expoweb/handbook/survey/gps.htm

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CUCC Austria Cave Surveying Guide
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<h2 align=center>CUCC Expedition Handbook: Surveying<br>
Fixing an entrance location by GPS.</h2>
<p>The entrance to a cave significant enough to get a number and a survey
will eventually be marked by a numbered tag attached to a spit. This
will then become the primary survey station - ie. the point where an
underground survey will start, and the point to which a surface survey
should go. It's worth thinking about where you would put such a tag right
from the start. Unlike the first rigging bolt (often used as the first
point of a survey in the past) it should be sited with a particular
view to its visibility and accessibility without having to put on SRT
kit. If such a point has a clear view of the majority of the sky, then
this is the point to use for a GPS fix too.
<p>If however, you are dealing with a cave at the foot of a cliff, or
otherwise with a restricted view of the sky, then choose instead a good
landmark with a clear view, and within one (or maybe two) survey shots
of the entrance. If you have found a group of caves close together, it
might be better to GPS a central point rather than get quick (but less
accurate) fixes on each entrance.
<p>Once you have chosen your point, mark it in some way (could be a spit hole
or a cairn, for example - we aren't supposed to use paint any more) and place
the GPS on the point. If you build a cairn, make it wide rather than high -
tall cairns are knocked down by the depth of snow each winter. Give it a
couple of minutes to get a fairly good fix (the first figure reported may be
quite a way out, but after a couple of minutes things should settle). Then
mark the point as a waypoint. If your GPS supports averaging, then choose
"average" and leave the GPS to do its own averaging for half an hour or more.
If it doesn't support averaging, then fix another waypoint at the same
location just before you leave. This shows someone examining the track log
later that all the track points relate to the same spot, and they can then do
the averaging themselves.
<p>While the GPS is recording your location, you can do something useful
(like rigging the cave, doing a surface survey from the GPS point to the
marker spit, looking for other caves, or even having lunch!) It does not
matter (and may be slightly beneficial) if you leave the GPS longer than half
an hour. But if you want to use it for anything else, remember to stop the
waypoint averaging before moving the unit or changing the display page. Take
a photo of your GPS point showing at least one of your cave entrances too.
<p>It doesn't especially matter what display options are selected when you
are getting the GPS fix, but it is important to use standard ones when
writing down the reported position in the survey book. Currently we use
"German" grid, "Austrian" datum, and "metric" units. All is not lost if you
can't select this particular set, but it is very important that you <u>write
down what was actually used</u>, since different grid systems can give
results up to a couple of kilometres different !
<p>Write down the figure that the GPS gives for each waypoint at the time
(just in case some failure loses the data from the GPS memory). That's all
you need to do at the cave. Get the GPS data downloaded to a computer next
time you are in Base Camp (or Top Camp if someone has a laptop :-). This
should be put in a file and a clear reference to it put in the notKH survey
book. Don't alter the file in any way - it may be necessary to upload it to
a GPS unit at some time to do coordinate conversion. Also copy your written
down data to the survey book with all the other details of your cave.
<p>If you want to read about the nitty gritty of converting GPS coordinates
to the ones used by the Kataster system, you can do no better than read
Wookey's <a href="../../years/1996/gps.htm">Compass Points Article</a>.
Briefly, this says "it's horribly complicated and we don't really know how to
do it properly". However, the main point of having a GPS fix on an entrance
is so we can find it again and be sure it is the same one !
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