CUCC Expo Surveying Handbook

Base Camp: from muddy book to Survex plot

The original notes and sketches should be filed in a clearly marked envelope - don't take them caving again and don't leave them lying around to be "Gössered"!

The notes (all of them, including dates, personnel, calibration, LRUD, station details, etc.) should be filed away in a numbered wallet in the current surveys file. You might have to include a transcription if they are illegible (to other people; if you can't read them yourself, go back and do the survey again!). Even if you do this, never throw away the original notes.

The data should be typed into whichever computer is being used for the survey, again including all the notes, including station details and passage names (and make a backup copy to a floppy or another machine). It is absolutely essential that you also fill in details of which survey folder the notes are in, with index numbers.

Survex has its own documentation for the format of the data, though the template file and a look at someone else's data will quickly make this fairly clear. Survex has some very flexible data entry options, so there are a few extra guidelines to try to get some consistency in the way everyone uses it within this project.

At this stage, you have done enough to get a centre line for drawing up. If you aren't completely confident about the structure of the Austria data, or the Survex syntax of *equate and *export which can be rather cryptic for the uninitiated, it may be best not to try to link your survey to everything else so skip the next bit and read on from here.

However, if you need to see your survey in relation to the rest of the dataset:

To make that all a bit more concrete, here is a fictitious example of a survey off Swings & Roundabouts in 204. Let's say that you went to explore a lead from the QM list numbered 2002-99, that the nearest survey station was listed as 204.allswings.swings5.2 and you found it successfully, and numbered it within your own survey as station 0. Then you might create the following file:

File wibble.svx
*begin wibble

; Locn:	Totes Gebirge, Austria - Loser/Augst-Eck Plateau (kataster group 1623)
; Cave:	Steinbruckenhöhle
*title "Wibbled by Goesser"
*date 2004.08.32 ;date the survey was done
*team Insts John Doe
*team Notes Jane Doe
*team Tape Jane Doe
 
; ref.:	2004 #999 ; the #number is on the clear pocket containing the original notes.

; ====== stations refindable to link to other surveys: ======

*export 0 ; list all exported survey points.

*calibrate tape 0	; +ve if tape was too short, -ve if too long
;calibration data 148,+23,147,+23.5,148,+23,329,-23,328,-23.5,328.5,-23

;from	to	tape	compass	clino	; remarks
1	p5	5.48	181	-27
[and the rest of your survey data]
6	5	5.66	-	DOWN

;stn	L	R	U	D	Desc
;1	0.7	0.4	0.3	0.5	RP top of boulder
[and the rest of the station details]
*end wibble

That lot would be typed by copying caves/204/template.svx to caves/204/swings/wibble.svx and then filling in the blanks and adding your data. If you are linking to the rest of the survey then in the file caves/204/swings/allswings.svx add the lines:

*include wibble
*equate wibble.0 swings5.2

Remember not to put surface data and underground data in the same file, even if they are part of one continuous survey. You need to create two files, with a defined station for the entrance, and a suitable equate in the file which includes both surface stuff and underground stuff.

Once you have your data typed in and checked, it must be run through the survey software (which on expo will be Survex) and a centre line printed, both for plan and for extended elevation. Measure the print out to check that it really has printed at the scale you wanted (typically 1:500), as this has sometimes caused problems in the past.

Now see the "Drawing it up" page.