Not quite successful day in the field

My MSc student had done a lot of work on the samples that were still available from the earlier projects that her project was built on. But the day came we needed to go and collect some of our own. And I thought it would be good if we could resample some of the locations of her forbears. And I had booked the GPS with which that would be possible.

Late morning I tried to find out how you can make it navigate you to a waypoint. I know it can be done! I've seen Martin use it that way. But I didn't quite manage to make it work! The technicians in charge of the GPS didn't know how it’s done, but I found a YouTube video that showed it. Unfortunately, you had to give it the waypoints. No problem, I thought; just make a CSV file and put it on the SD card. But my computer didn't recognise the SD card! So that failed. But you can, of course, just keep an eye on the northing and easting as it is shown live on the screen, and make the numbers run in the direction you want them to. I had made sure I had the coordinates ready in that format. 

Then we set off. We drove to the estuary, and I unpacked the GPS. It worked fine! In a way. The GPS part saw a plethora of satellites and indicated it could measure at high precision. The handset had established contact with the GPS. Also seemed to be going well! Except that it didn't tell us our location.

The previous time I had an issue with this piece of kit I had phoned the technician, and he had recommended I switch it off and on again. I should have managed to think about that myself. But at least it has solved the problem! This time I decided to do the off-on trick before phoning him. We did it twice! But to no avail, so I phoned him. 

No easting, no northing 

The technician said he didn't know what the problem was, and couldn't help me from a distance. Now what? We could either go home, or just take some samples while we were here, and hope for the best. We all carried mobile phones; they can also determine position, albeit not as precise as a very expensive DGPS. And we wouldn't have a chance of finding the exact locations of the master students who had come before.

We decided to sample. It wasn't ideal, but at least it was quick. We already knew that once you get into the sandflat, you don't find much pollution. So if you want to relate foraminifera assemblages to pollution, just a few sandflat samples will do. We didn't have to walk all the way to the far end of the estuary, as one of the earlier students had done. And that was nice, given that it was very cold.

Looking down the estuary 

Looking up the estuary 

Every time something doesn't work out as planned, such as bad foram preservation, or equipment failure like this, or anything, you lose time. These master students don't have much time! And I think I know how we can speed up this project, but for that to work, the DGPS really has to do what I want. Ideally, I would want a technician (or Martin) with me in the field, to troubleshoot when needed! But I think they are quite overworked. So that might not be feasible. We might just have to keep our fingers firmly crossed!