My first Nikon

Of crappy office days this has been up there with the worst of them.
Sure, I got loads of stuff done and away to clients, some admin, and other correspondence sorted which I allowed to jump the queue if I’m honest.
The result is a dull headache from lack of fresh air (I didn’t even walk with Caley and M this morning) and a mind left absolutely bereft of any blip inspiration. I had this one sitting at the back of the blip shelf for such an evening but I am disappointed I haven’t been more imaginative with some sort of contextual image.
This is my first ever Nikon but it’s not a camera. It is an NPL352 total station which rarely goes to site with me now. It is a two man instrument; you need an assistant to walk about with a pole. It has no autolock, mag drive servo motors or anything like that but at the time it was a perfect instrument. It had a high quality feel to all the locks and tangent screws and stayed in adjustment much better than my current Trimble S6. It can measure about 200 metres to a plain surface and with a single prism a theoretical 5000 metres though I only ever tried it at about 2.4km for an experiment. It is an engineering and survey instrument and has lots of clever on board software to perform real time calculations or simply record data as an electronic field book.
I bought it after seeing a demo at a huge trade show held at Telford in Shropshire. It does have one nasty problem in that it could take a rogue measurement, in prism mode, from a blowing leaf on a tree. It was quite an issue at the time as the company who were selling them insisted that my reports to them were impossible. That company have now developed the reputation of being the BT of customer service to the survey industry. I have no need to deal with them anymore.
Nearly all survey instruments come with an IP rating indicating their ability to resist dust and moisture. The NPL352 was about IP66 which was very good. It still strikes me as odd that even the most expensive pro camera gear is only described in terms like “weather sealed” rather than a firm indication that it will continue to work in a downpour. I have been racking my brain trying to recall when I bought it and have just searched the accounts spreadsheet; May 2003; and it cost half as much again as a Nikon D4 does today.
Before I conclude I need to mention about measuring long distances through air. Whether the instrument can do it or not you need to exercise extreme care because the effect of earth curvature kicks in significantly by about 1500 metres and the atmosphere also distorts the beam. Are you asleep yet?