California Surveyors Forums

To all you GPS surveyors out there.....

Can anyone recommend any sort of training material, i.e. book, video, etc. that is a how-to guide for the different aspects of gps surveying? I'm looking for something that will bring together both the theory and the actual methodology for carrying out the different types of GPS surveying in a real world environment, from collecting the data to post-processing it using reference stations and more. I'm not looking for something that just gives a set of steps without an explanation, and I'm also not looking for just theory without practical application. Any ideas? There is a textbook called GPS for Land Surveyors, there is a 3rd edition that was just released, has anyone seen the book and know if it would be helpful? There is another textbook called GPS Satellite Surveying but that looks like it is mainly theoretical.

I will also add to this - Does anyone know of classes that are offered somewhere that teach what I've asked about?

PE PLS

A few years ago, I found some great stuff on the web from Wsdot (Washington State Dept of transportation)
In the early '90s there were a lot of free or semi-free seminars given up and down the State. I dont know about any of these any more.
You might try checking in the magazines . . . like California Surveyor.

For classes ? try Humbolt state or Fresno State ?

Good luck. . . I 'll keep an eye out for you

"good"

I have read Jan Vansickle's, "GPS for Land Surveyors," and I believe it is a worthy addition to any surveyor's library. The utility of this book, in my opinion, lies in the Author's ability to relate technical information in an easy-to-understand fashion. You will learn quite a bit of theory along with a fair amount of application. However, I do not believe this book is the "complete package" in terms of what you are after, as it does not detail much in the way of field procedures.

I've done some research and found a very good paper, recently updated (though still in draft format) from NGS regarding RTK. The paper is called

"National Geodetic Survey Guidelines for Classical Real Time GNSS Positioning"

the link can be found here:
http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/PUBS_LIB/NGSRea ... v2.0.2.pdf

For all you RTK users out there it talks much about accuracy and the like. Its worth looking at....

Actually the most recent version (Sept 2008) is here:

http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/PUBS_LIB/NGSRea ... v2.0.4.pdf

Does any company or individual in California offer services such as this:

http://www.terrasurveytraining.com/Services.aspx

It would be nice if they were in the SF Bay Area