MnGCA

Arcticabn · Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2005 8:43 am Post subject:

Got mine last night.
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Airborne All the Way!

Dances With Beehives · Geocacher Joined: 12 Sep 2003 Posts: 671 Location: Chaska

I've given up....after leaving two phone messages, and an email....I've still not heard back from the NMC. I'm going with the Firewise people who at least responded to my request for info.
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...formerly 'dachebo'.

Koszmo&Andie · Geocacher Joined: 13 Feb 2005 Posts: 10

We sent an e-mail on Sunday and the forms were delivered on Friday. Give the e-mail another shot, maybe it got lost somewhere.

I see Sui Generis took the SW St Paul Quad, has anyone else signed up for a south metro quad? We were looking at either Inver Grove, Coates or Farmington.

Arcticabn · Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2005 8:45 pm Post subject:

I got Farmington. I don't think that anyone has either IG or Coates.
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Airborne All the Way!

fsu*noles · Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 10:43 pm Post subject:

Dumb question: is there a rule that prohibits two volunteers from "taking" the same quadrant, it would seem as though the more people the merrier? And similar to that: is it helpful then to ask for more than one quadrant, say "West Buffalo", "East Buffalo", and "Rockford" if I live there and drive through all 3 twice a day for work? Trying to figure out what's more helpful, but not sure what the volume of requests are per quadrant - less in the outer regions and more in St. Paul etc.

Well ok, so that's more than one dumb question, sorry...

-Ken

s4xton · Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 10:50 pm Post subject:

They seem to only one one person per quadrangle, likely for the purpose of organization. I assume they don't bank on a couple or a team of people to coordinate which portions of the quadrangle each member of the team will do.

The USGS seems to want people to start with one quadrangle, and then after that quadrangle is complete, the voulenteer can request to take on an additional quadrangle or more.

Right now, I'm having a hard time judging how long or how difficult this will be. Can I do all of what's expected of me in a weekend? 80 hours of work? 200 hours of work? It's hard for me to judge right now, even after I got my map.

-Aaron

Arcticabn · Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 10:51 pm Post subject:

I think that they focus one volunteer on one quad. I don't think that there are any rules about having help but unless volunteers are coordinated then there is a good possibility of double working the same effort.

In my packet it stated that they wanted the volunteer to work one quad first and then after ht work was evaluated they would be willing to assign additional quads.
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sui generis · Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2005 6:45 am Post subject:

As I recolect, if there is a good reason, (large urban area for example), they will split a quadrant into parts. However, Rather than having two people responsible for the whole quad, I believe each would be responsible for their part of the quad (ie. north half assigned to A and South half assigned to B)
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I am amazed by how many people harp on the need to speak and write English in this country while exhibiting a fundamental lack of skills in the areas of spelling and sentence composition. Would this be irony, hypocrisy, or both?

Arcticabn · Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2005 10:37 am Post subject:

S4xton,

I'm thinking that this is a major undertaking and will take at a minimum several months and upwards to complete. Since the NMC does not provide a list of specific target point they want check we need to verify every point on the map. It is my intent to start at one corner and drive every road on the map at least once looking for their list of places they want coordinates for. I plan to divide my map up into subsections that I figure I can do in one day blocks. By looking at the existing locations on the map I have an idea of how many points will be needed in for a single day run. I think as a minimum all of the purple buildings on the map (not purple urban tinted areas) have to be checked along will all of the specific identified man made features identified in black (i.e. City Hall, School, Radio Tower, etc).

According to the instructions when you complete the entire quad you send in your spreadsheet. They would like the quad completed in approximately 1 year.

Of course this doesn't mean that we can enlist help for a quad. But it probably means that they will only issue one volunteer badge per quad unless specific reasons are provided.
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Airborne All the Way!

s4xton · Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2005 10:45 am Post subject:

I agree. I was being a bit sarcastic when I said "weekend." =)

I'll be getting started on it towards the end of April or early May.

-Aaron

Dances With Beehives · Geocacher Joined: 12 Sep 2003 Posts: 671 Location: Chaska

Koszmo&Andie wrote:

Buzzygirl · Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2005 1:07 pm Post subject:

I sent in my application, still waiting to hear from them. I think I picked an area that may already have a number of volunteers already assigned, though (St. Paul East).

towlebooth · Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2005 1:36 pm Post subject:

fsu*noles · Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2005 6:24 pm Post subject:

I wrestled with whether I'd have time for family, caching, Firewise, hockey, work-travel, AND the Map Corps - and of course, the answer was "what the heck". I asked for Buffalo East with Rockford as an alternate, and sent the form in today...no doubt influenced by s4xton's description of the bitchin' badge. The USGS will no doubt be shocked that someone actually requested a quadrangle west of Mpls! Wink

-Ken

15Tango · Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2005 3:57 am Post subject:

After 4 emails, I finally got some signs of life from them (when I click on a "contact" email on a web page, my computer automatically goes to Outlook, and anything I send through Outlook seems to get stuck in limbo)--I'm hoping to get my application soon!!! Hopefully there will still be something fairly close to St. Paul available. I see that gc.com now has a whole separate forum for the National Map Corps.
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There comes a time in every young boy's life when he gets an irresistible urge to seek buried treasure.--Mark Twain