Snowblowers clearing a mountain road in Norway - GIF

[Altair]

Snowblowers clearing a mountain road in Norway.




Previously:

Jet-powered snow blower/melter - video
Railway jet engine snowblower - GIF
Aeroflot VMV-3 snowblower - photo
Loader-mounted snow blower - GIF
Excavator-mounted turbine snowblower - GIF
Oshkosh snowblower - GIF and video

[Karl_H]

It is all about feeds and speeds.

[rgsparber]

How do they know where the road is? I didn’t see any posts.

Rick

[hemmjo]

How do they know where the road is? I didn’t see any posts.

Rick

I was wondering the same thing. Having cleared roads for the township here for a few years, it is hard enough when there is just a foot of snow. With only a few mailbox posts along the way, and the wind blown the snow filling in the road side ditches, those lonely country roads get lost under that cool white blanket.

These days they could use GPS? But how they did it in the early days, no clue.

[rgsparber]

Modern GPS is accurate enough to guide a snow plow. I'm guessing that posts with flags would have been the old way. Given the depth of that snow, those posts would have to very tall.

It wasn't that many years ago that a GPS this accurate would cost $10,000. You can now get the bare receiver for $275: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/15136. This one is good to +/- 10 cm in three dimensions.

Rick

[hemmjo]

In some of the northern states here in the US, they do put tall poles to mark and eliminate damage on fire hydrants, on the ends of bridge guard rails, etc. to make roads. But that is on main highways, etc. The smaller township roads are mostly unmarked.

[Frank S]

Modern GPS is accurate enough to guide a snow plow. I'm guessing that posts with flags would have been the old way. Given the depth of that snow, those posts would have to very tall.

It wasn't that many years ago that a GPS this accurate would cost $10,000. You can now get the bare receiver for $275: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/15136. This one is good to +/- 10 cm in three dimensions.

Rick

And yet many people still get lost following their GPS to the local 7-11 store.
A friend of mine recently bought a house on +/- 23 acres, The tittle deed company and his wife insisted on a survey of the property lines
Hired a surveyor to come out to locate the pins if there were any. he used GPS to locate where he thought the pins should be located.
When he finished his report it showed they only had bought 14 acres. just a slight discrepancy in land mass that's all nothing to be concerned about their $250K cash purchase was.
Another survey company scheduled for next week I think.

[hemmjo]

It is not uncommon for surveys, especially old ones, to be imprecise. We bought a property that had been originally surveyed and described with chains, with ket points marked with "a large cherry tree", "big stone", and a couple of iron pins. We had it surveyed BEFORE the purchase and found it was 20.6 acres instead of 19.2 acres as originally described.