Used to run a cutterhead by feel alone, now I let the GPS do half the work

Back in '08 on the Mississippi River, I'd read the material by how the vibration felt through the dredge ladder, no screens or sensors. These last 5 years with the new positioning system, I just watch the monitor and adjust the swing speed without guessing. Anyone else think the old way made you a better operator?

3 comments

3 Comments

troychen10d ago

GPS took over in like '07 for most big rigs, so that timeline's a bit off.

pat_murray5310d ago

Hold on, you're saying GPS was standard by '07? I was running a cutterhead on the Lower Mississippi in 2009 and we didn't have a single screen on the whole boat, just bare steel and a lot of guesswork. That timeline doesn't match my experience at all, maybe the big Army Corps rigs had it but the private outfits were still old school.

thomas_price10d ago

Bare steel and a lot of guesswork" is exactly how my old man described running a hopper dredge back in the 90s. But yeah, the private outfits were always behind the curve. I was doing local deliveries around the ports in 2011 and the smaller towboats still had paper charts and a compass, no joke. The Corps and the big offshore guys got the fancy gear first, but the working boats took another 5-10 years to even get a basic GPS unit bolted to the dash.