I am pretty excited about the amount of organizational planning we are doing for this PKAP season. It really feels like we have a handle on things. This isn’t to say that we were disorganized in the past, but we were a small enough project that we could did not need a lot of pre-planning to take place. What we learned over the last 2 years was that once you moved past a dozen people, things got harder to manage. This is compounded by the fact that we want to be a field school as well as an archaeological project. Things have been going smoothly so far. The real trick will be in seeing how well we planned and learning from our mistakes.
And a minor victory for me. I have been very worried about transporting the tripods for the Trimble R8 system. While they are fairly sturdy, I have seen what can happen to even sturdy things when they are transported by an airline. I have had a camera tripod smashed, and even a PVC tube cracked. The problem is that Trimble doesn’t make a hard shell bag for the tripods – the base and rover yes, but not for the tripods. They get nylon cases. My first thought was to wrap them in foam, lots of it, which is how I have transported our theodolite for the past four years. The theodolite, however, broke down in to fairly small discrete components. These tripods don’t do that. When I talked to my Trimble rep he was at a loss at what to suggest. I finally went with a hard shell golf bag, the Deluxe ATA golf travel case by SKB. The problem is that I never could gain a very clear idea of how much space it enclosed. It arrived yesterday and was a perfect fit for the tripods. It does need a bit more foam padding inside to keep the tripods from moving around, but I can do that myself.
RSM
Ancient History Ramblings 