St. Paul District Orders Boat and Sweep System from Ross Labs

St. Paul District Orders Boat and Sweep System from Ross Labs

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers St. Paul District has awarded a contract to Ross Laboratories Inc. of Seattle Washington to provide a turn-key multi-channel sweep system installed on a 24-foot Armstrong Marine aluminum work boat.

The Ross Mini-Sweep is a small boat multi-channel survey system designed for inland rivers and shallow water surveying and for installation on small trailerable vessels. The system for the Fountain City Service Base office will be installed on a custom-designed 24-foot catamaran hull work boat from Armstrong Marine of Port Angeles Washington.

Ten-foot booms mounted on sides of the vessel will provide a 25-foot overall sweep width using six transducers. The booms will be stored in recessed areas in the hull leaving the deck clear at all times. The booms are deployed by a hydraulic system using controls at the helm station.

Electronics will be stowed in a custom-built work cabinet containing the depth sounding system Panasonic Toughbook™ data collection computer and a Trimble DGPS sub-meter system. Hypack™ software will be installed for data collection and processing.

The St. Paul District is responsible for surveying and mapping the upper 243.6 miles of navigation channel to a minimum depth of nine feet on the Mississippi River from Minneapolis Minnesota at river mile 857.6 to Guttenberg Iowa at river mile 614.0 and 40.6 miles on three tributaries: the Minnesota St. Croix and Black rivers.

This new vessel will replace a Ross sweep survey boat that has been in operation for more than 12 years and will work along with a survey boat with sweep system supplied by Ross in 2000.

The new boat is expected to be delivered by early January 2013.