I've used a number of different electronic data recorders while contract timber cruising in various parts of the U.S. The slickest outfit I've seen for all-weather cruising was an OmniData recorder with an attached light wand for reading bar codes. In addition to the data recorder you carried a clipboard with your cruise maps. On the back of the clipboard we laminated a data form on which there was a bar code for each choice in each data category, For that particular cruise we sampled species (~ 10 choices), product (4 choices), DBH class (2" classes, ~ 10 choices), height class (5' classes, ~ 10 choices), and grade (4 choices). On each plot you keyed in the plot number, then made 5 swipes of the light wand, one in each catagory, for each tree. The recorder gave an audible beep when it had recieved a valid entry and would not proceed to the next field until it had recived valid data for the current field. At the end of the plot you keyed in an 'end of plot' code. With some keyboard gymnastics you could review the plot data and make corrections to specific fields. Entering tree data was vary fast once you became accustomed to the data form layout. It was my all-time favorite data collection system for working in the rain. No pencils and very little key punching. I'll also attest to the durability of the husky hunter. We used one once for two days _after_ one of the crew members inadvertantly embedded a machete in it, removing half of the display in the process. The HH continued to function and later we successfully retrieved all 5 days worth of data from it without problems. -- K.T. Wieringa George Banzhaf & Company Ironwood, MI
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