Support group for land surveyors who still use HP48 and HP35 Calculators for Data Collection and in their daily surveying lives. Share tips tricks and software here.
Many land surveyors still like the convenience of a pocket calculator in the field. They are trusty, don't create many of the problems found in many modern day calculators and most of all, there are many surveyors who completed school and were taught surveying using calculators. I've had a request from a couple of our members to dig up some information specifically on the HP33s Calculators and some guides on programming them yourself. Below you will find the following documents (and also attached to bottom of this post in PDF form):
HP33s Scientific Calculator User Guide
Programming the HP33s Calculator
Programming HP33s in Simple Terms
I will keep digging as there is quite a bit of helpful information out there if you know where to look. Let me know if any of this is of help to you or if you might need something specifically. Here are a few links to some other helpful webpage I found for the HP33s Calculators for surveying:
HP33ssurveyor-Huge list of Helpful surveying tutorials for calculators and a couple of helpful videos
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Replies
Thanks, Justin. That's the most well organized and thorough presentation of the HP-33 I have seen! I made myself a big part of what I am today with one of these:
Had I not learned how to use one in the field, not for data collection, but to analyze data and make computations right there during the field survey I would have never been able to be efficient or understand what I needed to know to pass my licensure exam. (16 hours of exam = 1.6 years using this calculator) Perhaps one tenth of what I know about making a boundary determination came from my experience with the HP-48GX?