I have a surveyor's map of a property. Never having been trained on
these things, I am having trouble understanding the notations. The
property is irregularly shaped with many angles around the perimeter.
For example, there is a point marked as 109 that corresponds to a
known stake. From there, a line is drawn to the next point (110). The
line is labelled N. 43^ 31' 00" W. 86.66' (The ^ character is
actually a degree symbol).

The 86.66' seems correct for the distance to point 110. The rest seems
to be specifying an angle, but how? Relative to North? Relative to
the previous segment? I can't come up with anything that makes sense
to me. The line is actually aiming roughly 110 degrees from true
north (ie, ESE). All of the lines have that same format - an N or S
followed by a degrees/minutes/seconds value followed by an E or W and
then a distance in feet. Is there someone on this group who is
familiar with this type of notation who can give me a hint?

Thanks,
Pat

On Tue, 16 Sep 2014 10:43:32 -0400, Pat wrote:

I have a surveyor's map of a property. Never having been trained on
these things, I am having trouble understanding the notations. The
property is irregularly shaped with many angles around the perimeter.
For example, there is a point marked as 109 that corresponds to a
known stake. From there, a line is drawn to the next point (110). The
line is labelled N. 43^ 31' 00" W. 86.66' (The ^ character is
actually a degree symbol).

The 86.66' seems correct for the distance to point 110. The rest seems
to be specifying an angle, but how? Relative to North? Relative to
the previous segment? I can't come up with anything that makes sense
to me. The line is actually aiming roughly 110 degrees from true
north (ie, ESE). All of the lines have that same format - an N or S
followed by a degrees/minutes/seconds value followed by an E or W and
then a distance in feet. Is there someone on this group who is
familiar with this type of notation who can give me a hint?

Thanks,
Pat

Never mind - I finally found it using Google. What had me tripped up
was the point numbers seem to be going is reverse on my drawing.
This is from a wikipedia article:

"For example N 38 00 00 E is 38 degrees into the northeast quadrant or
38 degrees east of north. Similarly S 22 00 00 W is 22 degrees west of
south."

So mine is 38 and a half degrees west of north or 321.5 degrees. The
other end of that line should be pointing 321.5 - 180 = 141.5 degrees.
(My estimate of 110 degrees in my original post was way off. North is
not up on this particular map so it was easy for me to guess wrong).