CUCC Expedition Handbook - New Cave

Creating a new cave in the online system

Great, I have discovered a new cave...

So, you have staggered off the plateau with a fist-full of notes and surveys, and you want to let the world know of your massive discovery.

If you have not yet learned how to record your prospecting and survey your leads, read the prospecting introduction and survey handbook which tells you how to record survey information in your waterproof notebook.
This page outlines the rest of the process. Each part of it is documented separately.

Process

After 40 years or so, we have a well-defined process which you will need to learn.

Write up your trip in the logbook
Put notes in a new wallet
Scan the notes
Type in survey data (in the right place in the file system) in survex format.
(This includes passage descriptions and open leads known as QMs: Question Marks).
Run survex to create a centre-line printout
Transcribe your sketches onto centre-line paper
Scan your centre-lined sketches
Use tunnel to digitise your centre-line sketches

and either later or at the same time, you will be doing these other tasks

Create a new folder in the file system for the wallet data
Create a new folder in the file system for the survex data
Create a "new cave entry" in the website
Write the full cave description into the correct html files.
(This will mean copying the passage descriptions from the survex files.)
Update the index tick boxes on paper: as your wallet progresses through this process
Update the online record of those tick boxes
Regenerate the list of outstanding survey tasks for everyone

This documentation assumes that you have recorded your survey data in a waterproof paper notebook. If instead you are using a PDA to record the survey readings digitally for your first cave, don't. Use the paper process first, then when you are familair the overall process, look at the PDA additional notes.

Starting a new wallet

Put all your written notes into the next empty "wallet": (a transparent folder/envelope) in this year's lever-arch file labelled e.g. "Expo Survey 2018" in the potato hut*.
The wallet has a paper sticky label on it with the wallet-identifier, e.g. 2018#22, already printed on the label.
Write the date and the names of the people on the trip on the label.
Tick whether your trip was a surface or a cave trip.
Write the name of the cave (with number if you know it), e.g. "264 Balkon"
Write the area in the cave you did your surveying, e.g. "mongol rally"
Now turn to the index sheets at the front of the folder, and fill in the line (e.g. 2018#22) for your wallet
- "264 mongol rally"
- date of trip
- people who were on it
- then there are a lot of tick boxes. The explanations for these will come later.
Now, if you have not done it immediately after you left the cave, photograph all the pages of survey notes with your phone. Get one or more of the people also on the trip to do this too.

* As people spend longer and longer at top camp, we may establish a wallet file at top camp too, with pre-allocated numbers.

The original notes and sketches should be filed in the clearly marked wallet. Rip them out of the notebook, 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 the wallet in the current year's surveys file. You should include a transcription on a sheet of paper 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.

Scan the notes into the online wallet

Each wallet has a corresponding folder in the online system where a record is kept of what information is in the wallet and where the corresponding survey data is filed:

/expofiles/surveyscans/2018/2018#22/

This is where the scanned copies of the survey notes are kept.

If your initial backup photos of your notes were poor quality, use the scanner in the potato hut to make better copies. Scan to JPEG format as .jpg files.

Name the scanned pages "notes1.jpg", notes2.jpg" etc. This is important as a script detects whether these files exist and if you name them something else it will hassle you unnecessarily.

Scanned survey notes are voluminous and so are not kept in the version control system. Instead it is all kept in the file bucket "expofiles" on the expo server in Cambridge.

You will be using the expo laptop to do the scanning and you will put all the scan files in the folder for your wallet, e.g. for 2018#19 it is:

/home/expo/expofiles/surveyscans/2018/2018#19/

and tell someone nerdy when you have finished and they will ensure that it is copied to the expo server. If you want to do this yourself, or are using your own laptop, then learn how to use Filezilla - as documented for uploading your expo photographs. The correct folder on the expo server is the same as that on the expo laptop- because we set up the expo laptop to be like that.

Typing in the survey data in survex format

[This has been described in several places and we are in the process of consolidating the documentation and getting rid of out of date notes.]

The survey data typed up must include all the notes, including station details and passage names. Make a backup copy to another machine or USB stick as soon as you have typed it in.

Survex cave data belongs in the repository "loser", e.g. loser "caves-1623/264/mongolrally.svx".

If you have never worked with the distributed version control system before, then you will be using the expo laptop to create the .svx file and you will put it in the folder

/home/expo/loser/caves-1623/264/mongolrally.svx

and tell someone nerdy when you have finished and they will ensure that it is saved, committed, and pushed appropriately.

If you have several parts of the cave surveyed on one trip, create several distinct .svx files.

How to make a survex file - PDF
From muddy book to survex plot - the survex file format (to be revised)
Drawing up your survey - incomplete and a bit out of date
Back in the UK - not really part of the process
Training course slidepack

Running survex to create a centre-line

to be documented

Transcribing and re-scanning your sketches

to be documented See drawing up the sketches.

Using tunnel for final survey production

to be documented

Tunnel tutorial - a wiki of examples and tutorials

Tunnel only produces plan surveys, but they are very pretty.

The cave description and rigging guide

Write a passage description. This should be detailed enough to be followed by someone in the cave who hasn't been there before, and should include all passage names, lengths of pitches and climbs, compass directions when this makes left/right/ahead clearer. If your passage is a connection it is worth while writing descriptions from both directions. You will type this description, and pass it on to someone more nerdy who will file it in the right place. In written descriptions, underline passage names the first time they are mentioned, or when they are "defined".

Complementing the passage description in vertical bits is a Rigging Guide. This is usually easiest to do as a sketch, but include notes to ensure that all bolts can be found again and any deviations and natural belays recognised.

One way of getting the rope lengths for your rigging guide is to leave the knots in ropes removed at derigging so they can be measured, but these days our caves are a bit deep and complicated for this to be feasible . Although a good survey and details of the belays can be used to estimate the length of rope needed, this is no substitute for measuring how much rope it actually took to rig.

to be completed