Sacramento Surveyors Visit the NGS Airborne Gravimeter - CLSA

By: Dan Walsh, PLS
Girl Scout Survey Merit Badge Event
Sponsored by the Riverside / San Bernardino Chapter of CLSA
The Riverside / San Bernardino Chapter of the
California Land Surveyors Association held a
Girl Scout Merit Badge Event on Saturday, October
23, 2010, at Camp Arnaz in Ojai. There were 17
Girl Scouts, aged 11 – 17, from the Conejo Valley
Girl Scouts in attendance along with 9 volunteer
surveyors. Two of the volunteers arrived Friday to
set up points, hubs and stakes for the field work.
This Merit Badge program was originally
developed in 2006 by Delia “Dee” Smith of the
Riverside / San Bernardino Chapter. This is the
first time Dee re-visited the program since then
and it was a great hit with the girls. Dee Smith and Mike
Parks spent about 5 hours of their day on the road just
to come up and help with the program.
The main goal was to teach the girls the different
types of measurements that are made and used in our
profession and provide knowledge that land surveying is
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a professional career option. We started the day with
breakfast and followed that with two hours of classroom
training. Dee began with first aid training and then
other volunteers presented on the following topics:
chaining & pacing, leveling, traversing, and global positioning
systems (GPS). The objective was to introduce the
girls to horizontal measurements, vertical measurements,
traversing and GPS. The first aid training covered
heat related injuries, cuts & scratches, poisonous plants
and animals.
After classroom training, we went into the field and
separated into groups of 3-4 and rotated through stations
that the volunteers set up for hands-on training. At
the traverse station the girls had a chance observe a
backsite using a total
station, set the horizontal
angle to zero,
measure a distance,
then turn an angle to
a second station. At
the leveling station
they had to level the
instrument, read a
back site rod, then
read a foresight rod
and calculate the elevation
of the foresight
point. At the GPS station
the girls were
given a chance to
operate an RTK rover
receiver and a handheld GPS receiver and with these
they located a predetermined point. At the chaining and
pacing station the girls had a chance to determine their
walking pace and to use that as well as a plumb bob and
steel chain to measure distances between three points.
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