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Post by NorthWes on Apr 24, 2009 9:33:02 GMT -9
Once LBK has a chance to log his 4-23-09 recovery of TT3759 949 7649 D TIDAL - a National Ocean Survey Tidal Bench Mark disk - with the National Geodetic Survey (NGS) he'll have set a new record. LBK already holds the claim for the 'farthest north' extreme benchmark recovery reported to the NGS by a geocacher, but this new find will move the record location even farther north. It's quite a feat finding a 'scaled' benchmark in winter snows in Alaska... the mark was found 341' west of its listed location (although LBK was quick to tell me he could see the witness post easily from the listed coordinates, it's still a monumental recovery) Kudos are in order!
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laddd
Bronze Cacher
Posts: 12
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Post by laddd on Apr 24, 2009 10:21:16 GMT -9
and kudos he shall have!!!! - multitudes his way!!! ;D
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Post by ladybugkids on Apr 24, 2009 22:38:33 GMT -9
Thanks, NorthWes! USGS log is complete. I was looking at the benchmark hunting statistics and noticed that NorthWes holds the distinction for making the northernmost benchmark recovery in the 48 contiguous states right along the Candian border with Washington. That claim to "fame" is pretty safe until someone logs a benchmark in very northern Minnesota.
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Post by li1gray on Apr 25, 2009 8:30:20 GMT -9
So I take it by the pictures that the Avg Joe benchmark hunter is not going to be able to grab this BM as it is located past the security gates at Prudhoe. Guess I can't grab that one on a caribou hunting trip up North! All in all, it is still very much a worthy find and Congrats LBK! Thanks for the link to the stats for BMs too neat reading those. You hold the top 3 spots before OMG has one then you have the next 3 before NorthWes even shows up. Thanks for the motivation. I just have to figure out how to get teh datsheets on my Ipod and load the coordinates correctly on my GPS so they show at NAD83 that way I don't have to carry 2 of them! Congrats again LBK!
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Post by ladybugkids on Apr 25, 2009 9:09:25 GMT -9
So I take it by the pictures that the Avg Joe benchmark hunter is not going to be able to grab this BM as it is located past the security gates at Prudhoe. Guess I can't grab that one on a caribou hunting trip up North! All in all, it is still very much a worthy find and Congrats LBK! Thanks for the link to the stats for BMs too neat reading those. You hold the top 3 spots before OMG has one then you have the next 3 before NorthWes even shows up. Thanks for the motivation. I just have to figure out how to get teh datsheets on my Ipod and load the coordinates correctly on my GPS so they show at NAD83 that way I don't have to carry 2 of them! Congrats again LBK! You are correct that the northernmost benchmarks off the end of the Dalton Highway are beyond the oil field security checkpoints. However, there are dozens of benchmarks along the Dalton highway to find, including Alaska's highest benchmark somewhere along the road as it goes through Atigun Pass. (I want to verify that independently...I would have thought there were higher mountaintop benchmarks, but maybe they aren't in the USGS database.) The ultimate northernmost find is publically accessible if one flies to Barrow and heads out to Point Barrow. The benchmark page says it was placed by helicopter, but one might be able to walk the beach from the end of the road while keeping an eye out for polar bears. I'm struggling with the same challenges you have about getting the datasheets in electronic format. This trip, I downloaded the loc files from geocaching.com to GSAK and got them into the GPS. However, I couldn't get the bmgpx application to convert the NGS data file to gpx so I could put the descriptions into my PDA via GSAK. Instead, I converted the NGS data file to a text document I could read off my laptop. It worked, but it was awkward bumping along the roads out there with a laptop balanced on my lap. I've poked around the gc.com benchmarking forums looking for a tutorial on how to run bmgpx, but haven't had any luck finding the right discussion as of yet. I'll post a link in here if I find it.
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Post by NorthWes on Apr 25, 2009 10:16:06 GMT -9
Oh bmgpx is easy to run. Problem is, right now the USGS archived datasheet site is down & that's where you have to get the input data...
I'd be happy to do a tutorial at a tech-event once we have the data site back up. It's the only reason I can knock down so many while traveling. I'm up to 806 or so right now - and on some trips I can nail 30+ a day - but only 'cuz I ran the data thru bmgpx to gsak.
And as for Atigun Pass oh my goodness I'd love to score that find. I'm not sure why it's the highest - that's got to be a burp in the system, I'd think.
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Post by ladybugkids on Apr 25, 2009 10:58:35 GMT -9
When I click on bmgpx.exe loaded on my computer, a DOS window opens, a script starts to run, but I don't get a prompt for an input file name. How do you get bmpgx to point to a data file? Bmgpx is freeware available here.
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Post by NorthWes on Apr 26, 2009 6:31:29 GMT -9
When I click on bmgpx.exe loaded on my computer, a DOS window opens, a script starts to run, but I don't get a prompt for an input file name. How do you get bmpgx to point to a data file? Bmgpx is freeware available here. You never doubleclick or 'run' bmgpx - you just drag and drop dat files on top of it.
Here's the process: At the USGS data page online, you download a county file (listed by state)(and currently showing 'no data available, thanks to an ongoing upgrade by USGS that seems to be taking FOREVER!) - the county file is generally in a zipped folder. 'Extract' the folder. Take the resulting 'county'.dat file and drag it on top of the bmgpx.exe icon - bmgpx autoruns and suddenly like magic a gpx file appears! The gpx file contains all the county's benchmark info. Load that into GSAK and presto - you have mark by mark controlability of all those datapoints in an excellent database program. I use folders to organize each county. They come with numeric names and I don't like to fiddle with the dat files - it leads to errors - so I simply make a folder for each county I'm targeting and drag my bmgpx icon into the folder as I 'work' it. When I'm trip-planning I have a county folder for each county I'm to travel through. Once the data's into GSAK I can then output files for my gps and files for my cell phone's "cacheberry" program (a database app for crackberry users which keeps a full description of those incredibly detailed benchmark data sheets, as well as the fairly simple cache pages). Using the online benchmark viewer (state by state) I scope out what marks lie on my route, then check 'em off in the GSAK program for inclusion in the final output file. By the time I leave (say, for the Las Vegas area) I've got a series of mapsource files output which target specific marks along my route(s), blended with cache data from geocaching.com as well. I even plan routes day by day. Simple, eh? As they say - anticipation's half the fun. When trip planning I spend hours prepping 'route files' and often by the time I arrive on site I've even 'driven' past the target zones via google.earth's street view option. Makes recovery time faster and eases the issue of 'where am I?' That's how I discovered an old airway route marker just north of Las Vegas that had been missed by some of the best benchmark hunters in the Southwest... good preplanning, including google earth.
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Post by ladybugkids on Apr 26, 2009 7:28:46 GMT -9
When I click on bmgpx.exe loaded on my computer, a DOS window opens, a script starts to run, but I don't get a prompt for an input file name. How do you get bmpgx to point to a data file? Bmgpx is freeware available here. You never doubleclick or 'run' bmgpx - you just drag and drop dat files on top of it.
That worked like a charm! (I'd never dragged and dropped onto an executable to get it to execute.) Now I have the Prudhoe Bay benchmarks (data file was obtained using a radius search against a benchmark I'd previously found up there) loaded into GSAK and I can click through each one viewing the location in the GSAK preview pane. Once I've filtered the accessible benchmarks of interest, I can stuff them into my PDA and GPS. Holoscene has all county data files as of September 2008 on his website here. I downloaded the Anchorage "county," unzipped it (gotta' do that first, or BMGPX will output a null file), dropped it onto BMGPX, uploaded the gpx file into GSAK and voila, had 608 benchmarks within 45 miles of my home coordinates (including four in Kodiak for some reason). Thanks, NorthWes!
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Post by li1gray on Apr 28, 2009 16:34:29 GMT -9
Okay looks like this post has sparked more interest in Benchmarks... I only have 84 of them found and was glad I loaded the ones I did the other day on the way to Portage so I could grab a few more. I still have the caches along the Indian to Girdwood Bike trail to get this year and hopefully I will be able to get them this time. The Mrs started Chemo today and looks like she will be in this mode till October at least so I am sure caching and bikle riding are going to take a back seat again this year too but that is okay I still have her to bug me!
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Post by tzipora on May 7, 2009 21:25:20 GMT -9
I can't seem to download the data sheets. They all tell me there's no data. I know that means I'm doing it wrong...or they're not mac-compatible. Any tips?
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Post by ladybugkids on May 8, 2009 6:57:25 GMT -9
You've got me on the MAC question. The data sheets come in as a text file, which should be readable by a MAC. I suspect BMGPX is PC compatible only, but that shouldn't stop you. You should be able to open the text file in virtually any document editor and run a text search on the PID to find the benchmark description you are interested in. Are you trying to downlown from the NGS or Holecene website? Also, are your trying the instruction set posted here?
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Post by tzipora on May 11, 2009 21:59:23 GMT -9
I tried following the instructions, but I couldn't do step 1 due to software compatibility issues. BMGPX is also PC only. Every time I try using the NGS website, I must click on something different, because I get to different pages every time. I might be getting results this time. Hopefully I can figure out how to get them from the computer to the GPS.
Thanks for your help.
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