Just guess how this happened...
In the morning when my partner and I set up our GPS base station equipment on a control point we were greeted by two horses who were quite interested in what we were doing. I didn't pay much attention to the way one of the horses seemed to be particularly interested in the nylon strap at the base of the "offending limb" of the yellow tripod, so my partner and I continued down the road to gather RTK positional data, then returning to the base station to find the scene above. I am not a detective, but I assume that there was some "horseplay" going on while we were gone.
Fortunately, no damage was done to the equipment. Unfortunately, our rover was still receiving RTK corrections from the base, even though it was tipped half way over. Sure enough, when we put the tripod back over the point and returned to our remote control, we discovered that everything was "off" by about four feet - go figure. We repeated what we did in the morning in the afternoon for a loss of better words. The horses were nowhere to be found when we packed up for the day, and the straps on the tripod were promptly removed using my knife.
Replies
When I do RTK, I always assign one of my guys to secure the reference. Lucky me in the Philippines that we do have cheaper labor. Buying a new set of RTK reference setup is too much for a third world surveyor like me. We can't simply compromise our equipment safety.