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Last month in Arizona I saw a dig crew using ground penetrating radar and it made me wonder
They found what looks like a Hohokam ballcourt near Phoenix without ever breaking ground, just based on the scans. Has anyone else seen these GPR setups actually pan out at smaller sites or is it mostly for the big budget projects?
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joel_young26d ago
The one I saw in Tucson was pretty funny actually... they spent all afternoon scanning this empty lot and found what looked like a massive underground structure. Turned out to be an old septic tank from the 1950s.
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hugo_hayes26d ago
@joel_young that reminds me of something else though. Those ground scanners can pick up old concrete septic tanks and cisterns all the time because they look huge on the readings. The old ones from the 50s were built like bomb shelters, thick concrete walls that mess with the signals. But here's the thing - those scans usually show depth too, not just width. If they were reading a septic tank it would look shallow, not deep like a real structure. A true underground bunker or utility tunnel would show way different on the radar profiles. Most folks just don't know how to read the data properly and get excited about tanks and old wells.
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