PLSO Oregon Surveyor July/August 2020

Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon |  www.plso.org 11 OrYSN Corner OrYSN Corner T here is a compilation video on You- Tube of infomercial fails—black and white commercials of someone who can’t drain their spaghetti without dropping all the noodles in the sink, or struggles with a kink in their garden hose. Then we switch to color and see the As Seen On TV product that will change their lives. Sometimes, I feel like I’m that guy in black and white who can’t crack an egg into a frying pan or spills his bowl of popcorn on the couch. Why? Basis of Bearing. How many of you have rotated a job partway through the project only to encounter a painful angular error when staking, going out for additional topography, or, heav- en forbid, setting monuments? Recently, we have done topographic sur- veys of two different ODOT Right of Ways in two different cities. One was way off - site of a residential subdivision for an intersection improvement. We began our project on a local calibration, but elected to switch to the Oregon Coordinate Refer- ence System (OCRS) for the intersection, as the distance away may have exceeded the tolerances of Plane Surveying. We also left the project in grid since we weren’t going to file anything. We surveyed up to the fog lines, but not in a busy road for fear of death (and cripplingly expen- sive traffic control costs). The engineer needed more detail in the road. The second site was a commercial subdi- vision fronting an ODOT Right of Way. It was adjacent to an older project of ours that was begun before we bought GPS, and we set our job up on a local calibra- tion based on our filed Partition Plat. Again, the engineer needed highly detailed cross sections to minimize drainage impact of any improvements. The solution to both of these problems was ODOT’smobile LIDAR. Through a pub- lic records request routed to my old OIT classmate, I was given, for free, highly de- tailed data of the right of way. The point clouds were already georeferenced and grid-scaled to the OCRS, which we have been using with our GPS. At the first in - tersection that was left on grid, the LIDAR data fell right on top of our existing topog- raphy. At the commercial subdivision on a local coordinate system, I turned into the black and white infomercial person. I had to hold my breath while I rotated and moved my TIN, and then screwed it up when I accidentally snapped to a zero elevation point node. For those of us who use GPS, I think it’s time to live our lives in full color. Let’s all agree to keep our jobs in grid, provide OCRS Northing and Easting of our two Basis of Bearing monuments, and free ourselves to just “drop” ODOT data into our projects. I’m tired of developing GPS calibrations to rotate on to old town plats, aren’t you?  x Editor’s Note: In the last issue, we listed Leo Lito- wich as a PLS in his byline. He is a PLS in Arizona, but is not yet licensed in Oregon. Sometimes, I feel like I’m that guy in black and white who can’t crack an egg into a frying pan or spills his bowl of popcorn on the couch. Why? Basis of Bearing. How many of you have rotated a job partway through the project only to encounter a painful angular error when staking, going out for additional topography, or, heaven forbid, setting monuments? Leo Litowich PLS (Arizona)