Best smartphone app for land surveying?

[DMax82]

Hello everyone, I'm not sure what exactly I need, but I'll try to convey what I'm looking to accomplish. We recently acquired 64 acres that has mostly been clearcut. One piece at the road wasn't though, it is nine acres and I want to chop it up into 6 lots roughly 1.5 acres each. Below is a screenshot of the land from tax records and then a rendering of how the lots would look. 

So what I want is a way to map out the lots to the size that I want, then have the app guide me along the perimeter of each lot. It would also be nice if I can walk areas and then have my route recorded so I can see the plot that I walked. 

There are a ton of options coming up when I search for "free surveying app" on the Google Play store. GPS Fields Area and Super GeoGPS both look interesting. I am not super technical though and am not sure if they would do what I am interested in.

I would like to note that I will be having an actual surveyor come at some point (the county requires it to subdivide), but I would just like to get an early jump on things and kind of try to lay out stuff in advance. 

If anybody has any programs/apps to recommend I would highly appreciate it. Thanks! David 



 

[farmfromkansas]

This is interesting.  I have a quarter section planning to build a fence around. Would your plan work to locate the property line?  Save me hiring a surveyor to mark the dividing lines between mine and the neighbors?

[low_48]

I did a little reading, accuracy can not be any closer than 15' on some.

[Mooseherder]

The Forester who walked our property uses Avenza and I was able to download the App and his mapping of it for free.  His company must of paid the fee for the map.  I think it only cost them a dollar because I bought a map of another area for a dollar.  Wherever I walk on the property it shows where I'm at.  Great tool for me.  It's accurate enough for what were using it for.  The app will map the area you walk.  If you walk the line, it'll draw from where you start until you tell it to stop tracking you.  You can print the map after saving.
Must be dozens of apps just like it. 

[SunnyHillFarm]

As a land surveyor for close to 35 years using a phone app for anything other than a general picture is not recommended. It would be a good way to get your neighbor to survey a line if you tried to establish it with a phone app. Establishing a boundary line involves much more than walking a line with a phone app. Just saying! FWIW. The error distance of 15+- feet is spot on. Old deeds have no reference to GPS coordinates or control.

[Larry]

My property has corner pins but they are hard to find because of heavy timber.  I got the geographical coordinates, I think off my survey.  I than created a google map by inputting the coordinates.  My phone gets me to within a few feet of the pins using google maps.  This is a lot more accurate than it was just a couple of years ago.

Our county got some Federal grant money and we have a really nice online GIS available for public use.  I can do some pretty cool things with it.

[farmfromkansas]

The gps on ag equipment is within a few inches.  15'?

[Sheepkeeper]

The gps on ag equipment is within a few inches.  15'?

The sub-inch accuracy on ag gps equipment comes at a price, though. That plus a few extra grey hairs when it won't behave itself  :D btdt.

[dgdrls]

Dave, step at a time,

First question, is there or did you get a survey of what you acquired?
Any, deeds or maps?

Without belaboring the requirements of applications/software, coordinates and metes & bounds for the perimeter....
Building the geometry first then transferring it to a gps system would be easier.
From there you can hit the field and navigate by points.  Understand your accuracy will not
be dead-on and may be off by many 10's of feet using a phone as a receiver depending on your signal reception.
How did you make the rendering?

modified from original post,
D

[DMax82]

Thanks to everybody who took the time to respond! I apologize for my own delayed response, as I have been out of town with only cell phone internet access.

The perimeter of my new land has been pinned and or staked by a surveyor, so I won't be crossing over into my neighbors' property. In theory anyways. 

I was walking the property yesterday and all but one of my proposed lots looks good. The one exception sits a bit low and is soggy. 

I called a surveyor last week (the guy who actually surveyed it before we bought it), and am waiting on him to meet me out there, hopefully next week. I would like his help in laying out the lots as wisely as possible.

[reride82]

The gps on ag equipment is within a few inches.  15'?

FFK,
Ag GPS is precise, but not accurate in the sense that it isn't repeatable. It will keep you within your 3-6" as you move along the line, but it can't repeat that same line next year as it needs calibration to its current array. Most Ag GPS don't utilize RTK(real time kinetic positioning) solutions, which is based off a fixed location/solution. Survey Grade GPS uses a base and correction signal to get down to sub 0.1' accuracy. Without RTK, 15' is as accurate you will get, but you can hold a precise line. So, in theory, if you staked both endpoints with the cell phone app and then marked the line at the same time it should be precise enough for a fence unless the canopy hinders the skyview.
Levi