Hot take: hand-drawn site maps beat GPS logging for small digs

I spent the last two summers on a dig outside Santa Fe, and we tested GPS logging against old-fashioned hand-drawn maps on graph paper for the same trench grid. Hand-drawing caught three small features the GPS missed because the satellite signal bounced off the canyon walls. Anyone else find that low-tech methods still win out in tricky terrain?

2 comments

2 Comments

maxmurphy3mo ago

Did you account for the canyon walls causing GPS multipath errors before you started? Modern GPS units with multi-band receivers filter out a lot of that bounce, so the gap is probably smaller now than a few years ago. A good hybrid approach using both methods gives you the best of both worlds.

knight.diana3mo ago

Wait, have you tried doing a direct comparison test with an older single-band unit next to a modern multi-band one in the same canyon? I did that last summer and the difference in accuracy was honestly wild, the new receiver barely flinched while the old one was all over the place. It really feels like the tech has caught up enough that multipath is hardly the headache it used to be, especially if you're running the newer chipsets.