Chase Goldman

Had a blast as usual, Bob. That old, likely-British military regimental button was amazing to see first hand and the depiction detail in that sword or dagger cross-guard is just amazing and just plain interesting and puzzling to contemplate its purpose. I'm putting together a separate finds thread for this hunt because, spoiler alert, I pulled out the Manticore for it's maiden voyage in the Relic fields this time out instead of solely using my trusty, tried, and true Deus 2 <gasp>. So stand by for my first take on Manticore as a relic machine, coming up soon.

So blatantly fake, then. I know power bank suppliers do a lot of embellishing on mAh numbers but this is ridiculous. But I guess they get plenty of suckers to fall for this baloney without any consequences to the supplier, so why not. Same deal on the ridiculous storage capacity claims on counterfeit/fake memory cards. Although unlike memory card fakes, proving the bogus mAh claims are false are difficult for the average consumer to prove. Just ridiculous. SMH. As far as power banks go, I like Anker and Ugreen products as a good balance of decent cost, performance to claims, features, and quality hardware. When dealing with power banks exposed to the elements, built-in protective features are very important to ensure you don't end up with a flamethrower under your elbow. LiIon tech is very unforgiving when not handled properly.

Dan - Is this a special configuration regarding the "easily installed" antenna or are you just saying by having a second dedicated water rig, the antenna just stays installed so it's easier to deal with.

Definite typo - I have a similar clone one to that and it's 10000mAH

Here's an example of the zip tie approach that F350 mentioned. This poster is using a modified Anderson XP mount attached to a Nokta Simplex shaft system, but the principle applies to other approaches using the XP WS6 standalone mount, as well. Just got to use a little imagination.

Steve - all that changed last month. The Pennsylvania repair center is no longer affiliated with or authorized to do US in-warranty repairs on ML detectors due to a ML Corporate decision. The Pennsylvania facility is now an independent repair center and will do post-warranty repair work on ML gear, if requested. US In-Warranty repair autorization is handled now by the ML Illinois factory repair center and you ship your gear to them directly. Here is a thread that addresses this recent change.

You did great. Those two pseudo All Metal modes are strange in the way they behave and process target signals. Those who don't have a Deus or who do but have not experimented with those modes are probably lost with either explanation. It's something you have to use to appreciate but it can also be a little overwhelming unless you have options to tame it (e.g., Notch 00, IAR, Max FMF Frequency, High Square audio, and periodic ground grabs). I just like Relic's reactivity to what's in the ground. I use other modes for interrogating targets or for cherry picking. But if I use them for general searching instead of Relic, I feel like I'm operating a little partially blind to what might be under the coil and, like you, I like how non-ferrous audibly pops out at you when in thick iron. And you can't argue with the results.

Great hunt my friend. Congrats on yet another Spanish silver. It was a joy to get out even though I got to the field 2 hours later than planned. Nevertheless I was happy with my finds in quality, quantity, and variety, though I did break my silver streak. Oh well. I didn't exactly sob uncontrollably on my 2 hour trek home. Glad you are really liking Relic, Bob and tweaking it to suit your detecting style. It's easy to like it seeing how successful you have been with it of late. You're killing it! Anyway, I hope you don't mind me injecting some additional detector tech nerd commentary and clarifications on D2's Relic mode based on my experience using Relic almost exclusively for more than a year and loving it even more since the Deus 2 Version 2.0 update was released. Though the update only officially addressed improvements to the Goldfield program processing and sensitivity to small gold, I have noticed what seems to be greater TID stability on all programs and greater sensitivity with Relic, as well. First some context - Relic and Golfield's lack of discrimination that is otherwise present on all the other stock programs also means that those two programs lack the ability to process and display negative TIDs. Notching 00 will blank weak, small iron and ferrous mineralization related ground noise not cancelled by ground grab that occasionally show up as TID 0. But not all iron is TID 0, so notch 00 does not blank all iron. Also, for some strange reason, TID 0 is audibly heard as pitch vs. Iron audio, which is very confusing, so 00 notch gets rid of that anomaly as well. If you run with a reference threshold, anything detected that is notched out will blank the threshold. Iron Amplitude Rejection (IAR), the Relic/Goldfield form of discrimination despite its name doesn't actually blank or reject iron, per se. It works more like an iron bias, suppressing the tendency of small and/or large iron (depending on the IAR level applied) to false outright or false off the edge of the coil. If it detects iron, it processes and displays a corresponding ferrous ID and iron audio for anything below TID about 10 (not adjustable). Increasing IAR has no impact on the breakpoint TID that results in iron audio being applied. I run with an aggressive IAR of 5 in mild soil as even deep non-ferrous tends not to indicate ferrous at the edge of detection. In hotter soils I back off on IAR. In the hottest of soils, I back all the way off IAR to 0 because IAR will aggressively break up any target signal in such ground. IAR is far from foolproof. I haven't actually observed it provide a false positive signal on a non-ferrous target (I periodically dig high probability ferrous targets just to make sure the detector is not fooling me). As Bob mentioned, IAR does get consistently fooled by certain common ferrous targets including: big, deep flat iron; iron hooks and bent nails; and by iron rings and nut fasteners. There are telltale clues to ferret out falsing: typically falsing is also accompanied by a simultaneous ferrous grunt and corresponding simultaneous indications of a ferrous and non-ferrous target on the horseshoe display, falsing often manifests as TID 85 or occaisonally TID 75 that devolves into single digit ferrous IDs when you turn on the target. If you can isolate and turn on the target and maintain the non-ferrous ID, there's a good chance the target is non-ferrous or there are co-located ferrous and non-ferrous targets. If you are digging a deep hole and getting a progressively strong pinpointer response indicating a large target, you are probably digging to iron. My Nokta discriminating pinpointer helps to keep me from having to completely extract many of these big pieces of leverite. In the mild, sandy soil of the Northern Neck, there is little if any depth advantage to be gained by going with a PI unless the coil size available to you is much greater than the maximum coil size for the preferred vlf detector. Regarding "dig it all", yes that pretty much applies, but the Axiom "on demand" ferrous check should work better at greater depths than would be expected in a hot dirt location. But if PI is not really detecting much deeper than the D2, in mild soil, there is no compelling reason to fly partially blind by running the Axiom vice the D2 in the mild soils. Anyway, I still need to clean up and examine my finds closer but here's a look at my keepers. Many of which were plucked out of machine gun iron while running IAR at 5. No silver this time out for me other than a hint of some silver plating on one of the brass items. But I did manage an IHP, several buttons, a thimble as well as several fancy colonial buckle pieces and saddle adornments. And a rarity for this neck of the woods, a fired CW era minie ball. On the way back to my vehicle I got a sweet 93 and thought my silver streak was going to be saved. Turned out to be a '65 clad quarter. Couldn't even eek out a '64 to save me. SMH. Thanks again for the opportunity to dig with ya, Bob. It was yet another killer outing.

Probably not. It’s designed for large, deep contiguous cache’s of metal. Preferably high conductors. It would be harder for it to detect metal caches where the individual items are not fused together. Gold alloy’s would also be harder for it because gold conductivity drops significantly when alloyed with other metals and impurities. Furthermore, this type of target would never occur naturally, so it would be in some sort of container, correct. Unless that container is non-metallic, you would probably be more likely to detect the container rather than the contents. The types of questions you keep asking the forum revolve around non-natural targets, very deep buried caches, perhaps under rock, perhaps in non- metallic containers etc that push beyond the technical limits of the consumer grade detectors you keep asking about, including even the XP Xtreme hunter. You would probably be much better off investing in professional industrial/archeological equipment like ground penetrating radar that can reveal subterranean voids rather than consumer metal detectors for whatever it is you are trying to find. Just a suggestion.

So it looks like Breeze Airlines is restricting recreational items that contain LiIon Batteries above and beyond the TSA restrictions which is certainly within their right to do so to further limit the hazard risk this technology presents to just personal electronics like phones, headphones, tablets, and laptops. Anyway, without knowing what detector rental models or rates will be available to you in the immediate area you are visiting, I can't advise you on that. I've never rented a detector and would be most comfortable with one that I was already familiar with. Another option to consider would be to arrange to ship your detector to your destination in advance and then ship it back home at the end of your trip. It might be more cost effective than renting and you'll have the detector you know you'll like. HTH.

Jane - First a carification. The battery parameter the FAA/TSA is concerned about is actually "Watt-Hours" or "W-H" which is a measure of the energy stored in the battery and the potential for how much "fuel" is available to feed a fire vesus "Watts" which is a measure of the maximum product of volts times current that a battery can supply at any instant in time. The Nox 800 uses a battery rated at 3.7 v at 5000mAH which is equivalent to 18.5 W-H which is well below the 100 W-H limit. More info in my post linked below regarding requirements for checked baggage vs. a carry on bag etc.

I feel as if I was a little misunderstood on my 6000 comments, so I’ll just make a few additional comments addressing that below and exit the thread because I’m just a relic detectorist looking for bullets, no biggie if I leave them in the ground and so forth…. Bottom line if you don’t want to wade through all the words below - Thanks for setting the record straight and I agree with you (in fact I never disagreed in the first place, as relic detectorists and prospectors have many common viewpoints when it comes to a detector’s capabilities but also some divergent points of view on the value of certain features). As I’ve repeatedly stated, it was never my intent to saddle the E1500 with suggested features and capabilities useless to prospectors or to cajole gold detectorists into defending why the E1500 doesn’t have these features out of the box. And I will state again, for the record, that the E1500 is very compelling as is to me as solely a relic detectorist because it appears to hit all those cost/weight/performance wickets Steve set as stretch goals for PI manufacturers. My intent was simply to articulate features and capabilities I have found useful as a relic detectorist that hopefully could be considered in the future for an E1500 without significant cost or complexity. And if the E1500 proves in practice that its existing capabilities wrt to EMI, ground handling, and integrated ID/audio obviate the need for these additional features in a relic detecting context, so much the better. Regarding my original comment on the 6000. My point wasn’t about how the 6000 DD’s are great (I have no knowledge of that as I don’t own a 6000). Nor was I asking for a defense of the Iron Check feature as great or necessary - I know and am constantly reminded by prospectors how utterly useless the feature is. I was simply pointing out IN SUPPORT OF THE E1500 that the 6000 has no iron check feature and I remembered posts and and direct conversations were folks figured out ways to manipulate the GPX 6000 switchable automatic ground handling and timing features and/or used audio clues to interrogate targets on the fly to ID likely iron or junk targets (I.e., proficient 6000 users were not missing the lack of the iron check feature for either prospecting or relic detecting). I just couldn’t remember if a DD was needed as part of the equation. My bad - thanks for chiming in and setting the record straight as I hoped you would. I wasn’t trying to use that whole 6000 thing to justify DD, I am actually glad it’s not necessary. And, yes, I know a lot of of GPX 4K/5K and Axiom users (me included) that integrate the target audio with and without the iron check features to make dig decisions. There are also situations where I would turn off the GPX iron blanking feature altogether because ground conditions were making it break on non-ferrous targets and go solely with audio to make dig decisions. Finally, if I have limited time in a hot dirt field iron patch, I’m personally pulling out a simultaneous frequency VLF (probably a D2) given todays available PI tools and will gladly trade depth for speed and the possibility of getting non-ferrous audio hits in that situation. If the E1500 can keep me from pulling a VLF out in that situation, that would be an impressive and welcome game changer. So, of course, having the visual ID info provided by the E1500 will only help in this regard and could be game changing feature. Thanks for indulging this relic detectorist’s perspective. Chase out. Wake me when these actually make their way to the US. P.S. I finally managed to locate the GPX 6000 thread that Steve H. started on the subject of manipulating PI detector controls to interrogate and characterize different non-ferrous and ferrous targets based on how differently the targets responded to the different settings. Below, I am linking the final post in the thread by Andrew Benson that documented his results on a variety of ferrous and non-ferrous relic test targets You can dive back into that entire thread from this jumping off point, if desired. It's not earth shattering or rocket science, but just providing it here for reference, to show how a PI detector without a dedicated iron check feature can be used to interrogate and differentiate between various ferrous and non-ferrous targets by manipulating controls and interpreting target audio response on the fly. Indeed, as confirmed by Steve and Andrew, this methodology was executed with a mono coil. The visual ID component provided by the E1500 should just add another tool in the toolkit to facilitate similar target interrogation methodologies for relic and gold hunting alike, despite the absence of a dedicated, DD-facilitated ferrous check feature. FWIW.

I don't want to derail this thread into a debate on the pros and cons of having some means of iron identification on a PI. As as a gold detectorist, your lack of enthusiasm for the feature vs. mine or other relic detectorists is totally understandable. I can see where it can be perceived as a low value feature that is not worth paying extra for or adding to the complexity of operating the detector. I'm not trying to change your position, just trying to better explain my POV and to re-emphasize a point made by Steve H. regarding the E1500's ID numbers in this context. In relic detecting in hot to very hot ground (the sole logical use case for most relic hunters to consider a PI over a vlf), the ability to invoke iron check or blanking with a DD is a useful feature provided the detectorist understands its limitations (it is depth limited, far from foolproof as it is subject to both false positives and false negatives, and practically useless in iron patches, at least in the Minelab GPX iron blanking implementation). For the latter reason, I too prefer the Axiom "on demand" implementation as it enables iron patches to be managed - though most are likely better off just trying to sift through them with a VLF regardless of ground conditions. That being said, with 7 years of GPX experience and just under 1 year of Axiom experience under my belt, I would have to say the GPX iron blanking implementation is slightly more reliable at depth than Axiom's in correctly signaling iron. But not enough that I prefer it over Axiom's on demand iron grunt feature. All that being said, I know very experienced detectorists like Steve and Andrew Benson who can manipulate controls on the fly on the GPX 6000 (which has no explicit iron check features) to derive ferrous telltale responses. I believe this does require a DD coil to be attached, but Steve or Andrew can set the record straight on that. The other thing to note about the GPX and Axiom iron check features is that they work (with varying reliability) on both big iron (which typically manifests as high conductive low tones) and most iron bits (which manifest as high tones). They routinely get fooled by barbed wire, small circular iron, and bent square nails but those targets can also have audio tell tales that an experienced PI user can identify to make an informed dig judgment call. Now regarding E1500's numerical ID. That is a fascinating feature and I am excited to see it in action, but I just want to point out (and Steve has already done this) that since it is just going to be a number corresponding to the relative conductivity of the target derived from it's time constant, it is going to be limited in providing a positive iron ID because iron (just as some other metals like aluminum, gold and lead) have derived conductivities that vary widely with the mass and shape of the target. Iron and to a lesser extent lead and gold can show up as either high or low conductors. Sophisticated frequency domain signal processing algorithms benefitting from simultaneous multifrequency operation in vlf induction balance Detectors with DD coils have resulted in some very sophisticated iron filters that go beyond simple TID discrimination. Excited to see how the E1500 integrates its on demand TID feature with its audio to help a detectorist make an informed call on the nature of the target under a mono coil. If it proves out to be a breakthrough combo that obviates the need to have heavy DD coils or pseudo reliable iron check features, then Win-Win. If DD compatibility can be added to further enhance the E1500's capabilities down the road enabling detectorists additional options and choices, that would be great as well. Overall, all the other boxes the E1500 checks on paper (price point, light weight, relative ease of use, coil optimization, dual channel GB, bring your own power and coil, and visual target signal feedback) makes this a very compelling detector regardless of your use case.

With the GPX DD cancel feature, I never encountered an economically sound use case for investing in an AI coil while relic detecting. The stock 11" DD Commander did exactly what I needed it to do in DD or Cancel mode (recognizing the depth limitations in the latter it silenced a nasty aeronautical transmitter beacon and enabled me to recover targets at depth that would have been impossible to recover if I was only rocking a mono coil). As a result, I had no need for the extra expense of a special AI coil even if it performed deeper than a DD in cancel, nor be continuously depth limited while having an AI coil attached or to go to the extra effort to switch back to my standard DD with ferrous blanking when I was out of the EMI field to get back to full performance capability. I just flipped the GPX toggle back to DD and was good to go with full DD capability. Besides, correct me if I am wrong, but I don't believe AI's are Mono coils therefore would also not be compatible with this rig. So even if I had owned AI coils in my arsenal, I wouldn't be able to use them with this detector. I guess all I am saying is E1500 simple compatibility with DD (fully recognizing they would be suboptimal to mono coils for maximum depth) would have been nice for those already invested in GPX DD coil. Furthermore, the E1500 being able to optionally utilize the inherent noise cancellation capability (recognizing the tradeoff in depth, etc) and/or ferrous check capabilities could have been the icing on the cake for those intending to use this rig for non-prospecting detecting in high EMI and or hot ground or salt. Again, not a showstopper, just would have been a nice to have as long as those features did not have a significant impact on price point. All the points regarding DD coil advantages with respect to EMI, ground handling, and ferrous disc (because the E1500 TID and audio features might be sufficient to aid in reliably differentiating ferrous from non-ferrous) might be moot once the real world capabilities of the Algo are known. With the exception that those of us with only DD GPX coils (primarily relic and beach hunters) are in the same boat as those with no coils and will have to purchase some compatible coils, increasing the required investment vs. those who already have mono coils (i.e., gold detectorists). And to be clear, I am not raining on this parade whatsoever. I am still excited to see what this detector has to offer to both the gold and relic/beach detectorist communities. DD compatibility would have been a nice but not necessary capability for the reasons already stated.

I have been in several broadband common mode noise situations near airports and electrical transformers with the GPX where channel scan is worthless and the only solution is using a DD and going to cancel. And for those of us who built up a collection comprised solely of DD GPX compatible Coils to facilitate the ferrous blanking and Cancel mode features of the GPX, we're SOL. So I'm with Jeff McClendon wrt the disappointment that DD Coils or noise cancelling coils are not compatible. Not a complete showstopper, but something that relic, coin, and Beach hunters that relied on features facilitated by DD coils need to consider.

Good, I can sit back and wait for the unbiased report on whether it is living up to all its claims.

It's deformed (bent in different axial directions) probably from whatever snapped it in the first place but also some of that curvature could be intentional. Also, it seems too narrow and lacks the multiple fastener holes you would expect to attach it to footware. So, yeah, a likely musket attachment.

I think you may be right. Probably too thick for heel plate looking at it again, and my digging partner found a similar piece nearby, as well as a dropped minie ball in the vicinity.

Yep. Glad that's over. I was starting to wonder... 🤣 Regarding the Digs mount and your shaft system, I believe it is a great match up, especially for water work, where one failed D2 remote control retention lock and/or lanyard can really ruin your day. No such concerns with this setup. I also like the angled display a lot more than I thought I would. The screw-in mount is secure and I have not identified any weaknesses. Thumbs up all around.

Agree. I noticed that too. It's a mystery.

We're thinking some sort of fancy saddle or horse tack adornment. It was found where near other decorative brass saddle studs were located.

As Jeff stated and also implied, it's not something you can really describe or put into words in terms of tonal nuances. It is very subtle and far from foolproof. The best you can do is just get out there dig everything to train your brain on what does and doesn't sound like probable junk until it becomes something you don't consciously think about you just react based on experience and what you are hearing and seeing. At this point, you simply need to rack up swing hours and target recoveries and recognize you are just always going to dig a lot more trash than treasure (set realistic expectations) but that with time you will learn how to make good dig decisions and will dig higher percentages of good targets.

Yes. You just remove the thumb screws. Takes about 15 - 20 seconds or so to do it.

It sounds like the coil is still alive if you are getting the heartbeat light. So regardless of whether you can get the coil charge light to glow steady, I would think you should be able to connect the coil. I would delete the coil from your remote, unplug the shaft battery from the HF coil wait a minute and then plug the battery back in and then try to re-connect as if you are adding a new coil. That may also reset the coil such that it sees the charger again. Not sure what you mean by plugging the coil in directly to USB. Did you homebrew a connector or something? If you are still having issues after unplugging and reconnecting the HF coil external battery, I would get a replacement battery.

Possibly, but the teeth are pretty small so I think it's more likely a clock gear.