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Got roasted by a retired surveyor for trusting my GPS too much on a dig near Tucson
Last spring I was mapping a small site outside Tucson and I was proud of how fast I got the grid laid out with a GPS unit. A retired surveyor who volunteers with our group pulled me aside and said, flat out, "Your points are neat, but you don't know where you actually are." He meant I never tied anything to a known benchmark, so if the satellite setup drifted, all my points were off together and I'd never catch it.
I was annoyed for a day. Then I bought a cheap total station and started running a tape and compass backup on every unit. Takes twice as long now, but my notes actually hold up when someone else checks them.
Curious if anyone else here keeps a low tech check on their survey gear, or am I just slow now?
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kevin_hernandez833d ago
Man, a buddy of mine ran into the same thing on a forest survey and his whole week of points ended up shifted about four meters off. He never caught it until a second crew walked the same units with a tape and compass and nothing lined up. So no, you're not slow, you're just the only one on that crew who learned the lesson before it cost him.
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