Friday, December 20, 2013

Lesson Learned

Being Chairman of APLS has taught me something.  Even the best of intentions can be resisted if the other side feels shut out.  I have come to realize that APLS is NOT structured for all of its members to agree on everything.  No matter how bad I want us to.  So from this point forward I am not going to hammer my opinion.  I will offer my point of view and if you agree so be it if you disagree so be it.  If you want to talk about it we can.  However I won't be arguing to change any point of view.  I will simply offer mine and listen you to yours.

Surveying Stuff......

I have been spending the last 2 months marking and posting national forest boundary.  I love this work.  Being out in the woods; the physical exertion; and the recovery of 100 year old HES corners.  On one particular job the Boundary was a considerable distance inside a landowners fence.  So we made contact and myself and the landowner looked for the HES corner.  She kept looking around the fence and I crawled into a manzanita and there it was.  I cleared the brush and showed her the chiseled "WC 8 HES ...." on the face of the sandstone.  She became very angry.  After several minutes of discourse she ask me to vacate the property.  So we did. As we were leaving she said and I quote "F#$%ing rocks; I thought surveyors used satellites";  I am still laughing about that.

Merry Christmas ALL. 

Monday, December 2, 2013

When to ignore a monument accessory

I have been working on several posting jobs for the forest service.  I have been noticing something in the Payson area that I did not expect.  The bearing trees when measured from side center or face (more on that later) do fit the record call.  The BT is there the stone is there; the bearing and distance is questionable. 

So when I move to another HES corner; the stone is missing.  There is a fence corner an one of the BT's of record.  Also the HES was subdivided.  First I checked the BT to the fence corner and it was close.  Within a trash can lid.  The lot corners I recovered all pointed to the fence post with a probable area of about a quarter.  Well the answer was obvious;..........................

I used to be of the frame of mind that the manual was gospel and there was no deviation.  Here lately I have discovered that subsequent lot corner may be a better accessory than a bearing tree.

 More about the side center vs. face of blaze.  In some circles this oddity is well known. Most surveyors under 50 don't know that in many parts of Arizona; mineral surveyors were also contracting with the forest service and GLO.  In so doing it is not uncommon to find bearing trees on HES corners that are measured to the face of the blaze.  This is the rule for mineral surveys; however for PLSS work; the side center is the rule.

In my case neither worked so I noted it and moved on...