Last week I had one of my LOCUS units setting on a Section corner at a rural road intersection, with cones and flags set, I was parked with my flashers on, slightly up the intersecting road, sitting in the pickup writing in my field book " Wham!!!" I turned and saw my unit cartwheeling up the road. I ran up to cuss out the driver but saw that the unit had demolished the windshield of her car and she was sitting there spitting glass and trying to clear her eyes. I made sure that she was OK before I asked "didn't you see that?", she responded " I saw you slumped over and thought you were sick." Anyway, the tripod was kindling, the triback was demolished and the LOCUS battery case was broken and the antennae was deeply scratched, but the lights were still blinking and upon return to the office, the data was downloaded and apparently was good. The next day a setup on a known point confirmed that the unit was OK. How ever, I did send it in to be checked and await a confirmation.

I handle my receivers like new-born babies, valuable as diamonds, fragile to the touch, fearful of misshandling lest they get bumbed ever so slighly...

Its good to hear that they can be tossed around some without serious damage.

I never put a tripod on a road, why not stick a static point in the ground nearby, and do a 10 or 20 second kinematic on the all-important point in the roadway?

Let this be a lesson unto you, oh surveyor. Just because you have some dazzling cones in the vicinity, you think you might be safe. That tripod, busted into a thousand pieces, might just as easily have been you getting splattered about, and to hell with the warranty.

Once upon a time my partner Randy asked somebody to back their truck up just a little so he could get one of our Ashtech Dimension receivers out from under their front tire. It still worked but we had to buy a new battery for it.

The tripod and tribrach had seen better days.

Surveyors have worked in roads for a long time. Even with the static session out of the road you have to get out there to make that measurement to the monument in the road. Sure, the more time in the road the more risk but the fact is you take your chances with the work we do. The accident only takes a few seconds.