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10. GPR Sounding
Any field work starts at office, where it is better to check battery levels for GPR, PC
and other necessary devices. Be sure that TCP/IP setting are adjusted properly to support
communication with GPR (take a look on Section 5. Computer presets on page 10 for
details). If you use any Bluetooth devices (GPS/GNSS receiver, Bluetooth wheel, etc.)
please check it’s pairing with PC and its COM ports numbers coinciding with indicated
ones in
Prism2
software settings (menu
Radar/Positioning
). It is recommended to check
also other initial GPR parameters from menu
Radar
. If you start a new field work it is
suggested to create a separate directory on the hard drive for the data and indicate it in
Radar/Where to save
menu.
Filed work starts from the antenna(-s) placement, put it in a working position at the
initial point of the survey line, Power up PC and GPR. If you use wireless connection
please make sure that PC is connected to the GPR wireless network (Zond-12e, Python,
Cobra or zGPR) and run “
Prism2
” software. Use menu
Radar/Start
or press keyboard
shortcut
Ctrl+A
. if
Tablet Controls
are not enabled, then keyboard is possible to use only.
It is better to use keys
,
, Enter
and
Space
for navigation between controls.
Tune the GPR if needed and close the GPR settings windows. Make sure that the
positioning mode is set correctly, the current positioning method is indicated at the top of
the screen. There are controlling buttons at the bottom or right side of the screen in data
acquisition mode (take a look on point 9.2 on page 34 for details). Initially there is access
to five active buttons:
Setup
,
Start
,
Exit
and
Palette
. Using the
Palette
button to select the
colors for the acquired data output. The
Start
button becomes active on start up.
Press
Start
button. If the
Radar/When to save/During the acquisition option
is
enabled, the software asks to specify the filename for the future profile before sounding. if
menu
Radar/Sounds
is checked user here
Let’s go
sound and GPR sounding starts with
the profile real time output on the screen. It is better to start moving the antenna at this
moment.
There is additional information in the upper part of the screen. It is possible to read
the current acquired traces number, traveled distance (except Manual positioning) and the
GPR battery status. Software controls different parameters and if faces with something that
needs user attention, it pops up the event. Events appear in the bottom part of profile. Each
event has the color legend, take care about Red and Yellow ones.
The number and set of active buttons is changing right after data acquisition start:
Start
button changes to
Stop
,
Mark
and
Pause
buttons enabled, but
Setup
and
Exit
disabled. The
Mark
button becomes active. If user needs to insert a mark to the profile
during the data acquiring, while passing location marker, just press the
Enter
or
Spacebar
at the moment when antenna and location marker centers coincide. Each marking is
accompanied with a beep sound. Mark appears as a vertical line on the profile with its
number at the top. First and last traces of the profile are marked automatically.
To stop data acquisition, press
Esc
or
Stop
button. User will hear the
Stopped
sound
and acquisition stops. The buttons states are changing to initial one, where
Save
button
becomes active.
There are different ways to handle the acquired data:
It is possible to save it as a file to a hard drive. Software prompts to enter the
traveled distance for the manual positioning, Y-offset, movement direction
(forward or backward) and a filename. Software uses the default mask for the
filenames “DAT_XXXX”, where XXXX is incrementing id number. If it detects
existing files in the store folder with such mask, it takes the maximum id and
