This past weekend I went on a map-accuracy field trip in the Moble, AL area. We took a couple of precision GPS's and a really cool laser EDM that has some sort of electronic gizmo that can tell up, down, and azimuth with about a degree error. (It looks like a Buck Rodgers pistol, so I'll call it a gun so I don't have to retype "Buck Rodgers Gun" 10 - 15 times). You log a point with the GPS and shoot the target with the gun and the GPS software provides a coordinate for the remote position, +/- 1 degree to about 400 meters. At 400 meters that's about a 15 cm error and since our check polygons are about 0.5 ha minimum area, 15 cm ain't worth thinking about. The gun is Bluetooth compliant but the GPS's are not (Trimble Pro-XR with Asset Surveyor I or ASII).

We also log what we think the polygon label should be and what the label is on the map we're checking. In the evening we count all the various totals of different categories and give them by voice on a land line to the statistician back at the ranch who will modify our search criteria for the next day.

The system works fine and is a huge improvement over the pre-GPS, pre-gun, pre-cellphone world. But I'm thinking, wouldn't it be cool to take the shot, enter the data, and squirt it to the statistician while we're in the field so that we could modify the search as needed rather than once per day? Also, I'd like to dump the Asset Surveyor and go directly to a ruggedized laptop. The sol'n I've seen so far look like about a $5K upgrade and are in the ESRI environment. I hate ESRI products and have hated them all since Arc/Info on a Unix workstation back in the late 1980's, since ported to various Winders platforms including XP. On the XP, ArcMap is more stable than any other version I've used, but it still crashes, especially when in the field using the GPS toolbox. But ArcMap is the standard and you just about have to own a copy if you make maps. Like Winders is to general business. A piece of canine poopie that everybody must carry in their shirt pocket.

Any comments?

B