Scott, does all of this fancy stuff eventually come back to where somebody placed a stone 200 + years ago?
Ed,
The short answer is that the "fancy stuff" really has no bearing on resolving boundaries. A stone that is called for in a deed carries more weight in the evidence rules than bearings, distances or coordinates when it is physically recovered. It doesn't matter what technique or equipment was used to recover it.
Electronic distance measurement, which started being used by surveyors on a widespread basis in the late 70's, had a huge impact on surveying fieldwork. I am old enough to remember doing huge tract outbounds with transit and tape. Alluvium in Voorhees is one of them. It took months of traversing with a 30" K&E transit turning three sets of 4 observations at every point, applying tension and temperature corrections to all measurements and using a handheld sight level to make sure the tape was level while passing through hilly terrain.
Electronic data collection was the next big thing and allowed the fieldwork to be collected in an x, y, and z format and was easily transferred into CAD for drafting.
GPS helps with searching for physical corners in remote areas if you have old surveys that are in some type of coordinate system.
For instance, Guy takes SPC 1927 coordinates from old State Forest survey maps, converts them to lat/lon using Corpscon and then goes out and searches for the corner with a handheld GPS, a poker and a keen eye.
Performing land surveying in NAD 83 and NAVD 88 coordinate realms by utilizing GPS is only done to allow mapping of projects in an accepted, Statewide system. It does nothing to discount or enhance the veracity of the locations of field evidence.
Scott
