All posts by Dave Doyle
Feature: A New Datum
Finally: the rationale for a new geometric geodetic reference frame to replace the North American Datum of 1983. In 2008, the NGS released the publication of a ten-year operating plan that, among other things, called for efforts to replace NAD 83 and NAVD 88, the official horizontal and vertical geodetic datums of the United States. (Note...
Editor’s Desk: Use H, Not Z
During recent correspondence with a surveyor friend who was concerned about a positional difference he had observed at an old triangulation station, he sent me the following information: N = 213674.3282 m, E = 178633.4978 m, Z = 6.989 m. Where the station is located is irrelevant. This type of a coordinate description is...
Editor’s Desk: Ordered to Shut Down
Note: The federal government is running once again; here Dave Doyle (former chief geodetic surveyor for the NGS and our geodesy editor) explains NGS’s role in the shutdown, work-arounds in case this happens again, and what you can do to help prevent a denial of access to essential surveying data in the future. Maybe Joni Mitchell...
Editor’s Desk: Lobby Day
This past November, Thursday the 21st, was the annual Lobby Day for the National Society of Professional Surveyors (NSPS). Held in conjunction with the semi-annual meetings of NSPS’s Board of Governors and Board of Directors, this is an opportunity for representatives of the surveying community to meet with their state’s members of Congress and their...
Editor’s Desk: A New Magazine
Like so many ideas in surveying, this one started over a beer at a great little Irish pub with friends, where we discussed what the landscape of surveying might look like in the not-so-distant future. I figure, during the course of almost 50 years that I’ve been a geodetic surveyor, virtually all parts of our...
xyHt: A New Magazine
Like so many ideas in surveying, starting this magazine started over a beer at a great little Irish pub with friends, where we discussed what the landscape of surveying might look like in the not-so-distant future. I figure, during the course of almost 50 years that I’ve been a geodetic surveyor, virtually all parts of...
