Category Archives: Surveying
Search for the Missing Pier
Above: The Gaithersburg Latitude Observatory is now a community park. My tale of locating the latitude pier of the Cincinnati Latitude Observatory, one of six international latitude observatories now defunct but historically significant. It was 1974, and I’d been working at the National Geodetic Survey (NGS) for two years. One afternoon my boss told me...
Construction Staking
Are you doing it right? In today’s world, survey construction staking is a major service being provided by most companies within the land surveying and civil engineering industry. Throughout my career, like many of you, I have been employed by a handful of different land surveying and civil engineering firms, and with each firm came...
The “Ah Ha” Moments, Part 2
Last month I wrote of two “Ah Ha” moments early in my career: situations where the “light came on” from a surveying experience, even if the value of the moment wasn’t fully understood at the time. In this issue, I share a couple more: where a practical application cemented abstract concepts and where a lack...
Outlook 2020: 40 under 40 Geospatial Leaders
Join xyHt in Celebrating Young Leadership in Geospatial Professions, Industries, and Sciences Who are the current young geo-leaders internationally? And where are they making a difference? Read the 2019 xyHt 40 under 40 profiles here. Send your nominations to 40under40@xyht.com before September 1, 2017. A maxim goes, “We teach children their future, and not our...
The “Ah Ha” Moments
I can’t speak about other professional career paths, but I can certainly attest to land surveying after more than 40 years of “practicing” the art and science. There truly has been an opportunity to learn something new almost every day of those 40-plus years (unless I interfered). From the fundamental basics like stocking the survey...
Understanding GNSS Pt. 2
Vertical Datums Part 1 covers ellipsoids, datums, and realizations and is in the April print issue. This final part covers vertical datums. From my previous article: One of the most important things to understand when it comes to using survey-grade GPS systems is the difference among the many datums, reference ellipsoids, and coordinate systems that...