people who don't know any better. You'll probably waste more time and effort arguing and explaining than it's worth.

> today's reason a plat was rejected by a P&Z reviewer.
>
> didn't match a r.o.w. dedication from 10 years ago...
>
> i'm really curious as to what comprises the training for these positions.
>
> shoulda stayed in juneau another week...

At a minimum, a bearing basis should be shown on any right-of-way, subdivision, or whatever plat of survey. What bearing basis is shown on the right-of-way plat? Assuming you reviewed the right-of-way dedication while you were preparing your plat, what drove your decision to use a different bearing basis?

Just curious.

They never look to see what the bearings are referenced as being related to even though it is all spelled out and found noted below the north arrow.

Today I spent trying to get ladies at the Title Company to understand that they have been writing title policies for the last 40yrs on a 2 acre tract that is not a part of the tract it calls to be a part of.

Says part of 69 acres, not true. Part of 50 acres that measures out to be 65 1/4 acres.

At least they both belonged to the same person.

They sent me a deed that was actually 4 separate deeds and 100 pages off in the deed records, page 565-568 instead of pages 465-468

Have to start today all over again n the morning, phew.

😉

the note on the r.o.w. take was "texas state plane coordinate system, nad 83." verbatim. which has its obvious flaws, but i'm not gonna hang a guy out for that.

my note: "texas coordinate system, nad 83(2011), central zone, utilizing leica smartnet reference network and referencing LCRA control monuments xxx, xxx, and xxx."

and my decision to use a different bearing basis was that i thoroughly clocked into various found monumentation outside and beyond the TWO rods set for this r.o.w. take, as well as several control monuments notorious for their reliability. i'm not in the business of holding a guy's bearing if i have the means to do otherwise. there's also the issue of a couple, three new geoids being incoporated in the meanwhile.

basically, in the conference call i tried to explain to them, as succinctly as possible, that north in 2004 isn't north in 2014. even if it means by less than a minute against record bearings. and that digits are just digits- the recovered monuments match what was called, are within an acceptable tolerance from record distance-wise (<.1'), and that in my professional opinion represent the intent of the original conveyance. and will not, therefore, throw their entire widening project into chaos...

flyin,

No layperson, and even a few surveyors, understand that our duty and purpose is to retrace property lines on the ground - and that measurements and math are imperfect.

The multiple monument phenomenon is direct proof that some surveyors do not understand this duty.

I have tried several notes on my plat, because I gave up explaining to the public why our measurements CAN NOT match numbers on a piece of paper:

Of all the notes I've tried, I have not had one single "rejection" from title companies or clerks since I started using the following note several years ago:

" ( ) - Denotes record data depicting the same line on the ground as retraced by this survey."

- ww co pls

Have a nice day! Or, may your monument prevail over some guy's touchscreen.

round here you don't put record bearings on subdivision plats. or if you do, you learn quickly that you'll never have one approved. it's assumed, i guess, at that point that title is cleared, the boundary is resolved, and your bearing becomes gospel. which is part of the problem...

Yeah, I agree, you wouldn't show R vs. M on a subdivision plat. Some people use the words the "plat" rather generically in reference to any recordable survey, so I didn't assume you were talking about a subdivision plat.

Hold on, I can hear the reproducible bearing police coming!

The angles have to remain the same, right? Maybe just an innocent question would work: "On which SINGLE line do you want me to hold the record bearing?" It might make their head explode, but if possible, maybe it will be a step in their evolution.

Planners

> Most of them have Geography degrees (which is way different than Geology).

Off topic, but interesting. Most of the planners I deal with have degrees in, well, planning

NAD83 (86) north is the same as NAD83 (CORS) and NAD83 (2011) north for all real world purposes. The origin of the system (at earth's mass center) changed slightly, at the 1-2 meter level, but the orientation difference is at the very small fraction of a second level. There may be local biases of a second or two or arc, but nothing that matters for boundary surveys. That also applies to NAD27, but the difference can be a couple of seconds, again, hardly enough to matter.

Therefore I believe that the statement "texas state plane coordinate system, nad 83." has only one flaw...what zone? Maybe that is what you mean when you say it has flaws, although one could deduce that the zone is the legislated zone for that county.

And, unless you are talking about magnetic north, north in 2004 is the same as north in 2014 (and the same as in 1904), at typical survey accuracy levels. The methods of determining it have changed. But, with proper equipment and procedures, the same basic accuracy was attainable a century ago as today. However, it was more common in the past to determine azimuth by using the solar altitude method (I know there is a better name, I can't think of it right now). That was because time was not usually accurately known in the field. But, the accuracy was degraded by the uncertainty in the refraction correction, so ±1' was commonmy attained. Of course, they could have used polaris at elongation, during which time is not critical. Modern methods would almost always use the hour angle method, where time is critical (or GPS, of course).

I just explain it to them and move on. If they try to buck me, well, then that's an entirely different story. I have no issue with someone asking a question like this. It implies that they are actually engaged at reviewing the plat along with other documents. This is not a bad thing. How they respond to the answer is whether or not I would hold respect for them past that.

The FEW times this has happened, I took time out of my day and drove to their office, met with them, sat down with a pencil and paper and I taught them how to subtend the bearings into angles and review the angular relationship vs. the bearings. Then a quick geodesy lesson regarding standard parallels and theta/gamma angles and why the relation is shown on the plat and the power that one has with that relationship in evaluating other bearings with respect to true meridians, and I've not had many follow up phone calls.

Personally, I feel that it's good business and I've made a contact. Had I been a butthole about it, then maybe my plats get looked at harder and stay in the Que longer. As it stands now, I have very little trouble getting plats through.

One city even doesn't check them (not a huge fan of that) because I was on the committee that literally, wrote the rules for subdivision development. 🙂

:good:
The data that controlled the datum didn't change, only the origin. 🙂

Ok- so I stated that incorrectly. I couldn't go out and shoot a point, come back a week later, shoot the same point, and get the EXACT same results. Maybe 10% of the time. And I don't believe anybody who says they could. Let alone measure something another guy did a decade ago and expect to replicate it exactly. Does his measurement (or my first one) have any more implicit value than my last one- with the giant caveat of assuming all other procedural apples are apples?

Ah, but here's the thing: yes, while it is an opportunity to engage with an attentive viewer, I KNOW this isn't the first time this has run across her desk. We're talking about a community that has quadrupled in size in the past 15 years- I've probably platted 2 dozen subdivisions there myself. It seems absurd that this still throws a wrench into the gears, or that we still get comments that "your survey doesn't match our GIS." I've had these kinds of conversations myriad times over the last decade with various municipal reviewers. Strikes me there's a core component of knowledge that isn't being taught in this profession. That, or there's some intentional attempt at being obtuse for the sake of... What?

I would hope that you could go out and shoot two points with GPS, then go out almost any amount of time later and shoot the same two and get the same bearing within a second or two. I would also hope you could turn angles through the same points and get the same angles within a few seconds as well....

John,Texas' legal names for the coordinate systems

NATURAL RESOURCES CODE

Acts 1977, 65th Leg., p. 2357, ch. 871, art. I, § 1, eff. Sept. 1,
1977. Amended by Acts 1987, 70th Leg., ch. 616, § 3, eff. Sept.
1, 1987.

If you look at some of the original documents put out by the NGS, they look like this; "(State) Plane Coordinate System", meaning that one should insert the state's name between the parentheses and then remove the parentheses to complete the correct nomenclature. Someone missed it and just added the state's name to the entire phrase, so it became Texas State Plane Coordinate system..

> ...within a few seconds...

bingo. i'd hope so too. but variation is variation. how many times have you re-traced somebody else's ten year-old work and hit within a few seconds? i'm not asking to be snarky, i can say that i could count on maybe three fingers how many times i have.

look, if i go out and re-trace my own work years down the road and find that everything is as it's supposed to be, then i'll hold the original calls. if i find the same in somebody else's work, i'm inclined to do the same. if, in this case, i find two rods, 230' apart, a tenth or so and 34 seconds off record, i'm curious as to why i'm compelled to assume that the original surveyor's measurements should hold over mine, in the grand scheme of one line out of the nine that comprise this site. my work was thorough, complete, and satisfies the standards both dictated to me by the profession and the state, as well as the expectations i have of myself as a surveyor. holding specific digits over intent and practice has never led to anything but headaches for me.