Category Archives: Professional Surveyor Archives

Guest Essay: I Cannot Wait to Be Part of the Future

“As a surveyor in my forties, I must be ready for any future change,” says James Shaw Jr., president-elect of the Maryland Society of Surveyors and their Surveyor of the Year for 2012. James represents the new wave of leadership in the surveying profession: he’s experienced in core disciplines of cadastral, geodetic, and development surveying...

UAS Takes Autism to the Sky

A mapping project helps kids with autism by coaching them to build and fly a UAS (and make movies with it); the project also reveals sound business practices stemming from this new technology. What was it that got you into the surveying and mapping profession?  Surveyors often state that it was an interest in math...

Editor’s Desk: Join Us!

I love the future.  Here in my family room on a sunny Sunday afternoon, I am sitting and watching it in action. It’s called a Roomba, and it’s a robot vacuum that’s efficiently motoring back and forth around and under furniture, doing what my wife, kids, and I hate doing the most.  “Larry,” as we...

Software Review: Traverse PC

I have been using Traverse PC (TPC) since its inception in 1987. I’ve used it in my work as both a private surveyor and as a county surveyor in Idaho. I stopped using other programs for the same reasons so many other surveyors have.  I rely entirely upon TPC to do my survey work and...

GNSS Next: A Control Center for Real-time GNSS Data

Editor’s Note: GNSS is a global amenity that all segments of society now rely on. While low-precision uses of GNSS can work with the default broadcast products alone, directly from the satellites, all high-precision GNSS uses rely to varying degrees on external “value added” data products. These products, such as enhanced clock and orbit data, are...

History Corner: Community Service and the Pioneer Surveyor: E.B. Camp

Few people realize that the roles of the men who surveyed the wild frontiers of America (and other nations) were not confined to the profession of surveying.  Because surveyors were, relative to the general population, fairly well educated and could “do their ciphers” and read complicated instructions, often they were the only men to whom...