Recovering rocket engineer
Hi, my name is Steve. I’m a recovering rocket engineer. That career went <poof> in 2010. I learned to survey in high school when I was hired by my hometown’s municipal engineering department. I started as the chainman / rodman and as a drafter. This was around 1980ish — AutoCAD wasn’t a think just yet. The department had a four post transit and a level (don’t even think it was an auto level). We did mostly drainage improvements, but started a road reconstruction program to rebuild the old New England oil & tar country roads into a modern bituminous road with proper catch basins etc.
After my layoff in 2010, I put myself through a local law enforcement academy. While I wasn’t hired as a full time peace officer (Colorado term), I met a surveyor while volunteering as a Reserve Police officer in a local community. A couple months later he called to ask if I was interested in some part time work. And that was that. A year or so later I discovered survey equipment on eBay (dangerous combination), and started acquiring some gear. Now I find myself running my own company providing field services and drafting to local surveyors.
I’m presently running a Leica TCRP1203, GS14 RTK, GPS1230 GNSS base, with a CS15 data collector.
Log in to reply.