Land Surveyor Forum

What to do about stolen equipment

Posted by Chris Root on June 6, 2010 at 2:25pm in Surveying Equipment and Software Talk
For the first time in my 18 year career, I had equipment stolen. I've had the truck broken into before and had personal things stolen, like my personal HP 48, but nothing on this scale.We had set up our base, a typical older Trimble base with a receiver, a radio, a 13" ground plane, a marine battery, a series of cables, and two tripods ... one of which a radio specific with the double rising pole for the high-output antennae.We went and checked into a couple of known points to make sure we were good, and set off to set a couple of back boundary corners about 500' away, and when we got there, we lost radio link with the base. We had been having trouble with the battery life and wondered if it were that simple. When we returned to the base, it was gone. Every last piece, except our rover and TSCE anyway.We called our boss, the owner of the business and the equipment, and then called the police. Our boss was not happy of course, he'd had that equipment for 11 years, a few pieces were newer, but mostly all original. The company is suffering severely from the recession as it is, we're only working 1 day next week, and he just lost one of his GPS units.Is there anyone else who has experienced something like this? Is there anything more you can do? I feel like it was my equipment that was stolen, I've used it off and on for 8 years.
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  • kendall payne July 22, 2010 at 11:34am
    man that is something very painfull i keep that in mind each time i setup my base i was trying to see if i can get a small device like a small gps sensor that can go on each hour so you can track the base if someone steals it.. but have not find it yet. i understand that ..good luck ..next time set up base near work area collect control or post process to the area of the work and rtk further with some line of sight to the base
    • Chris Root > kendall payne July 22, 2010 at 5:32pm
      Unfortunately we were doing section work and it required that we leave the base unattended and unseen, line of sight is almost non-existent in most of Florida, too many damn swamps in the way :)
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    William S Denison June 7, 2010 at 9:08am
    I seen this alot in my 30 years in the industry. I just took in a S6 robotic totalstation for repair, it didn't have a carrying case and the owner didn't really know what he had. I contacted Trimble and they told me who originally sold the unit. I contacted that dealler and they contacted the company that bought it. They had it stolen off of the side of the road 4 years ago. They never thought they would ever see it a gain. I contacted the police and the returned ot back to the owner. The instrument needed about $5000 worth of repairs, They sent it back to me to repair even though I wasn't there normal repair center. They were very happy!!! Make a police report, check with all local pawn shops and just pass the word about it being stolen. Trimble keeps track of stolen instruments as well as POB magazine also keeps an active list. We need to all work together to stop the thieves from winning.
    • Chris Root > William S Denison June 7, 2010 at 3:37pm
      I agree, thanks for the info.
  • Arnel M. Domag June 7, 2010 at 1:09am
    I can feel your pain Chris.
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