DND ASE pin / stake found

[Robin Craig]

So, great infor there Terry as ever.

Where were these kinds of bars used then in this area and why would it be here on my island?

[maple_leaf_eh]

I'll have to ask one of the old-time surveyors about aluminum pins. My mind goes towards a year-by-year marker when a job is close to being finished, but needs to be revisited next survey season. For some reason your pin was not retrieved when the job was completed, or the survey parties had worked their way across to the edge of the next map sheet and had no compelling reason to go all the way back for a written-off marker.

Your island should have been collected in one season by a party of three, four, five surveyors. A party chief, an instrument man and any number of fore and backsight men. The more observations the party can take, the quicker things go but a lot depends on what else is happening in other survey programs.

I have a wartime Canadian map sheet in the unit's collection that has a genuine "there be dragons" data void. It is in southwest Ontario in the diagonally settled agricultural ranges and concessions. Almost all of the sheet is complete with the expected level of detail for buildings, roads, bridges and woodlines. Except on one edge there is a stretch where the surveyor collected what he could see from the road, as would have been the extent of his practical limits, very likely using plane table survey. What he couldn't see he didn't draw, leaving along the edge of the sheet a scalloped wave of white paper! Whoever had the job to edge-match the two adjoining sheets either didn't have any more detail or couldn't extrapolate to fill in the void.

[Robert Bergeron]

Fascinating depiction Terry.

I have walked past every day numerous ( at least 12 ) British land markers similar to these but made of steel all over CFB Esquimalt in the past year.

Some people took their land surveying seriously in those days..

[maple_leaf_eh]

I asked two different military surveyors about aluminum survey pins.

The Cpl spoke from his experience on airfield survey jobs where the party's task was to accurately locate the centreline of semi-improved strips on military bases. The RCAF has a huge long checklist of quals for its tactical airlift pilots. One of them is to land and takeoff a C130 from a grass strip. To that end several bases have approved strips which are coincidentally exactly parallel with existing hard surface strips. There is one at Camp Wainwright for example. I flew into that one for (oh brother does this sound old!) for RV89.

The grubby military surveyor's job is therefore to locate both ends of a centreline to millimeter accuracy, so the bluejob with zippers everywhere can skid his shiny air-e-o-plane onto a GPS track in the mowed grass. Three checks in the box for his quals and a logbook entry for the record. Because grass strips are unimproved, the task only needed two markers that could be easily found again, wouldn't really matter if they got mowed over, or gradered out.

Despite the prevalence of good airfields all around the world, there are times when putting a C130 into an impossibly tight spot is necessary. Goofle search for JACMEL, HAITI. There is a grass strip there where the palm trees have encroached so much, the CF Herc' had to land sideways after the 2010 earthquake. JACMEL is also the hometown of Her Excellency the Governor General Michaelle Jean. Someone had to prove a point. (Your humble scribe was asked urgently by the Airfield Engineers at Air Force HQ, where is the nearest gravel pit so they could fill a few holes. Northwest and upstream about 3km, we see a borrow pit on the Haitian's own map sheet. Good luck Gravel Tech!)

The Warrant Officer for the Survey Troop had a similar response to his Cpl. An aluminum pin would be a temporary survey station, rather than a brass or iron pin to mark a permanent station. If the point needed to be revisited, the instrument man could find the pin and set his instrument exactly over top. Then he could resume a previously suspended job and take it to completion. Aluminum pins are expendable, but for a few months or a couple of years, they are intended to be used again. If left behind, shrug, no a big deal.