The American Surveyor Blog

The American Surveyor Vol 9 No 1

2012-03-12T15:09:00.002-04:00

Editorial: The 3D Train
The winds of change continue to blow, and blow they did in Denver. At the January 2012 International LiDAR Mapping Forum (ILMF) we proudly launched our latest venture, LiDAR Magazine, the only contemporary geo-publication dedicated solely to LiDAR technology. ILMF, now in its 12th year, attracted more ....Read the Article

BIM Gets a Boost
The 1.2 million-square-foot Music City Center in Nashville will have plenty of design features and spaces for visitors to talk about when it is scheduled to open in February 2013: The multifunction exhibit hall covers 350,000 square feet, or about eight acres; the grand ballroom contains 57,500 square feet and the junior ballroom ....Read the Article

Knowledge is Not Enough—Interview With Ken Mooyman
Forget about the bears. Beware of the mating geese. These were the solemn words Ken Mooyman, President of Leica Geosystems NAFTA, heard 30 years ago the first time he was dropped off by a helicopter in the wilds of Northern Quebec for a three-day stretch. Armed with only a tent, sleeping bag, canteens, books, ....Read the Article

Frames for the Future: New Datum Definitions for Modernization of the U.S. NSRS (1 of 4)
In 2008, the National Geodetic Survey (NGS) released its 10-Year Plan (NGS, 2008). In that plan, NGS describes the replacement of the two national datums currently in use. These are the horizontal datum (the North American Datum of 1983, or NAD 83) and the vertical datum (the North American Vertical Datum of 1988, or NAVD 88). Note that NAD 83 (1986) was originally a ....Read the Article

RTN-101 (Part 16): A Decade of RTN
Has it really been ten years? Did RTNs really catch on? Does this RTN thing really work? In answer to all three questions, yes! Network corrected real-time high precision GNSS for surveying (and a great many other uses) has endured for its first full decade. Did RTNs revolutionize surveying and real-time GNSS? Perhaps ... Read the Article

Footsteps: United States v. Milner
The 2009 case of United States v. Milner demonstrates important common law principles related to tidal boundaries. It also offers interesting insights into the law and the balance courts try to strike in deciding the law. The struggle for balance as it relates to private property rights and the rights of society as a whole are clearly demonstrated in this case. Several events led to ...Read the Article

Vantage Point: Operating Wirelessly
Carl Nelson is a lot like many of us, hooked to his electronics and living efficiently by multi-tasking. Unfortunately for him, he got caught at it. On December 28, 2009, Mr. Nelson was ticketed by a police officer in Richmond, California for infraction of state law that prohibits use of a wireless telephone while driving a motor vehicle, unless the phone is configured for ...Read the Article

FeedBack
Canoes and Saying No: I have just read the latest issue of The American Surveyor magazine and have the following comments. 1) Denny and Delores DeMeyer's article "Voyage of the Koo Koo Sint & Paddle Song" is incorrect in the statement that David Thompson was the first person to survey and map the Columbia River in 1811. It seems to me that Lewis & Clark surveyed ....Read the Article

The American Surveyor Vol 8 No 9

2012-03-12T15:07:00.000-04:00

Table of Contents

365kb

Editors Corner:
What A(nother) Year!
By Marc Cheves, LS

207kb

Metrorail Team
One of the first reflectorless measurement road surface monitoring projects in the U.S. utilizes technology to minimize hazards.
By Joseph Betit, PS, and Craig S. Hewes, PS

2,870kb

Intersecting Paths of Success
The magazine visits three surveyors, one Chinese GNSS expert and import/export specialist, and three companies, all in Atlanta.
By Marc Cheves, PS

2,870kb

Indelible Imprints—A GNSS Memoir
Dr. Javad Ashjaee recounts the origins of the cooperation between Russia and America that brought GLONASS to the precise community.
By Dr. Javad Ashjaee

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Digitally Preserving a Wahi Pana
In late 2010 CyArk embarked on an effort to bring the world a Hawai’i beyond beaches and snorkeling.
By Justin Barton

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Footsteps: Vision Church v. Village of Long Grove
Zoning, land use, and annexation are examined in this installment.
By Landon Blake, PS

337kb

Vantage Point: About Face
Location, location location, and how it affects zoning.
By Wendy Lathrop, LS, CFM

113kb

Reconnaissance: Trials and Tribulations
One state’s process for handling complaints against surveyors.
By Gary Kent, PS
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The American Surveyor Vol 8 No 8

2011-12-18T12:11:00.001-05:00

Editorial: Polarization
The ninth meeting of the Space-Based Positioning Navigation and Timing advisory board, held in Alexandria VA on November 9, 2011 was widely anticipated as a "showdown" between the anti- and pro-LightSquared forces. While the meeting scored points for both sides, it left unanswered some of the most important issues: the upper spectrum band, and who will pay. Those who are just now ....Read the Article

Voyage of the Koo Koo Sint & Paddle Song
In 1811, David Thompson, surveyor and fur trader for the North West Company reached the Pacific Ocean, adding the Columbia River as the final leg of the Fur Trade Highway from Hudson's Bay and Montreal to the Pacific Ocean and becoming the first person to survey and map the Columbia River from its source near Invermere, British Columbia to its ....Read the Article

Rendezvous 2011—Altered Contours
From sometime around 1000 BC through 500 AD, natives piled great quantities of dirt into all shapes and configurations within the valley of the great river. What was the purpose of these mounds of fill shaped over fifteen hundred years in the south-central region of present day Ohio-- Religion? Artistic expression? A means of hunting, securing necessary ....Read the Article

Vantage Point: A Homeowner's Setback
Minnesota's Supreme Court recently struck down earlier decisions favoring a homeowner's complaint against the local city for errors related to the homeowner's shed. While Dr. Rajbir Sarpal and his wife Dr. Carol Sarpal had prevailed in the district and appellate courts, this May 2011 opinion (797 N.W.2d 18) remands the case back to district court, primarily regarding the point of equitable ... Read the Article

Footsteps: Finding the Courage to Say "No"
My father died in May. He was 52. The loss of someone close to you, especially your father, forces you to examine your life. You ask, "Am I following the moral principles that I was raised with, even when I'm under pressure to compromise?" This loss in my life and three recent situations I observed in my career as a land surveyor have prompted me to write this article. Boundary surveying is a branch of ...
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Conference Review: CGSIC and ION 2011—GPS-Greater than the Sum of its Parts
The 51st Meeting of the CGSIC and the ION GNSS 2011 was held September 19-23, 2011 in Portland, Oregon. I can think of no better combination of conferences that serves to illustrate (to paraphrase Aristotle) how the "whole" of GPS/GNSS is certainly "greater than the sum of its parts". These two events are "the" place to interact directly with the constellation operators, policy makers ...Read the Article

Data Mine—From Limestone Mine to National Archives Storage
Imagine you are charged with this task: Accurately survey the interior of a limestone mine cut into the base of a bluffa cave with vast expanses, irregular surfaces and no light. Collect data on enough individual points to create a meaningful model of the space so that it can be designed and built for warehousing and storage. The challenge would be ....Read the Article

A Colonial Surveyor in President Jefferson's Public Lands
My apologies to Mark Twain, as in parts of my journey to obtain CFedS Certification I felt like the Connecticut Yankee, in King Arthur's Court, but in reverse. That is, I was the learner and my predecessors were the teachers. Also, my appreciation for American Surveyor Magazine's motto "A Foot in the Past...An Eye to the Future" prompted me to write about the journey that I recently ....Read the Article

The American Surveyor Vol 8 No 7

2011-10-05T09:49:00.000-04:00

Editorial: Putting the Lean On Manufacturing—A Visit to Topcon
The manufacturing area of Topcon's US headquarters in Livermore, California was a veritable beehive of activity during my recent visit. Colin Kavanagh, Senior VP for Operations, called attention to the "lean" manufacturing processes that have "eliminated expenditures for resources for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer". To achieve this, Topcon cast a critical eye on ....
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Surveying with Google Earth
Over the past few years, I have become convinced that Google Earth represents an extraordinary opportunity to visualize and communicate survey data, though I too was skeptical of its value as a professional land surveying tool in the beginning. At the time, Metzger + Willard, Inc. (MWI) was making AutoCAD base maps with orthophotos in the vicinity of NGS control stations. Our reasoning was that, equipped with ....
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Conference Review: Hexagon User Conference 2011
What is Hexagon and what is the business of Hexagon? A company that decades ago was "importing tuna fish," according to CEO Ola Rollén, is now a key international player in geospatial products and services, metrology, design and process; this by acquiring and integrating a long list of established companies successful in their own ....
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Driving the Islands
When the Public Works department for Washington state's San Juan County was challenged with identifying and mapping roadside assets in an effort to improve traffic safety, it responded by sending out crews with hand-held GPS units. They quickly realized both the scope such a project entailed and the overall inefficiency of using that technique. Knowing the importance of the effort, however ...
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How Precise is OPUS? Part 3: The Rest of the Story
This is the third of three articles discussing the precision obtainable with the Online Positioning User Service (OPUS) offered by NOAA's National Geodetic Survey (NGS). The first two articles appeared in preceding issues of this magazine. OPUS is a Web-based utility available at www.geodesy.noaa.gov/OPUS to which surveyors and others can ...
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Footsteps: Changes to the 2009 Manual of Surveying Instructions
In a previous article, published online in June 2011, I discussed why the 2009 update to the Manual of Surveying Instructions was needed and how the BLM implemented it. The article is available in the Amerisurv Exclusive Online section of The American Surveyor website at www.amerisurv.com/content/view/8774/. What follows here are highlights of some of those changes in the 2009 edition of ...
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Vantage Point: Noticing a Dirty Past
Accutherm, Inc. manufactured thermometers containing mercury in Franklinville, New Jersey until 1994. It notified the state's Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) of its ceased operations, NJDEP issued cleanup orders to Accutherm, and when Accutherm didn't comply, the site was referred to the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for an assessment. The EPA's 1996 report ....
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Surveying `Da Situation: An Unexpected Gift
I believe we have all heard stories or had personal experiences of feeling as though someone close that we have lost reached out to touch us in some way. I had just that kind of experience recently. Back in the mid 1960s, my Dad was a deputy in the local sheriff's department. He had that job for several years until he found another one that paid a little better and freed up his weekends. Well, the county ....
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The American Surveyor Vol 8 No 6

2011-10-05T09:48:00.000-04:00

Editors Corner:
Do You Depend on GPS to Make Money?
By Marc Cheves, LS

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Surveyors on a Busman’s Holiday
In their time off, a group of surveyors investigate an interesting jog in a state boundary.
By Paul Hoinowski

1,545kb

The Elevation Certificate Translated (Part 2 of 2)
Our flood plain experts continue with their instructions for filling out the form.
By C. Barton Crattie, LS, CFM and Wendy Lathrop, LS, CFM

1,963kb

The Javad GNSS Triumph V.S.
Our Nashville correspondent examines the latest offering from Javad Ashjaee.
By Clifton Ogden, EI, LSIT

1,787kb

Conference Review: The Second Optech Innovative LiDAR Solutions Conference
LiDAR technology continues to boldly move forward.
By Gene Roe, LS, PE, PhD

1,099kb

How Precise is OPUS? (Part 2 of 3)
Experts from NGS examine available precision estimates.
By Richard Snay, Kevin Choi, Gerald Mader, Charles Schwarz, Tomás Soler and Neil Weston

523kb

Reconnaissance: Developments and Questions Regarding the New 2011 ALTA/ACSM Standards
Our ALTA expert shines more light on the new Standards.
By Gary Kent, LS

883kb

Earthquake in Christchurch
A land surveyor shares his eyewitness account of the unexpected quake that struck Christchurch during his visit to New Zealand.
By Malcolm Anderson, FRICS, FCInstCES (ret.)

1,243kb

Surveyors Report: The Face of Surveying
A Louisiana surveyor provides a history of the national organizations and a possible way forward for the future. J. Anthony Cavell, LS, CFedS
By J. Anthony Cavell, LS, CFedS

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The American Surveyor Vol 8 No 5

2011-10-05T09:47:00.000-04:00

Table of Contents

346kb

Editors Corner:
Military Surveying, Then and Now
By Marc Cheves, LS

311kb

Subsurface Modeling
New technology that employs GNSS and the capability to “see underground” holds promise for surveying utilities.
By Les MacFarlane, LS, and Jim Waite

1,446kb

The Elevation Certificate {translated} Part 1
FEMA certifications continue to provide work for surveyors. Unfortunately, some fall short of properly completing the paperwork.
By C. Barton Crattie, LS, CFM and Wendy Lathrop, LS, CFM

2,177kb

Reconstructing an Accident Scene
GNSS RTK from Altus Positioning Systems helps the Royal Canadian Mounted Police reconstruct collision scenes.
By Daniel C. Brown

1,342kb

Product Review: Sokkia SRX
Our expert product reviewer examines this popular robotic total station.
By Shawn Billings, LS

529kb

How Precise is OPUS? Part 1: Experimental Results
Thousands of surveyors are using OPUS. Do they understand the legal ramifications of the underlying accuracy and precision?
By Richard Snay, Kevin Choi, Gerald Mader, Charles Schwarz, Tomás Soler and Neil Weston

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BookMarks:
Burt’s Solar Compass: It Conception, Development, Manufacturing, Marketing and Daily Use by Robert C. Miller
By Jack N. Owens, LS

211kb

The American Surveyor Vol 8 No 4

2011-10-05T09:43:00.001-04:00

Table of Contents

247kb

Editors Corner:
Angular Accuracy
By Marc Cheves, LS

194kb

Mr. Bilby’s Elegant Assembly, Being both Elegant and Sublime
Long before GNSS, triangulation angle-turners had to take to the air.
By C. Barton Crattie, LS, CFM

2,146kb

Star Crossing & Stone Monuments
The USGS releases a circular about early-day control surveying in Colorado.
By J. B. Guyton, LS

782kb

The Story of a Stone
Metes and bounds Colonial states still depend on stone monuments set long ago.
By Timothy S. Guisewhite, LS

3,513kb

Mapping Interior Spaces with Speed, Ease & Accuracy
A growing market—with opportunities for surveyors—is served by the Applanix TIMMS.
By Peter Canter and Andrew Stott

701kb

Vantage Point:
Signs of the Times
By Wendy Lathrop, LS, CFM

480kb

GIS Matters: Point Data as GIS Features—ASCII
Continuing with our series on how surveyors can become involved in GIS.
By Rj Zimmer, LS

592kb

Footsteps: Claudino v. Pereira
This 2008 California case may have application across the country.
By Landon Blake, LS

662kb

Broadband vs. GPS
Do not panic, but be prepared to panic.
By Gavin Schrock, LS

503kb

The American Surveyor Vol 8 No 3

2011-10-05T09:42:00.000-04:00

Table of Contents

274kb

Editors Corner:
SPAR 2011
By Marc Cheves, LS

198kb

“Wienhenge” The Weeks Field Sundial Project
Vision, ingenuity and extreme patience culminate in a one-of-a-kind work of art and technology.
By Martin Gutoski, LS.

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Conference Review: Trimble Dimensions 2010
Under the banner of Converge, Connect, Collaborate, this popular user conference sets the bar.
By Gavin Schrock, LS

2,519kb

Look Closer–Using Pictures in Research
Surveyors can be creative when it comes to measuring. In this story, a surveyor uses old photographs to establish what was where and when.
By Kenneth T. Mills, LS

2,441kb

Boundary Hunters
The boundary of a wild and woolly Arkansas tract steeped in history is retraced using modern technology.
By G. C. Skipper

2,217kb

Vantage Point:
Future Tense
By Wendy Lathrop, LS, CFM

1,232kb

Footsteps:
Changes Affect Surveying, Part 2
By Landon Blake, LS

344kb

Surveyors Report: Changes in ALTA/ACSM Land Title Survey Standards for 2011
An opportunity for surveyors and a call to action.
By Trent Turk, LS

133kb

American Surveyor Vol 8 No 2 Articles Posted

2011-03-13T17:36:00.002-04:00

Editorial: The Things We Gather
You can tell a lot about people by the things they collect. Whatever the motivation, for most of us the process of collecting is a pleasurable pursuit. Many of our writers own fine collections--old surveying instruments, classic cars, antique clocks, coins, photographs and more. Personally, I've ....
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An Integrated Solution for Mining
The Twangiza-Namoya gold belt in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is potentially one of the most exciting undeveloped gold deposits in the world today. Exploration and mining activities across what are today Banro's four ...
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What Separates the Rich from the Poor?
"The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted." —James Madison. Of the 6 billion people on Earth, 2 billion try to survive on a few dollars a day. They don't businesses, or...
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Montana's GIS-Based Cadastre Layered with Riches
As the fourth largest state in the United States, Montana is synonymous with frontier. Under the state's famous "big sky" are 145,552 square miles of sparsely populated open land, and-- ranked forty-fourth in total population and forty-eighth in ...
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Harnessing a GPS Network
It's a powerful system, this SmartNet North America. Launched by Leica on March 1, 2010, SmartNet is a subscription-based service offering GNSS Network RTK corrections throughout North America. Geographically, SmartNet covers Ontario, Quebec ...
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Using Google Earth
I'm sure many surveyors like myself have downloaded and played with Google Earth. I have virtual map pins stuck in places where I've lived and worked, and pins placed at Air Force bases where I was stationed in the United States, Europe and North Africa. There are pins in the ...
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Vantage Point: Life Behind Levees: an Overview and Update
Throughout history, mankind's interaction with water has been a love/hate relationship. We have loved to be near water for drinking, bathing, fishing, watering crops, navigating our ships, and just plain aesthetics. On the other hand we have hated the unpredictability of water rising up out of ....
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Footsteps: Title Industry Changes Affect Surveying
Several changes have recently occurred in the land title industry. What caused these changes and what impact they have had on the boundary surveyor are the topics that this article will address. The land title industry is the group of companies that offer insurance to the purchaser of ...
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American Surveyor Vol 8 No 1 Articles Posted

2011-03-13T17:34:00.001-04:00

Editorial: Good Records
Old photos and family albums tell stories that few of us ever take the time to put into words. My wife's family was fortunate to have several ancestors who were good writers. They left behind stories, rich in detail, describing their lives in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the struggles they faced ....
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Rainier—The Unforgiving Mountain
Why has the Land Surveyors Association of Washington (LSAW) mounted repeated expedi tions to measure and remeasure Mount Rainier? Along with some very practical reasons--serving geosciences, geodesy, gravimetry, and public safety--this ....
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Using the Lynx Mobile Mapper to Survey a Levee
In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast of the United States, leaving in its wake an unprecedented loss of life and property damage. Among the critical infrastructure the storm impacted was the levee system that controls the ....
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GIS Matters: Convert CAD Data to GIS
Surveyors have been using Computer Aided Drafting/Design (CAD) for decades to draft surveys and to do design. As society becomes more spatially conscious, the ability to integrate data with geographic information systems data increases and is now to the point where CAD-GIS ...
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Product Review: MicroSurvey CAD 2010 Ultimate
"Good!" Step. Step. Step. Plumb the pole. Beep . . . beep . . . beep. "Good!" So goes the familiar rhythm of any one of a thousand topographic surveys on any given day. Each month, surveying magazines are filled with images of point clouds from laser scans. And each month the average practicing ...
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Conference Review: Moving Forward—2010 Leica Geosystems HDS Worldwide User Conference
This year's Leica HDS User Conference once again raised the bar for return on investment in terrestrial 3D laser scanning conferences. With attendance approaching 300, up some ...
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Model Behavior: The How-To Guide to Successful Surface Modeling, Part 5
Welcome back! In my last article I stated that the next installment of this discussion would examine some field techniques to help create more accurate base models, but I will cover that topic at a later time ....
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Vantage Point: The Latest "Gate"
My township taxes will probably be going up, and maybe you can gain a business lesson from my pain. Call it "Webcam-gate". Many businesses have formal policies regarding personal activities on business time. This includes phone calls to friends, family, doctors' offices, and the bank. It also ...
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Vol 7 No 9 Articles Posted

2010-12-20T10:02:00.001-05:00

Editorial: Winds of Change
The Windy City lived up to its name during a recent visit to Chicago where we attended a press event hosted by LizardTech, the leader in file compression. Those of you who deal with aerial images--for example, as backdrops for your land development maps--have undoubtedly encountered the company's popular multi-resolution seamless image database file format, MrSID, commonly pronounced ....Read the Article

CPS-98—An Odd Geodetic Survey Crew
The following paragraph is found on page 9 of the official history of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey in World War II: "To provide the additional staff needed, and to replace employees who joined the armed forces, many changes in personnel were made during the war. Since very few experienced persons were available for employment ....Read the Article

Laser Scanning Mushpot Cave
The concept for this project was hatched in the brilliance-inducing state one achieves by moving rapidly between the dim, flickering ambiance of a GIS computer screen and the dim, flickering ambiance of a bat-filled lava tube cave, which were not dissimilar to the conditions in which I interned as a cartographic technician at the Lava Beds National ....Read the Article

Coping with Tectonic Motion
Using GPS technology, surveyors can easily measure positional coordinates with centimeter-level accuracy. As a consequence of this capability, surveyors are now exposed to coordinates that change over time due to plate tectonics. In the contiguous United States (CONUS), the fastest changes in coordinates occur in California, because the state lies almost entirely within the boundary ... Read the Article

Rendezvous 2010 Recap
Rendezvous, in the plural sense, are more than meetings--they are gatherings and collections of brand spanking new perspectives on ancient, old and archaic facts in surveying history. Over the past 14 years the Surveyors Historical Society has held memorable meetings in memorable settings, studying many varied and memorable ...Read the Article

Vantage Point: Crawlspaces and Basements
Surveyors have been having trouble describing buildings for the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) since time immemorial, or at least since the introduction of building diagrams to categorize general construction techniques. It seemed that every structure we encountered in the field fell between the cracks in terms of conforming to one or another of the proffered examples. The most recent ...Read the Article

Real Time GNSS Network in New Mexico
Think RTK without a base station and you have a Real Time Network (RTN). No more shuffling through datasheets to find a nearby control point or doing recon for a station with unobstructed sky visibility and clear line of sight to the jobsite. No need to set up the unit in morning and tear it down in the evening. No more searching for an open frequency. Just get out of your vehicle and start surveying ....Read the Article

Surveyors Report: It Started at the Fair
On the opening day of the 2010 State Fair, the Missouri Society of Professional Surveyors started a Height Modernization Survey. This is a volunteer effort across the state with private surveyors donating their time and resources. Public surveyors from state and federal agencies also take part. We started the survey immediately following Governor Jay Nixon's official opening of the fair when he ...
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Vol 7, No 8 Articles Posted

2010-12-20T10:01:00.000-05:00

Table of Contents

319kb

Guest Editorial:
The Sky Refuses to Fall—GPS is NOT Dead!
By Gavin Schrock, LS

294kb

New Tech Showcase:
Environment Analysis from JAVAD GNSS and MOVE3 Moves to the U.S. Survey Market

761kb

Just Say You’ve Been There
Even surveyors have assumed the Arctic Circle is a fixed line of latitude on the surface of the earth. Not so.
By Eric Stahlke, LS, CFedS

1,273kb

Hard Work, Miserable Conditions—Surveying Tennessee’s Cumberland Trail
Even though the title sounds grim, what surveyor wouldn’t relish the thought of getting paid to camp out?
By Brad Longstreet

2,870kb

Another Coordinate System—This Time Without Survey Marks
As NGS prepares for the future, the former NGS Director addresses a few implementation questions.
By Lewis A. Lapine, PhD, LS

2,103kb

Product Review: Nikon Nivo C
Our reviewer comes up with an intriguing use for this full-featured, compact instrument.
By Shawn Billings, LS

909kb

Vantage Point:
Misperceptions
By Wendy Lathrop, LS, CFM

105kb

GIS Matters:
Something for Nothing
Rj Zimmer, LS

935kb

Reconnaissance:
Society Committees Adopt Draft of New 2011 ALTA/ACSM Survey Standards
By Gary Kent, LS

119kb

Volume 7, Number 7 Articles Posted

2010-10-18T15:36:00.001-04:00

Make Me a Map of the Valley
Under clear skies and warmer than normal temperatures, nearly 100 people gathered for the 14th annual Surveyors Rendezvous. Guests were treated to an extraordinary three-night stay onboard the legendary Delta Queen steamboat. Designated as a National Historic Landmark with more than two million miles of maritime history beneath her bow, the Delta Queen is now one of Chattanooga's most ....Read the Article

Digitizing the Legacy
"We are missing data on Washington's brow and cravat." "Even with the data from the scans on the talus slope?" "The angle is just too steep. We have to use the rig." "What about the scans from Lincoln, or the chins?" Two clicks brought up a different modelspace. "No,the angle was too oblique to catch the front of Washington." "We designed the rig to ....Read the Article

Machine Control: Lessons Learned
I am continually asked about the opportunities for land surveyors in the machine control market and I have written a couple past articles about these opportunities. But I am more curious about what the next trend is for machine control. What else is over the horizon that we haven't seen yet? What can land surveyors do to help fill the void that machine control has left in our revenues? Being involved in ... Read the Article

Not What, but Where is Qibla?
Back in the Spring of 2009, we received a routine request from one of our finer regular clients to perform a routine boundary and topographic survey. Sporting a brick rancher, the property backed up to an interstate highway, fronting on a somewhat secluded road but less than a mile from one of Tennessee's largest shopping malls. We completed the ...Read the Article

OPUS-DB and Uncertainty Testing
The Conrad Blucher Institute for Surveying and Science at Texas A&M University--Corpus Christi conducted a research project with the National Park Service (NPS) and National Geodetic Survey (NGS) to determine the heights of five peaks in the Guadalupe Mountains. This mountain range is located in West Texas near its border with New Mexico ...Read the Article

Vantage Point: Safety or Fraud?
About six years ago, as I chatted with a client as he drove us through northeastern Missouri to visit a work site, the inevitable questions of origins arose. Mine is a complicated tale of a family on the move from coast to coast, but his was simpler: "I'm from a small town in Pennsylvania I'm sure you've never heard of, Centralia." I turned toward him in sudden surprise and replied, "Oh, I know where that ....Read the Article

Feedback
More on Apprenticeship. I have been following the discussions about this subject at various locations and in many forms for many years now. In Dave Gibson's article "Licensure by Apprenticeship: Effects on the Surveying Profession" [Vol 7, Issue 4], he makes some good points. However, what I find difficult to accept about most of the opinions I have heard is that the argument seems to be always ...Read the Comments

Surveyors Report: Making the Most of the Recession
The Barnett Shale, the second largest producing onshore domestic natural gas field in the US, stretches over North Texas. It is still actively being discovered. Young and Associates Surveying and Mapping, LLC was formed in 2007 as the Barnett Shale was booming for natural gas exploration. As land surveyors who specialize in this niche market, we were in an optimal position to step in and step up ...
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Vol.7 No.6 Article Posted

2010-08-14T11:24:00.000-04:00

Editorial: Maps as a Metaphor
"I know this world is ruled by infinite intelligence. Everything that surrounds us--everything that exists--proves that there are infinite laws behind it. There can be no denying this fact. It is mathematical in its precision." There are many surveyors and mappers and members of the precision community who concur with these words of Thomas Edison. Economy, too, hangs on immutable laws. One of the ....Read the Article

Measuring a Caribbean Disaster
On January 12, 2010, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck the city of Port-au-Prince, the capital and largest city of Haiti. Tens of thousands of buildings collapsed, and more than 200,000 people died in the disaster. Earthquakes are not unexpected in Haiti. The country sits astride several fault lines, among them the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault ....Read the Article

3D-Laser Scanning and Surveying Collide
LandAir Surveying started business in 1988 performing site surveys and topographic surveys for contractors in Georgia and surrounding states with two survey crews and a total staff of less than 10. By 1998 the firm expanded to surveying cell tower sites for the telecommunications industry (more than 3,000 sites in four years) using ...Read the Article

Another Triumph!
He's done it again. Javad Ashjaee has released an impressive state-of-the-art product that enables surveyors to expand their GNSS capabilities. On June 29, 2010 Javad unveiled the Triumph VS at the company's 40,000 square foot newly designed headquarters and JAVAD EMS boardmanufacturing facility in San Jose, California. Over the decades ...Read the Article

Product Review: Hemisphere GPS R220
One of the recent trends in precision GPS manufacturing is the enclosed, fully integrated receiver. This is no doubt in response to market demands by surveyors in the field for gear that offers more durability and less complexity in setting up and getting to work. This trend has certainly offered surveyors many benefits, however, it has also ushered in a few limitations. For instance, many of these ...Read the Article

Comprehensive Collection
Recording the location, dimensions and physical attributes of every piece of equipment constituting rural utilities throughout the United States might seem like a tall order. But information tools used to build a GIS have advanced so much in recent years that the endeavor is not only possible, but plausible. Great Falls, Montana-based GeoNav Group International, Inc. recently acquired the technology to pull ....Read the Article

Feedback
Doing a Proper Job: I have a better reason for the legal profession insisting on a metes and bounds descriptions for dependent resurveys than clerk mentality or ancient check lists. In his article "Rewriting Legal Descriptions" [Vol. 7, Num. 4], Gary Kent's example of "the most egregious example of description rewriting is the preparation of a metes and bound description for a property that is a lot in ...Read the Comments

Vantage Point: "Just" What?
Several months ago my husband and I were working on a rail to trail conversion in our neighborhood, digging out debris and planting trees. At one point I was separating the junk found in the digging process from the recyclable beer cans and glass bottles when someone walked up and started talking to me. With my head still down, in the midst of trying to subdue a long strand of barbed wire into a ...Read the Article

Volume 7 Number 5 Articles Posted

2010-07-19T23:11:00.001-04:00

Guest Editorial: Aphorisms for the Surveyor
In place of my editorial in this issue, I thought our readers would enjoy these words of wisdom shared by Dr. Dick Elgin. "For many years I have delivered to state surveyor association meetings a seminar on how to improve one's surveying business. Its current revision is based on my 36 years of ....Read the Article

Big Ship {Tight Squeeze}
With a clearance of about 226 feet between Mean Lower Low Water (MLLW) and the span underside of San Francisco's Bay Bridge, there's usually plenty of room for the world's biggest ships to pass through on their way to the Port of Oakland. But ....Read the Article

Herr Niebuhr and the Remarkable Traverse
So began a personal adventure that continues to this day. Who was this Carsten Niebuhr chap? This we know: Born March 17, 1733, he was a farmer in the moist marshlands of coastal northern Germany, a fellow first learning alphabets and mathematics at 22 years of age, a student .... Read the Article

The Largest Non-BLM Cadastral Retracement in History
Maricopa County, Arizona, is the 14th largest county of roughly 2,950 counties in the country. It contains roughly 5,904,616 acres within its bounds, over 25 municipalities and communities and more than 3.5 million people who call it home. It is ....Read the Article

GIS Matters: The Power of Place
Geographic Information Systems--the powerful combination of visualization tools and spatial data--are ubiquitous today. People use GIS for many applications such as online searches for retail sources of products and services, as navigational aids in cars, planes, and boats, for ....Read the Article

Model Behavior: The How-To Guide to Successful Surface Modeling, Part 4
We've been examining some of the pitfalls in surface modeling based on differing source information. The last article [Dec. 2009] dealt with the common errors associated with using drawn contours as source ....Read the Article

Vantage Point: Beating Axles into Plowshares
As businesspeople, we have always been warned to diversify our clientele and services so that we don't suffer so badly when one client or one line of work no longer provides us the same (or any) income. But the fortunes of communities and cities often rise and fall due to a single ....Read the Comments

Survey Affidavit Of No Change
Many professional land surveyors know all too well about the survey affidavit of no change, its negative effects on the surveying profession, and the impact it has on the public. If a land surveyor's primary duty is to safeguard life, health, property and promote the public welfare, then perhaps an ....Read the Article

A Tribute to Stanislav "Stas" Sila-Novitsky, GNSS Pioneer and Longtime Javad Associate

2010-06-03T10:32:00.005-04:00

A tribute with American Surveyor images:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/amerisurv/sets/72157624185111594/show/

Stanislav "Stas" Sila-Novitsky, GNSS Pioneer and Longtime Javad Associate, Passes in Russia

2010-06-03T10:27:00.003-04:00

Stanislav "Stas" Sila-Novitsky, GNSS Pioneer and Longtime Javad Associate, Passes in Russia

Written by Glen Gibbons

Wednesday, 02 June 2010

Editor's note: The following article, by Glen Gibbons, the editor and founder of Inside GNSS, recently appeared on Glen's blog. We at The American Surveyor knew Stas very well and always considered him to be a friend. On our visits to Moscow he went out of his way to make us feel like family. In the next blog posting is a slide show that highlights some of the visit to the Izmailovsky Craft Market Glen mentions, as well as the JAVAD GNSS User Conference in 2008:

Very sad news from Moscow. Earlier this month, Stanislav Sila-Novitsky — Stas to his friends and colleagues — died unexpectedly after a short illness.

A member of the executive staff of Javad GNSS, Sila-Novitsky had a long career in space electronics engineering. During the Soviet era, he was the department head with the Russian Space Agency’s Institute of Space Device Engineering, which was responsible for the development of the overall GLONASS system electronics.

Around 1990, Sila-Novitsky joined Ashtech Inc., which had established a Moscow operation in the final years of the Soviet Union. It was the beginning of a 20-year relationship with Javad Ashjaee and the series of companies that the latter operated in Russia.

During those chaotic and difficult economic times, I heard from more than one Russian engineer this observation about the government, “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.” And, like many Russians, Stas’s humor also tended toward the ironic — but it was a gentle irony that I never saw veer into sarcasm.

I first met Stas in the mid-1990s but didn’t really get to know him until I visited Moscow in 2005 and 2007. Somewhat taciturn around strangers in settings outside Russia, he clearly became more comfortable, even expansive in his native land.

Although several pleasant memories suggest themselves — outings to Red Square on Moscow's Metro system — one stands out: the afternoon that he took time away from his work responsibilities to guide a small group of us personally through Moscow’s amazing Izmailovsky Craft Market.

He was careful about his guests' well-being. At night, when Stas accompanied us back to our hotel, he led us down this street, not the other one that looked the same but with dangers in the shadows. Then we watched as he walked back alone to Leningradsky Prospekt, where Stas would wave down a passing private car willing to serve as one of Moscow impromptu taxis and take him home.

I never learned a lot about Stas’s personal background. As echoed in his name, his family had come to Russia from Poland — or Russia had come to it as the borders moved back and forth in the 19th and 20th centuries.

I always meant to find out more about that history and thought there would always be another right time for that. But it never came, and now that moment has gone forever.

So, Stas’s passing teaches us the lesson once again: tell all our stories and ask for all theirs, drink all the toasts, take all the photos, visit all the sites desired but unseen, voice all our apologies and welcome their joys and regrets. When the opportunity to meet old friends appears, don’t turn aside or rush right by.

For life is uncertain, but death is not. And time flies; it doesn’t take the bus.

—Glen Gibbons

Source: http://www.insidegnss.com/node/2110

The American Surveyor Volume 7 Number 4 Articles Posted

2010-06-03T10:26:00.002-04:00

Editorial: Having the Right Tools
Earthquakes, blizzards, floods, tornadoes, erupting volcanoes, an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, financial and economic instability, political upheaval and thwarted terrorist plots--the theme song for the first half of 2010 could well be "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On." USGS records show that since 1900, an average of 16 earthquakes of magnitude-7 or ....Read the Article

Civic Duty - A Visit to Civic Engineering and Information Technologies
We've shared them before--stories about surveyor fathers and the sons who not only followed in their footsteps, but took the career to a whole new level. Clifton Ogden grew up in Gulf Shores, Alabama with a civil engineer father who enjoyed surveying. Ogden recalled his first summer in the field, spent locating wetlands. He used a ....
Read the Article

Phased Contracting
One of the biggest challenges in operating a profitable land surveying business is the impact of unexpected evidence and its effect on client relationships. Not surprisingly, the two are oftentimes related and when problems arise, it can affect one's business reputation along with the proverbial bottom line. If you are in business, it is assumed you intend to make a profit. If that is ...Read the Article

When Two Become One - A Look at the Law of Merger of Adjoining Parcels
A previously ignored fact buried in the hieroglyphics of a legal description suddenly presents possibilities to someone looking for value in their real estate, particularly in this economy. As we know, land that functions as a single property may actually include more than one distinct parcel or lot (we'll use these terms as synonyms). As to ...Read the Article

Building a Fully Functioning County GIS in Five Years
Five years ago Cochise County, Arizona embarked on a comprehensive plan to install a practical Geographical Information System. Today 300 county employees use it regularly. We attended the Arizona Geographic Information Council's 2009 Education and Training Seminar in Tucson in early November. Walter Domann, GIS Coordinator for Cochise County, explained how ...Read the Article

Full Steam Ahead - Applying 3-D Laser Scanning to a Boiler Plant Replacement Project
The engineers of Sebesta Blomberg & Associates in Roseville, Minnesota faced a daunting task in documenting existing conditions within the two central boiler plants at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. The Yarbrough facility, built in 1937, contains three large boilers and an intricate network of catwalks, pipes, conduit, ductwork and structural steel supporting the boilers and the ....Read the Article

Reconnaissance: Rewriting Legal Descriptions
When presenting programs to persons in the title industry, the question is frequently asked about the tendency of some surveyors in some areas to write new descriptions for virtually any property they are surveying. The questions posed are often along the lines of "Why do they do this?" and "Which description is correct—the old one or the new one?" The answer is often the same as ...Read the Article

Vantage Point: Professionalism, Logic, and Law
Three out of the four states in which I am licensed have mandatory continuing education requirements for renewing my professional land surveying licenses. The fourth is one of a minority without such requirements, including eight other states, several territories, and the District of Columbia. I don't consider it an imposition to comply with these requirements, and ...Read the Article

FeedBack
Which Came First? I just finished Chris Wickern's article "Whose Footsteps Are They?" [ 2010 Vol. 7 No. 3]. I enjoy the discussion points he puts forth. The cover photo was very true; I have a question about the location of the corner monument under the larger rock. Which came first—the monument or the rock? Was the monument set under the large rock? What evidence was given for Mr. Dopuch to ...Read the Comments

Surveyors Report: Licensure by Apprenticeship: Effects on the Surveying Profession
The image of land surveying as a technician/trade image is increasingly growing. I make a case for moving away from the apprenticeship system toward an educational standard. A 1525 English document gives the word origin of survey, a French word of two parts--sur meaning "from above", and vey, meaning "to see"--that is, any method of identifying and measuring ground features and ...Read the Article

The American Surveyor Vol 7 No 3 Articles Posted

2010-04-12T09:53:00.003-04:00

Editorial: SPAR 2010
Under the banner of Innovate, Connect & Learn, the seventh annual SPAR laser scanning conference was held in Houston in February. In comparison to attendance in 2009, which had decreased slightly from the previous year to 630, attendance this year roared back to nearly 800. Of these ....Read the Article

SMART Surveying
Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) is an overwhelmingly popular rail initiative in Northern California. Measure Q had an amazing 70% support of the two county (Sonoma-Marin) SMART District. One reason for voter enthusiasm is that SMART promises to be relatively ....Read the Article

Ashtech Comes Full Circle: An interview with François Erceau
They're back! While the name Ashtech may sound new to younger folks in the precise community, its corporate predecessors, Ashtech, Thales and Magellan have ... Read the Article

Whose Footsteps Are They? The Journey to the Center Quarter Corner
The center quarter corners of the Public Land Survey System are the topic of many heated discussions between surveyors. Some say the center quarter can exist only at the intersection of ...Read the Article

The Birthplace of VRS
Today, Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) networks are becoming commonplace. There is at least a small RTK network (or multiple RTK networks) in every state of the U.S., some with full statewide coverage. Internationally, many countries boast nationwide networks. All have been developed within a whirlwind decade since the introduction of the ....Read the Article

Infected with Surveying: A ProFile of Dick Elgin
Dick Elgin comes by his surveying "roots" honestly. Raised in his late parents' "Mom and Pop" surveying business, as with so many of us, surveying got into his blood early in life and has yet to leave. This rare combination of surveying practitioner, researcher, educator, author and ....Read the Article

Vantage Point: Ripple Effects Above and Below
The most popular saying around one office I worked in was, "You can have anything you want, but you have to pay the price." Both clients and employees heard it frequently. But it applies to life on a broader scale as well, affecting many aspects of the world we live in. One of ...Read the Comments

Network News
Earl Dudley, Inc. saw the benefits of a reference station network early on. Now, nearly a decade after their first station, they are seeing a lot of new converts to the technology. Equipment suppliers in a broad range of fields can often go years without a change in their product offering. Not ...Read the Article

Volume 7, Number 2 Articles Posted

2010-03-31T17:17:00.002-04:00

Editorial: Conference Season
Well, it's conference season again, and I'm sure many of you have or are attending your state shows. I'm very impressed with many of our state organizations for the work they do in promoting the profession and educating surveyors. The national shows, although costly, generally provide more than the state shows in the way of presentations, seminars and the latest technology and ....Read the Article

Surveyors In History
Bryant Sturgess is a licensed surveyor and civil engineer in California. He was Chief Surveyor for the State Lands Commission under François (Bud) Uzes and Roy Minnick. Now retired after 38 years service he continues to the present as a water boundary consultant for the California State Lands Commission and the State ....Read the Article

GPS at LSU - A New Box for the Tigers
Turning a golf course into a baseball stadium for one of the nation's most successful college teams presented a number of "interesting" challenges for my employer, Buquet & LeBlanc, Inc. of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The fact that the new stadium would replace a legendary ballpark that had been the site of the Louisiana State University Fighting Tigers' success for... Read the Article

Surveyors Convert, Connect & Expand to Create a Network of Possibilities
Beginning in 1967, Van Harten Surveying (VHS) built a reputation in the City of Guelph, Ontario, Canada and surrounding communities for its ability to complete a wide range of engineering and surveying activities with speed and accuracy. The company's list of clients eventually grew to include builders, developers, lawyers, universities, utilities and government agencies. Yet...Read the Article

A Visit To Nedo
When it comes to history, the picturesque town of Dornstetten has deep roots tracing back more than twelve hundred years. Translated "thorn places"or "thorn sites", its municipal crest bears a deer antler above a thorn bush. Located at the edge of the Black Forest in southwestern Germany, the town was first mentioned in public records in ....Read the Article

Students in the Pipeline
Surveyors don't need advanced tools to see changes on the horizon for their industry. The general economic slowdown has meant challenging times today, but the future promises increased opportunities. The 20082009 edition of the Bureau of Labor and Statistics' Occupational Outlook Handbook contained the prediction that "Overall employment of surveyors, cartographers ....Read the Article

Vantage Point: A Wish List for Risk MAP
Map Modernization is dead, long live Risk MAP. So said a colleague while discussing the future of floodplain mapping in the United States. What he meant was that FEMA is finishing up its final year of Congressional funding for the Flood Map Modernization Program and has begun the transition toward its new Risk MAP (Mapping, Assessment, and Planning) strategy. While Map Mod tried to ...Read the Comments

Pointed Journeys
After driving until the road ends and then hiking for hours, you arrive at your goal. Are you atop a mountain peak, at a cave's entrance, or at a rare fossil dig? No, you're at a degree confluence point. There is no band, victory tape, not even a marker. You are likely to be standing in a field alongside some bored-looking cows. But you are on a unique spotwhere a line of ...Read the Article

January articles posted

2010-01-18T09:20:00.002-05:00

Editorial: America the Beautiful
After a rough wagon ride up to Pikes Peak in 1893, it was the view from the top that inspired Katharine Lee Bates to write a poem that became known as "America the Beautiful." Later set to music by Samuel Ward, its images have become part of our national conscience. Few there are who cannot sing at least one stanza of the four. It's no secret to ....Read the Article

Brass Caps and Bandanas—Monumenting Anaktuvuk Pass
The Inupiaq are Eskimo people that live along the Arctic Ocean coast of Alaska's North Slope. In the last few hundred years a nomadic splinter group of the Inupiaq known as the Nunamiut moved inland away from the coast to follow the Caribou migrations and settled at Chandler Lake and the Killik River in the ....Read the Article

GIS Mapping—Campus Style
When Craig Moore switched from the academic side of Virginia Tech in October 2004 to become an engineer for site development in the campus' Facilities Department, he inherited a GIS that was not easily updated, and maintaining it was a problem. As a result, "it trailed off to nothing," he said. At that time the system focused on ... Read the Article

Alleviating Poverty in the Developing World—Leveraging Property Rights with Geospatial Technology
According to renowned economist Hernando de Soto, the inability of persons worldwide to gain formal recognition of their real property rights is a major stumbling block to alleviating poverty. This lack of formal legal recognition of property rights is ...Read the Article

A Dividing Line Brings Us Together
Oh, the lines. The shortest distance between two points? A line pulled to ring a bell? A colonial boundary between two long forgotten counties? Lines of dialog in a television documentary? The lines marked of legal secession from an illegally seceded state? Soup lines during the depression? A line connecting a hook to ....Read the Article

Conference Review: Leica HDS 2009—Simplifying the Complicated
When GPS technology first began to filter into survey work, it was necessarily complex, depending, as it did, on satellites, atomic clocks, relativistic equations, and the like. Surveyors took this in stride and accepted that working with such arcane magic would always require expensive equipment, lengthy training, and endless hours of ....Read the Article

FeedBack
Clarification Regarding 2009 Manual: I found the article "Why a Federal Surveying Manual is Relevant to the States," by Steve Hansen intriguing [Sept. 2009]. I interpret the author to mean that the new manual soon to be published (2009) is binding on all recovery, restoration, and retracements of the Public Land Survey regardless of the date of ...Read the Comments

Vantage Point: Going Out with a Sigh
The story I'm about to relate took place over the space of seven months, and the outcome ratcheted up so much emotion that it was impossible to write at its last turning point. On October 1, 2009, the backhoes revved up their engines at 8 A.M. sharp, the earliest time allowed for such noise in my township, and La Ronda began falling to ...Read the Article

November/December articles posted

2009-12-05T15:24:00.002-05:00

Guest Editorial: CGSIC Highlights
To state simply that the pool of GPS users has grown rapidly would be a gross understatement; more like a flood of biblical proportions. This flood is proving to be an epic challenge for the constellation providers to manage with regards to addressing needs and concerns of .... Read the Article

Eye In The Sky: A Visit to GeoEye
Fom August 1960, when a capsule containing exposed film from the first classified military reconnaissance satellite was parachuted back to Earth, to present day 2009, when better than half-meter satellite imagery is available to .... Read the Article

Reconnaissance: Retracement Surveys and Undocumented Corners (Part 2 of 2)
The original surveyor initiates the establishment of the corner and monuments it. In the case of a USPLSS corner, the acceptance of the deputy surveyor's plat locks in the corner. In the case of ... Read the Article

Vantage Point: "Scope Creep" and Other Illegal Activities
There are days when it seems to be dangerous to be in business (although the alternatives are scary in a different way). We need to track our work in so many ways, including compliance with contractual arrangements and paying attention to the ultimate impact of our work. The Army ... Read the Article

10 Things I've Learned
I recently retired from a medium sized engineering consulting firm. I had been with this firm for over 35 years. I started there when I graduated from the finest engineering school in the world, The University of Maryland, College Park. My career at this firm was a terrific experience. I made a .... Read the Article

Tennessee's Chimney
I think it was Christmas you said rumor had it the surveyors were drunk on the Tennessee/Kentucky line around the land between the rivers. There's something I need to tell you. All across this great country, state lines are really, really .... Read the Article

Product Review: Altus APS-3
A few short years ago it appeared that the precision GPS equipment manufacturing market was going to be controlled by just three or four companies. Mergers, acquisitions and partnerships consolidated the market at a rapid pace, with no new companies entering the ... Read the Article

Model Behavior: The How-To Guide to Successful Surface Modeling, Part 3
Back for more? Welcome to the third installment in a series where we are discussing the exciting world of digital terrain modeling! As you have experienced in the marketplace, it is no longer enough to simply ... Read the Article

October articles posted

2009-11-06T13:45:00.002-05:00

Editorial: Intergeo 2009
We recently attended Intergeo in Karlsruhe, Germany. Billed as the world's most important surveying congress, this year's show attracted more than 16,000 attendees--22 percent from outside Germany--and 475 exhibitors. For years, we've heard how nice it would be if we had a large show here in ....Read the Article

Rebuilding the Greens at The Olympic Club Lake Course
The history of San Francisco's Olympic Club dates back to 1860, making it one of the oldest such golf clubs in the country. The club has hosted four US Open tournaments over the years with its fifth slated for 2012 and the Lake Course enjoys certain notoriety. It has no ....Read the Article

Verdict at the Little Bighorn
There probably aren't many people alive today who have never heard of the name of Lt. Col. (Bvt. Maj. Gen.) George Armstrong Custer. Probably even fewer have never heard of the battle that made him famous (or infamous, depending on who is telling the story) the Battle of the ... Read the Article

USGS Quadrangles in Google Earth
QUADS (http://www.metzgerwillard.us/quads/) is a web-based service for visualizing USGS quadrangles in Google Earth that provides an easy-to-use framework for retrieving geo referenced PDF topo maps from the USGS Store. QUADS also includes USGS, or USGS derived, overlays ...Read the Article

Software Review: Magellan Professional ProMark500 RTK
It's nice to pick up a piece of equipment that works right out of the box. That was my experience with the Magellan Professional ProMark500 RTK system. Building on the blade technology that made the ProMark3 RTK system such a capable L1-only RTK system, the ProMark500 is a full-on GNSS receiver, able to receive both ....Read the Article

Vantage Point: On the Waterfront—or Not
Those who have deeds citing frontage on a body of water are very protective of that frontage. When natural phenomena such as avulsion, alluvium, or erosion change the physical proximity of a land parcel to water, we are generally familiar with the effect on boundaries. Of course rights along water boundaries are....Read the Article

Reconnaissance: Retracement Surveys and Undocumented Corners (Part 1 of 2)
Recently I was dismayed by a discussion thread on one of the surveying bulletin boards that related to the perpetuation of a section corner and an undocumented monument that appeared to be marking that corner. The thread started with a posting that referred to a "monument" (a nail) that was found ostensibly marking a public ... Read the Article

A Walk In The Park
On a sunny day in the middle of May, two survey colleagues and I spent the day in Muskego Park along with five advanced high school math students. This was the second year the program was presented to a group of students. Our goal was to show them that there are every day practical applications for math. We had ...Read the Article

A Fallen Hero

2009-10-27T11:55:00.001-04:00

A Fallen Hero... The sad news of more fallen soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan recently took on a much more personal note in our community of Frederick, Maryland when the photo of 24-year old Lance Cpl. Jordan Chrobot appeared on the front page of our local newspaper. While on patrol in Afghanistan on September 26, Jordan took a bullet just above his vest, and died in surgery shortly afterwards.

The stinging news of Jordan's death was driven deeper because we knew him personally. We watched him grow up in our church, and have enjoyed many years of friendship with many members of his family. During his recent deployments to Iraq first, and then Afghanistan, his grandparents frequently requested our Sunday School class to lift his unit in prayer and for strength for Amber, his young wife of two and a half years.

Support from the community has been immense. Jordan's funeral was attended by more than a thousand people, including 80 members of the Patriot Guard, a Viet Nam veterans motorcycle group that held flags and saluted the casket as it passed by. The vest on one of the bikers (right) said it best: All Gave Some, Some Gave All. (Click on the link to see more pictures.)

Jordan's body was laid to rest at the cemetery across the highway from his grandparents' home. In that home, Jordan and his siblings and cousins, aunts and uncles spent many happy hours. Jordan and Amber were even married there in the back yard. Following high school he worked for his grandfather, who had served as a Marine in Viet Nam. He and his family all knew that Jordan wanted to be a Marine from the time he was a little kid.

At Jordan's funeral, pastor Jimmy Inman said that Chrobot died doing something he loved. He fought for his country and to bring the hope of freedom to the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. He knew what he wanted in life and pursued his ideals to the end.

While the current economy is ravaging this country in ways that nearly every American is experiencing, many of the families of our fallen and wounded military men and women are hurting even more deeply. I'm sure that many of you have been touched by the ultimate sacrifice of a soldier. Jordan's death brought the news headlines home for us. In spite of political upheavals and current events, it's good to know that there are so many heroes among us. Let's keep them in our thoughts and prayers.

September articles posted

2009-10-27T11:52:00.001-04:00

Rebuilding the Greens at The Olympic Club Lake Course
The history of San Francisco's Olympic Club dates back to 1860, making it one of the oldest such golf clubs in the country. The club has hosted four US Open tournaments over the years -with its fifth slated for 2012 -and the ....
Read the Article

USGS Quadrangles in Google Earth
QUADS (http://www.metzgerwillard.us/quads/) is a web-based service for visualizing USGS quadrangles in Google Earth that provides an easy-to-use framework for retrieving georeferenced PDF topo maps from the USGS Store. QUADS also ...
Read the Article

Hardware Review: Magellan Professional ProMark500 RTK
It's nice to pick up a piece of equipment that works right out of the box. That was my experience with the Magellan Professional ProMark500 RTK system. Building on the blade technology that made the ProMark3 RTK system such a capable L1-only RTK system, the ....
Read the Article

Vantage Point: On the Waterfront--or Not
Those who have deeds citing frontage on a body of water are very protective of that frontage. When natural phenomena such as avulsion, alluvium, or erosion change the physical proximity of a land parcel to water, we are generally familiar with the effect on boundaries. Of....
Read the Article