silverbeauty wrote:nifty wrote: snip *** I was part of the last of the ANZUK Force (anybody know what that was?)
Neville
Quote from Wiki
ANZUK was a tripartite force formed by Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom to defend the Asian Pacific region after the United Kingdom withdrew forces from the east of Suez in the early seventies. The ANZUK force was formed in 1971 and disbanded in 1974.
Hah hah... I laughed when I saw the word 'defend' in the above quote. But we did have an enormous impact on the economy at a lower level. When ANZUK disbanded in 1974 there were thousands of amahs out of work, the taxis (Sergeaqnt and above were taken to and from home daily at the Aust Government's expense - Nee Soon was clogged with taxis at 1600). the breweries, bars,the satay man, the peanut man, the shoe man, the brush man, the grocer, the local restaurants, the tailors and many more would have suffered an immediate loss of income when we left.
Back to GIS and POI...the Australian Army got its first GPS in late 1970 and used a system called Geosat. Used to come in a case about the size of a laptop case . Quite often it took hours at night to get a fix on 4 satellites but was still quicker than a theodolite and Norries Nautical tables to get a n accurate position fix. All secret stuff in those days and most of the Australian topo maps had to be re-georeferenced because of inaccuracies. Probably the same world-wide. Map making was still a tedious job but at least the corner panel markers (100mr x 100mr) were accurate. 5 maps - natural and artificial features, hydrography, vegetation and contours. These were then all checked in the field, corrections made then the lot compiled together and printed. Gee, I wish we had the computers and satellite equipment with cm accuracy that exist today back then.
Neville