Problem with USGS map site downloads

[goldenIrishman]

I've been trying to download some maps from the USGS topo page and have been having some problems. I can find the maps I want with no problem, but when I go to download them I get about 1/4-1/3 of the zip file and it stops. Of course the files are no good when I attempt to open them. I really need these maps for my prospecting research and I'm getting ticked off at the USGS here. I've tried the downloads on three different computers all with the same results.

Has anyone else been having problems with the site? I really need to get my hands on these maps asap.

 

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[geologyjohn]

Frustrating, I know. What I finally did was buy a good quality gps (Garment Montana) and buy the chip with all of the USGS 15' sheets for my state. Once installed in the gps, its way cool. Of course I still have a huge collection of the paper 7.5' and 15' sheets from the days when that was our only choice. Anyway, sorry that I could not help. Geologyjohn.

 

[goldenIrishman]

Well I ended up talking to the USGS customer service rep on-line. She said that there had not been any reports of problems which got me thinking the problem may be in my internet connection which is Verizon MiFi.

Anyway.... I decided to try it again today and low and behold, the first time I went to the site it was "out of order". Checked back this evening and it was back up. I've already downloaded one of the maps I need and have the second one downloading now. Which just stopped with only 20% of the fricken file AGAIN! Well at least I got the main one I needed. The others are gravy

The GPS thing sounds like a good idea for our in the field but I need something larger than a tiny GPS screen. (Old eyes syndrome) What I'm doing is locating claims in the area through the LR2000 site from the BLM so I don't step on any toes and will be able to tell exactly where I can prospect with a view towards filing claims in the area.

 

[Clay Diggins]

Verizon has had really hinky broadband lately Jeff. They are experimenting with different compression methods to save a few bucks on their end. The results for their customers are broken downloads, crappy graphics and munged header files.

We block their compression on our servers and I've seen several efforts lately to go around internet protocols to force the compression. That led to several thousand sites being intermittently blocked - including ours. I could communicate directly with our server by ssh on Verizon but webpage requests were ignored by their server making it appear that our servers didn't exist to web users. At the same time I could access the web site fine through our other provider.

I think the children are playing. I only wish they had actually gotten educated rather than just tinylimp certified. A pox on their house.

 

[goldenIrishman]

Yeah... I've just about had it with Verizon. My phone through them is a pay as ya go type and if you don't use the funds you put on it within a certain amount of time they disappear. I feel that is nothing short of outright theft of the customers money.

Our problem here is that the entire house in on Verizon. Three Cell phones, the house phone and internet. So if something happens to the local tower (which gets nailed by lightning on a regular basis during the monsoons) we're pretty much out of business until it gets fixed.

Once I get moved I'm thinking of giving DishNet a try for internet. At least satellite can handle VOIP systems.

 

[Clay Diggins]

We travel extensively for our work and seldom are the internet options good. After 10 years of trying just about every type of internet connection available we have settled on the principle of always keeping a backup account from another type of provider. None of those providers are satellite.

I'd be really careful of satellite broadband. It's not. With a theoretical round trip (ping) time of more than a half second (600ms!) and real world times closer to 1.2 seconds a simple internet request becomes an exercise in patience. A single complex page load can require as many as 20 of those round trips to finish loading.

You can ignore the satellite providers claims of "acceleration" software to make that round trip faster. With the speed of light already being the speed limit for those signals there is no effective way to speed them up. Most of the accelerator software they offer are just manipulations of your browsers local cache so you effectively store your favorite websites on your own hard drive and load them from there. You can do that yourself without their software.

I have as yet to see a single satellite internet provider that can maintain a Skype connection with any consistent usability. The VOIP protocol requires huge amounts of distributed packets and those packets aren't very tolerant of large discrepancies in their arrival time. 1.2 seconds is an eternity in VOIP. "Whoops we've lost the signal" is a common phrase to every reporter relying on VOIP to report from a remote location. You will probably develop your own more colorful phrases.

On the other hand satellite can provide good single file streaming times to those of us in the southern portions of the United States. You should be able to get something like 1/2 Mbit upload and 1 Mbit download on average if the system isn't overloaded. The advertised bandwidths of 1 Gb are theoretical at best. That would still be a big boost over what you have now I imagine. Be very careful though about just how much data you are getting with your account, unlimited never really means unlimited as real humans understand that term. Those accounts that really offer "unlimited data" often cap your bandwidth after a certain amount of data per day or per month. Those speed caps effectively limit your data despite it being "unlimited". They will also sorely try your patience.

I could say some really bad but true things about some satellite providers here but it wouldn't mean much because they have all gone out of business! New names with the same equipment is the norm in the satellite internet business. Once customer service and reliability sink to the level nobody will do business with the company it collapses and arises out of the ashes with a new name and new promises of huge data, speed and great service. Curiously this cycle is a little longer than the length of a single service contract.

I will say that Hughes is the exception to the boom and fail cycle. I would never do business with Hughes again but they do keep plugging on. It's probably due to their large foreign corporate base and the fact that they own their own satellites.

Sometimes satellite is the only option. If it is not I would suggest you try your mifi at your new location before making your move to satellite. We've had really good success with using a signal amplifier and a good antenna for broadband cell in very remote situations where others couldn't even get any phone signal.

You will find that any rural internet experience in Arizona is going to be a compromise at best. At worst - we can tell you many horror stories. Verizon is not a good provider but if you can't get a good DSL or Cable connection in our experience they are your best bet in rural Arizona - if you can get a signal.

Heavy Pans

 

[boogeyman]

Have you tried places like the Sharlott Hall museum or the universities in Texas (best)? Don't have my links on this machine, but you can find them there. A few rt clicks & save & you have the whole state to save on a disk. Another source if you want hard copies is Wide World of Maps in Phoenix. WWM is printing them since USGS hasn't been printing them for a few years. All of these are a lot easier than dealing with the USGS site.

 

[goldenIrishman]

Yeah we were on Hughs until we switched to Verizon to save some money. I guess I'll have to see what kind of service I can get once I get up there. Talk to what few neighbors I'll have etc. As close as I'll be to Hwy 93 I'd think that I could at least get MiFi and cell signal. Then again the public library in Kingman is looking pretty good too.

 

[goldenIrishman]

Well I finally got all of the maps I needed/wanted for my research downloaded from the USGS site. Great stuff and well worth the hassle of fighting my internet connection to get them. So far I've been able to download everything in the Gold Basin and Lost Basin areas as well as everything from the intersection of I-10 and Hwy 93 south to Arrastrd Mountain along Hwy 93 then west to the Colorado river. If that doesn't give me enough area to hunt in, I'm in trouble!!!!!

Combining the topos with the info on the My Land Matters site is really giving me a good working knowledge of the North West corner of Arizona. I've identified lots of open areas that should prove to be very good for prospecting. Now I'll be ready to put boots on the ground as soon as I get moved up there and have the house set up. After just a quick glance I've already identified one area in particular that looks very promising. The great things about this area you ask? It's got all the signs (existing claims down stream, lode claims up stream, accessability and good geology) plus it's only about 5 miles from the house as the crow flies. No more having to drive 120 miles one way to get to a digging area! YEEE HAWWWW!!!

I figure that all of this research on the computer now is going to save me months of running around the desert like a chicken with its head cut off. By knowing where gold has been found already, where current claims are and which areas are open for prospecting, I'll be way ahead of the game when I hit Kingman. Just about the only thing I will have left to do before hitting the field to start the hunt will be to make a visit to the county recorders office to look up the descriptions of the claims as filed with them. Once I've got them plotted on my maps, I'll know exactly where they are so there will be no chance of me accidentally digging on a fellow miners claimed land. This is going to be great once I get up there!!!

 

[goldenIrishman]

Well the USGS site is still working pretty well. I've been on a mission to download all of the maps for Mohave County from the Grand Canyon south to the La Paz County line. I'm not going to worry about anything on the north side of the Grand Canyon right now as I doubt I'll be doing much prospecting up in that part of the state. Just in the area I'm getting I've gotten over 70 maps so far with maybe 30 maps left to get.

I do wish that the USGS maps had the same level of detail as those from the Defense Mapping Agency. But the PDF files also include a satellite view of the same area shown on each map that can be turned on and off as needed. The nice thing about this layer is that the image is very clear. I've enlarged them 800% and it is still clear as a bell.

Once finished, all the maps will be available to me out in the field thanks to my trusty 64 Gig flash drive and a laptop. I'm also backing them up onto another flash drive as well as my main computer. After all this time spent downloading them I sure don't want to loose them!

 

[boogeyman]

Well the USGS site is still working pretty well. I've been on a mission to download all of the maps for Mohave County from the Grand Canyon south to the La Paz County line. I'm not going to worry about anything on the north side of the Grand Canyon right now as I doubt I'll be doing much prospecting up in that part of the state. Just in the area I'm getting I've gotten over 70 maps so far with maybe 30 maps left to get.

I do wish that the USGS maps had the same level of detail as those from the Defense Mapping Agency. But the PDF files also include a satellite view of the same area shown on each map that can be turned on and off as needed. The nice thing about this layer is that the image is very clear. I've enlarged them 800% and it is still clear as a bell.

Once finished, all the maps will be available to me out in the field thanks to my trusty 64 Gig flash drive and a laptop. I'm also backing them up onto another flash drive as well as my main computer. After all this time spent downloading them I sure don't want to loose them!

A suggestion for you! Also back up your maps that you've gotten on to Cds also. You can arrange them as you want and (lord forbid) you misplace the thumbdrives or your puter crashes, you've got your CDs at home. BTW if anyone finds a thumbdrive out in the Rampart Range Colorado, it's mine!

 

[goldenIrishman]

Good idea Boogieman. I've just got to get a new computer with a burner is all. My poor ol dinosaur is about on it's last legs. Considering that I built it about 10 years ago, I'd say I've more than gotten my moneys worth out of it. It's now so out of date that there's a lot of programs I can't even run due to lack of RAM, processor speed and a graphics card that was a hand me down from Moses! At least I haven't let any of the smoke out of the chips....YET.

Since I can't build a laptop like I can a tower, I'm planning on spending more and getting a "Mil-Spec" laptop for the field. Bouncing around in the truck while driving where there's no roads I'm going to be needing something robust. When I build up a new tower, I'll be going top shelf on the parts and it should last me at least as long as my last one has. I've never owned a Hp, Dell or any other prebuilt computer and I don't plan on starting to now.

 

[Clay Diggins]

Since I can't build a laptop like I can a tower, I'm planning on spending more and getting a "Mil-Spec" laptop for the field.

Ruby and I use a ToughBook for field work. Waterproof, shockproof, drop proof, kick proof, dust proof, super high rez daylight capable screen, heated keyboard and screen for the winter and low temp processors and heat exchanger for the heat, tough as nails BUT they are slow and heavy by any modern standards.

When you seal processors, memory and drives up in a small airtight space you've got heat problems and can't hot rod any of the components. The processors, bus and memory are generally designed for twice the speed they are run at in the ToughBook and the drives are pretty slow. On the plus side the interface features and build quality are the best. Top notch graphic boards, firewire and multiple interface slots are standard.

A new fully rugged ToughBook is really pricey ($6,000+) but I haven't found anything as well made for the field. A lot of armoured laptops out there but they just don't have the features or testing/guarantee the ToughBooks do. Look around for a used deal if you can - they don't wear out.

 

[goldenIrishman]

Thanks Barry! I'm not all that worried about fast out in the field and would much rather have TOUGH. As long as I can call up those PDF topo maps and mine data sheets and don't have to take a nap while waiting for them to load I'll be happy! At the house... That's another matter!!!

 

[boogeyman]

Good idea Boogieman. I've just got to get a new computer with a burner is all. My poor ol dinosaur is about on it's last legs. Considering that I built it about 10 years ago, I'd say I've more than gotten my moneys worth out of it. It's now so out of date that there's a lot of programs I can't even run due to lack of RAM, processor speed and a graphics card that was a hand me down from Moses! At least I haven't let any of the smoke out of the chips....YET.

Since I can't build a laptop like I can a tower, I'm planning on spending more and getting a "Mil-Spec" laptop for the field. Bouncing around in the truck while driving where there's no roads I'm going to be needing something robust. When I build up a new tower, I'll be going top shelf on the parts and it should last me at least as long as my last one has. I've never owned a Hp, Dell or any other prebuilt computer and I don't plan on starting to now.

If you're not really looking to upgrade right away, You could try Frys electronics up in Phoenix or mesa or is it Tempe. They've got cd/dvd rw drives for around $29. Don't know if you're maxed out on memory but I almost fell over dead at how cheap memorys gotten in the last couple years. I'm using a thinkpad for in the field & so far haven't had any issues. Sheeze, now that I said it. I'll probably end up dropping it off the back bumper now. Yup! Murphy is my co-pilot!!!!
Hope that gives you a few ideas to keep your research safe!

 

[goldenIrishman]

Thanks Boogy,

I used to go to the Frys in San Diego but I was never impressed with them at all. They did have a great tech books section though. There used to be a small chain of shops in S.D. called PC Club. I loved that place! I could get all the parts I wanted/needed at great prices. Not sure if they're still in business but if they are, I have to make trips out to S.D. anyway and I'll just get all the parts I need from them if they're still around.

I'm looking at a couple TB of hard drive space and as much RAM as I can manage to squeeze onto the MB. I run a lot of very memory hungry progs, CAD, 3-D rendering progs etc and I'm always multitasking like a madman. I don't want everything built into the mother board either! Sound, video etc will all be separate components.

 

[boogeyman]

Just realized you're in Douglas. There's a place up in Phoenix called Wide World of Maps. They're right off I17. They have topos printed and if you know what you need they'll even roll them up and ship them to you. Beats driving across the state from Douglas.

 

[cw0909]

the USGS map topoview site has upgraded its format,and a vid on how to

USGS Historical Topographic Maps | topoView
how to