I bought a used Magellan Triton 500 on Ebay. Didn’t do much research, just wanted something handheld and cheap. Got it for $42 dollars which is what they’re going for. Found some battery acid stains in the battery compartment and the coiled spring for the one of batteries was rolling around. Took a picture and sent it to the seller telling him I wouldn’t have bid on it if I knew of it’s condition. He apologized profusely and gave me a full refund and told me to keep the unit. So I did.

The reason I wanted it was to find a long lost property corner. I looked for it in vain last winter, hadn’t seen it in twenty years.

I think I posted last year about trying to find GPS coordinates for locating survey stakes but couldn’t find a source for such a map. Enter Google Maps. In the map view, if you drill down close enough you’ll start to see property lines. There was my plot right in front of me.

A little poking around and I found if you right click on the map and then click on “what’s here”- it gives you the coordinates!

Using the satellite view, I found the coordinates for my observatory and my propane tank on the other side of the house and set them as waypoints to learn how to use the device. I was able to get down to about a 6 foot level of accuracy. I felt pretty confident when I enlarged the plot map all the way and click on the corner to get the long and lat of it.

Had to trudge and hack through 200 feet of blackberry, Thimbleberry and a maze of ancient moss-covered Vine Maple to reach the spot indicated on the Magellan. Sure enough, there was a pile of decaying surveyor’s tape where the stake was supposed to be, but no marker.

Because of low signal strength and the overhead cover of towering Maples, Red Cedar and Alder, I decided to give the Triton a few more tries from different angles. Got the same result. Turned the unit off and got down on my hands and knees.

After a few minutes I spotted it, under a large Sword fern, 10’ from the pile of ribbon. It was a heavy duty white plastic stake (moss covered of course) with a description and a reference to driven and capped piece of rebar. A few moments of digging and Eureka! I found it.

That was the SE corner. The SW corner marker was supposedly placed in an old stump which was removed before I bought the property.

Now for the point of the whole exercise. There is a 150+’ Cottonwood blocking the a good portion of the Southern view from my observatory. I frequently view Jupiter as it passes through the branches on it’s way down to the horizon.

The tree is very close to the property line and if it’s on my side, it’s coming down.