Surveying Students Alphabet

Angles are mostly acute and obtuse,
Bearings in snowstorms are easy to lose.

Compass is useful by day and by night,
Degrees can be turned to the left or the right.

Errors are sometimes not easy to find,
Foresight is seldom as perfect as hind.

Gridlines will help to plot traverses by,
Horizon is where the earth meets the sky.

Inches are twelve in an architects foot,
Jacobs staffs used to be made out of wood.

Kicks are received by the slow in the rear,
Longitude separates Greenwich from here.

Measurements tell us the size of the town,
Nadir is seen only if you look down.

Offsets are needed to miss a big tree,
Plumb bobs work best if allowed to hang free.

Quadrants of sections not often are square,
Random lines cannot be run evrywhere.

Sextants have nothing in common with sex,
Tripods are gadgets with only three legs.

Units are standards of distance or time,
Vertical circles can sometimes be prime.

Witness points save a location the best,
X is the axis that runs east and west.

Y use a wye? Use a Dumpy instead,
Zenith is located straight overhead.

About the Author

Fred Roeder, LS

Fred Roeder lives in Tularosa, New Mexico. He emigrated to the United States from Germany in 1957 and spent most of his surveying career in the Southwest, working for the U.S. Forest Service. Now retired, he started writing a regular column for the New Mexico Professional Surveyors Newsletter in 1988. In 1994, NMPS produced Antepasados, a book of his columns. Many surveyors are good writers, especially about technical or legal matters. However, it's not often that we find a surveyor/story-teller who can present historical facts in a manner that makes them fun to read. Fred Roeder is such a writer and we are pleased to present more than 80 of his stories here. Bibliography is a list of the books Fred used in his writings, and includes a numbered index of the articles. Index is a list of all the articles Fred has written and when. Editor's pick: The King Who Had No Title
Contact Fred Article List Below