Kindred Spirits

Earlier this month I received an unsolicited email from a name I didn't recognise.  He sent me photos of a long range lamp he'd purchased at an Army and Navy store in Oxford a few years ago.


I thanked him and asked how he came by me.  It appears that Morgan Ford has stumbled across my blog and decided I'd appreciate the images.  I do indeed.

It turns out that Morgan is a bit of a trig spotter too.  One of his hobbies, apart from buying survey equipment, is locating  National Geodetic Survey and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers survey markers.  And he sent me a photo of a U.S. survey marker near San Francisco, CA.

How wonderful - more arm chair bagging.  Thank you Morgan!

World Hydrography Day - The Sun Always Shines

Is it just me or is it a bit odd to hold World Hydrography Day on the same day that (in the UK at least) the news is captivated by sunrise chasers at Stonehenge and the consequential traffic jams on the A303.  OK, perhaps it's just a British thing.

World Hydrography Day was instigated in 2005 and first celebrated on 21 June 2007 from what I can see; so we're onto year 9 now.  The themes get broader each year which I like: hydrography is more than just depth measurement, or even safety of navigation.

As listed in http://www.iho.int/mtg_docs/WHD/Previous_WHD.htm

Hydrography - much more than just nautical charts	WHD - 2014
Hydrography - underpinning the Blue Economy	WHD - 2013
International Hydrographic Cooperation - supporting safe navigation	WHD- 2012
Human Ressources - The important element to the success of hydrography	WHD - 2011
Hydrographic Services the essential element for maritime trade	WHD - 2010
Hydrography Protecting the marine environment	WHD - 2009
Capacity Building, a vital tool to assist the IHO in achieving its mission and objectives.	WHD - 2008
Electronic Navigational Charts (ENCs); an essential element of safety at sea and efficient maritime operations	WHD - 2007

The theme for this year is "Our seas and waterways - yet to be fully charted and explored" which I suspect was influenced by the press coverage after the MH370 disappearance.

I can't get overly excited about these events.  I'm probably not convinced about the effect they have on those we are trying to reach - the movers and shakers of government and industry who influence policy and spend on the maritime environment. Perhaps it's because I hear little about them - and I'm someone who is IN the industry.  I suspect those outside hear even less.

But that's not a reason to give up.  In the same way that the International Cartographic Association is running International Map Year in 15/16, the steady drip drip of map, geomatics, charting, navigation events may keep the general public just a little bit aware of the geospatial industry.  Every industry is important to those in it.  We just need to work out how to engage with non-surveyors, to speak their language, so that they too understand our relevance and how much we contribute to Earth PLC.

Ken Hall - A Personal Reflection

My long standing colleague and closest surveying friend, Ken Hall, died suddenly last Friday.  It was totally unexpected and for me, along with many, many others, the shock is still palpable.

I simply have no idea where to start.  As I start compiling my memories of Ken, reading back through my blogs, flicking through the photo albums, I am astounded by how many memories we shared.

[RICS Geomatics Board Meeting, Newcastle, 2010]

I know I will not do justice to the might of the man in this personal tribute; and I don't intend to.  Others, such as Norma (his wife), the RICS (obituary here), ICES and TSA will all do sterling obituaries.  As will all those other committees and friends whose lives he touched.

I only knew Ken for the last 15 years or so of his life.  When we first met he had a well established surveying business and I was a mere green chartered land surveyor - building a career in maritime charting and using the wonderful network of the RICS to connect with geomatic surveyors.  Ken was one of the first I met and we built a natural rapport around our love (obsession - or is that just me?) with all things geo.  This was naturally assisted by the fact that we live close to each other and we shared what must be over 100s of shared car and train journeys to and from RICS meetings.

Ken was a fantastic support.  He was the founding member (of one?) of the Ruth fan club and has encouraged/cajoled me every step of my professional career.  It was never about him.  It was about others, about surveying.  His mantra was about quality and trust.  He wasn't a cut-corners man nor did he expect that of others. He promoted high professional standards and fretted when others didn't.

[Geo Tour, South Africa, 2015]

I only started my blog in April 2007 and within 4 posts there is mention of a meeting I would have attended with Ken Rics-and-survey-liaison-group and he gets his first mention in August that year.

In December 2007 I took over Chair of Geomatics and I know Ken was absoutely chuffed to bits to be passing me the reins.  Medal-of-honour

[Handing over the RICS Geomatics PG Reins, London, 2007.  Ken's trademark silk hanky ever present]

I won't detail all the meetings we attended, or every train ride home from London which invariably involved putting the world to right over a glass or two.  And I can't possibly list all the geo things we've done - bagging trigs to/from Governing Council meetings (eg 2011, 2012); or the absolute highlight which was the visit to the Great Theodolite.  A selection of photos of Ken are on my flikr.

[Great Theodolite, Dehra Dun, India, 2013]

As I type I am simply flooded with memories.  Such as the time when we were going to the 125th Anniversary RICS dinner in 2006 with Prince Charles as guest speaker and my hair wouldn't stay up.  So we ended up running around Sainsburys, near Victoria Station, in full evening dress buying hair spray.

[RICS 125th Anniversary Dinner, London, 2006]

Or the time when he was President of the Chartered Institution of Engineering Surveyors and he'd invited my husband and I as guests to their annual dinner on the SS Great Britain.  Ken, Roger and I were last off the ship and I remember us standing there about 2230 in full evening dress wondering where Norma was.  Of course she was used to Ken and left him to his surveying chats whilst she'd hopped off down the pub already.

I loved sharing geo artefacts with Ken.  I'd say "hey look what I found" and I'll show him a photo, website or article and his face would light up. "Oh, isn't that lovely?" he'd chuckle.

We didn't spend our lives in each other's pockets.  There would be months when we had no contact.  Sometimes we'd meet for lunch in Taunton if he had work that took him near my office.  Sometimes he'd send me an email as Norma was hassling him saying "when did you last catch up with Ruth?"

I'll leave you with the last email Ken ever sent me after our fantastic geo trip in Africa last month (here).

Thanks, Ruth,

We are both Very well, although I'm finding it difficult to fully immerse in work after the rush of the post-IGC travelling and fun.  If ever a salutary lesson was needed about playing as much as possible (rather than committing too much to work) - our next door neighbour got ill while we were away, and died this morning!  He was 53!!

On which happy note, Goodnight.

Trigs South African Style

It wouldn't be a proper away-from-home unless there was some trig hunting.  And on my recent trip to South Africa my fellow surveyors humoured me with not one but two trigs.

We had thought they'd be really hard to find and access and were delighted to find what I call a 'drive by trig' near Pofadder, Northern Cape.  Now I'm not adverse to a walk to find my prey, but it was around 35 deg celsius and none of us fancied traipsing around in that heat for long - especially not just to humour Ruth.

So this one was a mere 500m across a 'field'.  "Look out for for the land owner and his gun," Martin helpfully let drop as we entered the enclosure.

"Oh, and snakes," he thoughtfully added.

Anyway, what a reward we had.  My first ever trig with not only a top mark but barbed wire!

And the top mark did indeed come out.

But Ken and I were disappointed to find no spider on top nor flush bracket on one of the sides.  We are so spoilt by the British Ordnance Survey.

Ken and I: one for the trigs-we-have-bagged album.

After this we spotted trigs absolutely everywhere.  Including just around the corner from where we were staying.  So the next day we just had to swing by to say 'hi'.

This trig was called School 80.   [See?  No spider].

And without barbed wire this made it eminently huggable.

I could have seen more but I knew my trig hunting fancies were competing with other tourist attractions including cold beer.  I know defeat when I see it.

Solar Farming South Africa

On my recent trip to South Africa a few of us chartered surveyors went on safari.  However our game was geomatics related and our chat full of geo speak.  Our host, Martin de Beer from MnSGroup, flew us to Augrabies and en route we flew over the Khi Solar One farm which his team had surveyed.  The tower is over 200m tall and the focal point of the surrounding 4000 mirrors (heliostats to be precise - although I really do think it just means "mobile mirror").  A useful factsheet is here.

The heart shape is nothing to do with romance (have you ever met chartered surveyors?!) but a precise pattern for maximising the sun onto the tower.  

And it was truly awesome to take a spin around it.

The following day we drove to another solar farm MnS Group have surveyed, KaXu Solar One Farm.  In fact it was officially opened just a couple of weeks before we visited.  

It is incredibly hard to grasp the enormous scale of this 100MW plant.  

It was nearly possible to watch the solar panels (each approx 8x150m) rotate as they followed the sun.

More technical details on KaXu are here.

Adjacent to KaXu Solar One is the new site, Xina Solar One, on which a similar sized farm is being constructed.  The Environmental and Social plan  by the African Development Bank is an interesting read.  MnS Group have a couple of survey teams here and one of their chief surveyors kindly drove us around this enormous site explaining how the construction is developing.

The original ground cover is desert shrub land which is cleared, and then smoothed using these bulldozers.

Each parabolic panel sits on two precisely engineered struts which are set using this metal frame.

Drilling the hole.

These moulds fit the top of each concrete post.  The metal rod is inserted, the concrete poured in and the moulds used to shape the top.


A series of dual-struts being fixed.

Hundreds and hundreds of them.

Ooh, look, surveyor.

Workers on top of the new processing plant.  This is the hub of the plant controlling the collection and generation of the power.

We loved this door - I want one for work!

Accommodation for some of the project team.  A pool and astroturf in the desert.  Lush.

Team geomatics.

The following day we flew up the Orange River for sunset.  Like you do.  We were considering heading back when Martin suddenly said "oh wait, I recognise the road...KaXu is just over the hill..." and before we knew it we were flying over farm.  

So we had an aerial tour of the solar farm.  How absolutely amazing. 

Now that's what I call a decent safari.

Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory

I had the supreme privilege the other Saturday of having a personal tour of the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory near Johannesburg.


Hart RAO was built by NASA in 1961 with a 26m dish antenna to track space probes. Over time is has become a radio astronomy observatory conducting space geodesy as well as astronomical work.

Prof Ludwig Combrink showed us around.  What a mine of information!  And what a cool bit of astro bling to have in one's office.

We started in the control room.  SLR on the left behind us, VLBI on the right (or so I recall).

He then showed us his two atomic clocks.  Accurate to something greater than my mind could cope with (loses less than a second every 300 years?).  To be honest he could be showing me his beer fridges and I'd be just as impressed ;-)

Ludwig is an incredibly smart cookie.  He wrote the algorithms for lunar laser ranging and was first to spot an anomally in a recent satellite gravity mission.  Blows your brains.

He wrote all this software.

There are only a few observatories that measure to the moon.  By the time the 75cm diameter pulse has been flung out from their lasers it has a footprint 6.5km wide on the surface of the moon.  Still then, trying to aim that beam correctly is like trying to shoot a coin from 3km distant.  And then you don't only have to hit the moon (aiming for the reflectors left by the Apollo mission) but catch the return beam.

Dinner party fact Number 1 - the moon is racing away from us at 3.8cm per annum.  That's quite fast in the solar way of things.

This is the GPS station for Hart.

I queried why it was outside the perimeter fence.  "Stops the kids fiddling with it," was Ludwig's response.  Hart RAO has educational visits and there is little that mischievous fingers can interfere with on a 26m dome, but a small GPS antenna is just fun to play with isn't it?

Maritime Karlskrona

I have just had the privilege of spending nearly a week in the wonderful naval town of Karlskrona in Sweden.

In 1679 King Karl XI of Sweden declared that Karlskrona should become the home for the Swedish Fleet. Its first location, in Stockholm, was proving a disadvantage in their war against Denmark. The Danish Fleet, based in Copenhagen, unfroze before they did and the Swedish ships were unable to defend themselves whilst the Danish took a pop at western Sweden.

I was in a week long maritime-focused meeting based in the Naval Museum.

What a wonderful venue for a heap of nautically passionate people!

At lunchtimes/coffee breaks, if we had time, we were able to explore.


An old mine hunter.


Karlskrona is on one of many islands and the views were wonderful. Especially as we had sun for most of our trip.


I found a couple of lighthouses.


And even a messpunkt! (or rather a Mat Punkt - the Swedish equivalent).

I didn’t have much time to mooch around the museum so knew exactly which exhibit to focus on.

I made a bee-line for the navigation area.

Lots of lovely sextants, old charts and compasses.
.

We enjoyed using the astrolabe to measure our latitude.

I was hopelessly in error (the computer retorted “your crew want to know what you are up to…”).

A naval officer then had a go – to show me how to do it properly – and he was equally off the mark.

I suspect that when I dropped the astrolabe first off I put it back together incorrectly. Doh.

Near the naval museum is a small workshop for boat making apprentices.  We were welcomed in and indulged our senses - both visual and aromatic – gazing at these beautiful boats and breathing in lungful’s of oak scent.

Ooh, a chart.

This guy was pretty devoted to his craft. He estimated that with working 4 days a week on this boat he’d finish it around the summer of 2017. Now that’s dedication.

One evening we visited the Officer’s Club.  It has an amazing library with oodles of historical documents.


It was all somewhat casually handled: I know in our archive we touch these precious documents gloved. In this library we were allowed pick up what we fancied. Although most of us, recognising the precious nature of these items, didn’t.

We also managed to fit in a visit to the submarine museum there.

This was the first submarine the Swedish Navy had which came into service in 1904. It could only dive for a few hours and there was no messing nor sleeping arrangements onboard. Cooking was done on the top deck whilst surfaced (obviously) and sailors slept where they could in the cold, single hulled vessel.

This submarine., HMS Neptun, was retired around a decade ago so a lot more modern.


A tincy tiny chart table.

On our last day it clouded over. No great shakes except it happened to be the day of the partial solar eclipse.

I put my shades on but I hardly needed to.