Using Survey Bearings with GPS

How can I use the bearings given on my land survey to navigate between
corner stakes?

If the land survey says the bearing is S74deg20'02"W from a given
corner to the next corner, what compass reading do I follow on my GPS?

TIA
Doug

Add 180 degrees so a SW survey bearing to convert it to an azimuth (a
clockwise angle from North).

Subtract a NW survey bearing from 360 degrees to convert it to an azimuth.

Subtract a SE survey bearing from 180 degrees to convert it to an azimuth.

And a NE survey bearing matches to an azimuth...

However, I think what you want to do is convert your survey bearings and
distances to UTM coordinates so that they can be looked for with the GPS ?

Well, 'Scratch-Plot' will do that. Get the GPS UTM coordinates of one point.
Set up a scale in 'Scratch-Plot', enter the beginning UTM North and East
coordinate, and layout by azimuth and distance around the boundary from the
beginning point. Then the UTM coordinates of each corner point can be found
in the 'Scratch-Plot' file which can be opened with a text editor.

(Of course the resulting coordinates are approximate because local or
regional surveys have directional orientations relative only to themselves.
And this issue can't be dealt with because the consumer GPS has more error
than any difference in directional orientation.)


http://www.kbhscape.com/plot.htm

KBH,

I don't understand why I would want to use UTM. The definition I have
says that UTM is in meters. All I understand are feet and inches.

Thank you for the help though.

(The local survey is likely in feet and hundredth's of a foot and not using
inches.)

Well, a local survey is a plane survey not a geodetic survey...so it would
be fundamentally correct to use a forward based on a grid instead of a
forward based on geodesy.

A grid forward is a direction all the way to the point while a geodetic
forward is just the beginning direction to the point. The difference between
the two might be only 2 feet or so in 40 miles so it is okay to use the
geodetic forward with a small plane survey...

It occurred to me that you just wanted to convert the survey bearings to
azimuths so that you could project points with the GPS...

        What is to undetrstand?

        A meter is still a meter. If your GPS says you are 6
Kilo Meters from a waypoint, is that any different than say 4
miles? The GPS will tell you what direction to go whether it is
in Roman Miles, Swedish Miles, Imperial Miles, Leagues or
Kilometers.

        What is this metric phobia?

        When they do remove the brain tumour, they will weigh it
in grams and give its diameter in mm.

`        


--
In your case, Julian, this sort of behavior is clearly because the war on
terrorism has, for whatever reason, awakened your inner leftist
(and filled it with a terrible resolve). - Geoff Miller