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THE SURVEY CREW EXPERIENCE – PART III

AERIAL MAPPING, 1971- 1972

FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH ED BUSCH, SEPTEMBER 2010

Cross-training and job variety were part of the work tradition at the Bureau of Public 

Roads. Those working on survey and aerial mapping crews could look forward to 

learning all aspects of the operations associated with the job and to making their own 

decisions, independent of supervisors in the office.

Although he would not finish out his career 

with the Federal Highway Administration, Ed 

Busch enjoyed the work while employed there. 

“We did a lot of jobs, everyone really got along 

well,” he said, and he noted that he appreciated the 

opportunity to learn new skills. “The engineers 

really made sure you learned your stuff before you 

got a promotion.”

One of his mentors was Max Ulver. Ed 

had taken a hiatus from the Bureau of Public Roads 

from 1965 through 1969 and had then come back 

to the surveying work he had been doing for the 

agency since he first came on board in 1959. In the 

spring of 1971, he said, “I went to work on the 

aerial mapping crew for Max Ulver.” Among the 

other crew members were Paul Anderson, Ted 

Brenneman, and George Parson. “There were 

seven guys, (and) we all knew each other, and we 

all got along real well.”

When he joined the crew, they were 

working “in Grangeville, Idaho, (doing) a 50 mile 

survey from Grangeville to Elk City, Idaho. I think 

we were in there six months,” he said. “All that 

surveying was done by...setting control points, 

(then) the planes would fly it and take pictures 

from (about) 3,000 foot elevation.”

While working in Grangeville, they had 

regular contact with a survey crew working out of 

LaPine, Oregon. “The radio reception at Century 

Drive was not good,” he explained, and the crew in 

the field in central Oregon had difficulty contacting 

their own office. “We could hear them talking on 

our radios” even though they were 450 miles away, 

because of the way radio signals skip off the 

different layers of the atmosphere. “We’d sit there 

The Kelsh Stereoplotter was invented by a U.S. Geological

Survey employee, Harry T. Kelsh, during the 1950’s.

http://nationalmap.gov/ustopo/photos/j16-

kelsh_stereoplotter.jpg

and relay the messages (for) them,” he said. “We 

talked to them every morning; the reception was 

(that) good.”

They also worked out of Boise “on the 

main highway going up...to McCall. We did the 

preliminary survey on that, too. We had to leave 

there because of the snow...and went back the next 

June to finish it up.”

It was around that time that “computers 

became really popular,” he said. “We had a big 

computer section in Vancouver,” and the data they 

gathered “was put on what you call a Kelsh Plotter. 

All the design work was done off the aerial photo 

maps.”

Modern surveying and mapping technology 

methods have streamlined our work, but Ed 

remembered that “when I started, there were 
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probably 300-400 guys in the field, in the 1960’s.” 

At that time, he said, “a normal survey crew would

be probably about 30-40 guys.” When he went to 

the aerial mapping crew, there were only seven.

“When I was on aerial mapping crew, they 

used Electrotapes. It would measure by radio 

frequency...and the receiver was a 21⁄2-foot square 

box.” They had to pack that into the job, and 

“you’d have to pack in a car battery...to charge the 

Electrotape to run it.” He described the process, 

where there would be one guy “at each end. You’d 

have a set of earphones so you could talk back and 

forth, (and) you’d dial in the signal and it would 

give you a bell sound that (would tell you when) it 

was right on.

“You’d measure from both directions. 

Sound travels so many feet per second, so then you 

could determine” the distance, he explained. 

“Hewlett Packard made an instrument that would 

measure by laser, (and) we would check it with the 

Electrotape.” The instruments were accurate: 

“maybe a 1⁄2 inch or 3⁄4 inch difference.”

An electrotape set up beside a BPR vehicle on a 1973 project. 

WFLHD Archives.

To begin the process, “we would measure 

about 35 miles with the Electrotape,” he said, “and 

then we would stack the cubes on the Hewlett 

Packard laser. You could get maybe 11 miles in 

one distance.”

He added that they used “survival mirrors 

from WWII... (to) collect the sun (and) feed it to 

the mirror....You could pick up the flash and you 

knew you were turning your angle.” On cloudy 

days, he noted, they used a strobe light to turn the 

angle. “Then we tied it into US Geological Survey 

points. 

“Basically, when we finished the job, we 

never went back,” he added. “I don’t remember us 

going back on any of those jobs to recheck 

anything, because we had everything all checked 

out before we left.”

The crew worked four ten hour days, took 

“six days off, then four tens and four days off,” he 

said. “When we finished the job, we’d call in” and 

get instructions for where to go for the next job. 

“We were basically a seven man crew who were 

responsible for everything we did,” he added. The 

people back in the office “didn’t really bother us.”

The work took them deep into the 

wilderness, which Ed found interesting in itself. 

Sometimes they had to move in on foot, or “in the 

winter time we’d use skis.” In some areas they 

were able to move through the back country using 

small tracked vehicles. “They were like 

caterpillars, or little tracks, I don’t know what they 

called them.” The pick-ups were equipped with 

ramps and “we could drive them up onto the back 

of the pickup (on) a ramp and strap them down, and 

in areas where we could use them, we could put all 

our gear in them.” They liked the way it made it 

easier to “travel to different points and tie end 

points without carrying” the equipment on foot. 

“We could drive.”

Tom Hildreth was the head of aerial 

survey and Jack Kirkpatrick “would always do 

the computer programs for us,” Ed recalled. “He 

passed away at 45,” he added. People on the aerial 

mapping crew were rotated through the jobs. 

“Each guy got a chance to work in the office and 

do the calculations. They moved you around so 

you had an overall picture of the whole thing so 

everyone could pick up someone else’s job.”

During a 1973 open house, Tom Hildreth demonstrates the 

office's first electronic distance meter for a group of OSU 

students. WFLHD Archives
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During this period the office was getting a 

lot of survey work. “We did a lot of forest access 

and scenic highways, like the North Cross State 

Highway” in northern Washington and “I worked 

on Century Drive down around Davis Lake” in 

Central Oregon. “From there we went to...Granite 

Falls (out) of Seattle, and then we did some work 

over by Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.”

It was about 1972 when Ed left FHWA. In 

fact, h e was just getting ready to make a rotation 

into the office “on the next job,” he said, but “I quit 

before then.”

The experiences he had at the BPR and 

FHWA were memorable, however. “Of course we

always had to play jokes on each other,” he 

said of the aerial mapping crew. “I won’t tell you 

all of the things we did....(but) we always had to 

have a chuckle.” 

All horseplay aside, the job experience 

proved invaluable for his future work. “I used a lot 

of the information I learned...after I left FHWA.” 

At other times throughout his career, he had 

opportunities to put those skills to use, and he has 

stayed in touch, valuing the friends he made while 

working for the BPR and FHWA. “It’s something 

that will never be repeated again.”

Ted Breneman lets his equipment do the work during a 1973 survey. WFLHD Archives.

Ed Busch’s career with the BPR was interrupted for a stint in the Army in the early 1960’s. He first left 

the agency around 1965, getting married and moving to California; then returned in 1969. When he 

finally left for good, he put his BPR soil testing skills to work for Carlson Testing and Geo-Pacific 

Engineering, inspecting compaction for fills in subdivisions and on asphalt paving jobs.

Stories in this series have been developed by Marili Reilly from interviews and correspondence. 

Retirees who would like to share their memories may email marili.reilly@dot.gov.