Saturday April 21st , Shelby, Dana and I went out to Herbert Run and were able to get a lot done in in the field. We were able to set a decent amount of control points as well as make progress during the stake-out by obtaining roughly 8 more points. The points we were able to get were the ones on the far Eastern edge of Herbert Run 168-175. This leaves us with about 8 or so points left that need to be mapped out and I am convinced that with Dana's help today and a little help Friday that I will be able to complete the Survey either Saturday or Sunday at Herbert Run. Then next week I can do the complete Survey for The Knoll.
This data collector is helping a lot. At Landesign Inc. the data collector I used was no where near as nice as this one is. It can connect to the internet, which could make stake out really convenient. As displayed in the picture on the left the Trimble actually pulls up a complete map of the Survey that I will do. The points you see on the screen are the ones that I have loaded in. It also has my control points which you can see towards the top left of the screen as point numbers 4004 and 4005 These are my traverse 1 and traverse 2. This will be how I establish my traverse loop which because of the small size will probably have quite a small amount of error.
I am considering using existing control at Herbert Run to create control at the Knoll. Since I have specific coordinates for the traverse at Herbert Run I can use those to Run control down to The Knoll. This just means that I will have two traverse loops obviously the one that connects HR to the Knoll is far larger than the one that will be specifically for HR, which entails more error but we can distribute that error evenly throughout the loop and it will be fine.
Finally I am going to need to create the Grid points in GIS this week for The Knoll so that Monday I can get started on that.
Dana also had a great idea when we were out in the field she proposed that we use the GPS to guide us to the points that we are trying to survey. Sometimes these points are in the worst locations such as the points around 170 in Herbert Run and it can be a major hassle trying to read the map and decide what direction and how far is needed to pace to the next point. With the GPS we could get a much better rough estimate of where the next point to be staked out is, for those points that when using the map and actually walking through the forest are impossible to just pace to. This is the situation for large fallen trees in the way, large increases in elevation and streams.