California Surveyors Forums

My wife saw this on the Daily Show and saved it for me. Pretty funny take on the different "feet" that we have to deal with:

https://www.cc.com/video/zvx3zs/the-dai ... ot-problem

The segment starts at the 16:08 mark. I emailed Michael Dennis about it this morning. He said the "trophy" is marked "Made in China" so it is obviously an International Foot. Too funny.

Lee:

Thank you for the video - it was ridiculously entertaining.

I recently corresponded with Michael Dennis (and others) after completing a technical writing assignment. Not knowing him in any capacity, I thought he was a NOAA person due to his email address. Bonus to put a face and job title with the email, thanks again.

DWoolley

Thanks, Lee!

And please convey our appreciation to your wife for this fine find! (They're always looking after us.)

Although . . . 'merica should go metric and be done with it!

Crazy Phil - Surveyor to Recorder

hellsangle wrote:<snip>
Although . . . 'merica should go metric and be done with it!

Crazy Phil - Surveyor to Recorder

the door was open but NOAA dropped the ball

we were so close, then CalTrans submitted to the political pressures.
I for one am glad to have been indoctrinated to Metric (as a CalTrans contractor), my life is so much easier now.

I can not resist Peter :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5g7qGf-7p0

LMAO! That was good, Proud!

Ha....
I have been attending NGS's monthly webinars on the new reference frames and new tools to be wheeled out in a year or two (or three).

One of the webinars dealt with State Plane Coordinates and the "deprecating of the US Survey foot" in favor of the International Foot.

Well, one of the slides in the presentation showed that 42 states mandate legally or otherwise the US Survey Foot while 6 mandate the International Foot and the rest of the states and/or territories were either silent or allowed the use of either.

Admittedly, 2 ppm difference in the definitions is not much unless your distances are northings and eastings around 500,000 and 2,000,000 meters then the difference is more than 12 feet.

My comment during the webinar was why doesn't NGS publish metric values and provide a tool to convert to whichever definition of a foot the end user may want to use. No dice.

From my perspective having gone through the transition from 27 to 83 the big problem is related to legacy documents such as as-builts and any boundary related maps of record including GISs created to access mapping. In the new paradigm it will not only be a whole new coordinate system but a new definition of a foot in many states if they choose to follow.

Plus, from my experiences working on the Caltrans Metric Transition team the real, powerful opposition to the transition was the General Contractors and their concerns about their workers making costly mistakes. The same thing might happen with the potential change to the International Foot.

IMO, states and local municipalities should clearly weigh the costs/benefits of adopting the new reference frames and the International Foot and how it affects their legacy documents and the amount of money and time they have put into GISs.

To that end I think that California should not put into The Public Resources Code a mandate the use of the International Foot.

*Additional thought* NGS is now using the terms Survey Epoch Coordinates and Reference Epoch Coordinates where an SEC are coordinates at the time of the survey and the REC coordinates are related to some epoch date with a recommendation to update the REC every 5 years.

IMO, the SEC coordinates are good for geophysicists and geodetic surveys that are used to perform deformation modeling. Also, from my experiences on building big public works projects in the SF Bay Area that span 10 years or more from the original topographic mapping and creation of the project plans the only consideration of the geodetic control and any control created from the geodetic control during construction is their relationship to the original mapping and project plans.

If the project area is "moving" and the control is moving with it then nothing needs to be done. If the control is moving differently from the plans for at least part of the project then some updating needs to occur.

2 cents. (maybe 4)

As Mr. Taylor rightly points out:

"from my experiences working on the Caltrans Metric Transition team the real, powerful opposition to the transition was the General Contractors and their concerns about their workers making costly mistakes. The same thing might happen with the potential change to the International Foot".

Sadly in this country it's the dumbest hammer in the tool box that prevails.

Canada went metric over a three-day weekend and Canada didn't fall off the planet!

Here would be our chance to go metric and be with the rest of the world, and let Myanmar & Liberia be the only two metric hold-outs! (And that, my friends, are who U.S. aligns with - when it comes to metric! Sad, huh?)

Crazy Phil - Surveyor to Recorder