Yeah, I started taking him out in the field quite a bit in the afternoons (after school) when he turned 12, then after his freshman year at junior college (full scholarship) and having seen the things I had to put up with when dealing with civil engineers (the generation of engineers that I worked around in the mid 90's were mostly trained in government red tape, and very little actual "engineering"), he decided to not continue with the plan for an engineering degree I hoped for. Instead, he was determined to tackle surveying ... so, I insisted he work for another surveyor for at least a year for the "experience" before I would actually hire him. I officially hired him in late '96 and in 2003, at age 27, he was in the last group of Texas surveyors allowed to sit for the exam without a full bachelor's degree .... and passed in the first and only sitting. In 2000, we got pretty wrapped up in static GPS positioning and in 2001 started doing some fairly intricate experiments. He really took it all by the horns and through various contacts in the industry was asked to do product reviews for one of the national surveying magazines. That lasted about 4 years which lead to doing consulting (for a "surveyor's point of view") with a major gps equipment developer .... in his "spare time" (choke, choke). Even though we have a decent workload of paying jobs coming back after a 5 year lull, we spend at least 25-30% of our time on "experiments".
We certainly don't make a lot of money (at least I don't, lol), but we sure put a lot into our profession.
It's been a good run for me so far and I wouldn't change a thing.
JD
p.s. I still have the first Gurley transit I used (bought from a previous employer) and the first Topcon theodolite I bought in 1983. Both could use a professional internal cleaning/calibration.
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Guns - They aren't really yours until you void the warranty!
