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Little Gold In Big Iron


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1 hour ago, johnedoe said:

Thank you Steve for all your hard work and the sharing of it with all of us.... kudos to ya.

 

Well said johnedoe, and without being too sappy about it one might even go a bit further.

Of the handful of people in the world operating at this level of metal detecting knowledge, he is one of damn few without his hand out. No books for sale, seminars to buy, memberships etc. He answers anyone, the message is on point and understandable, no brands pushed. I struggle to think of even one of the so called big names in metal detecting that is quite that forthcoming.

I have bought and read more of those stupid-expensive books than anyone I know. My dealer says 5% of his customer base buys 95% of the books he sells, and I am one of those. I do not regret the money either, but came to feel differently about it recently. I emailed a question to the author of one of those books, his reply was that he was selling books... not Dear Abby.

In that little anecdote is the difference it makes.

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Thanks guys but I am not a saint nor doing it just for my health. I make a few bucks on the Google ads after forum expenses, get some free gear now and then, and get involved in neat projects. I love helping people the easiest way there is - sharing knowledge. People share back, I learn things. I like building websites. Frankly it is all fun and keeps me occupied when I can't go detecting. A win-win for everyone and I could not do it without you all. So thanks again!

Beware I may yet try to sell books if I ever get my posterior in gear and get them written.

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What book would you most like to write? Of all you could write about, what would it be?

Air testing the GR with small elliptical coil is interesting. Done in the house with the EMI and an eye to threshold stability. Not scientific and not measured, to see if sensitivity to desired target is lost as gain is reduced.

90-94 was taken as a standard to compare to, and gold stud earrings were used to ensure sensitivity to desired target.

80-89 only a very minimal loss in depth and good signal

70-79 depth about 75% of standard and good signal

60-69 depth drops significantly, less than 50%

Below 60, depth drops off rapidly to a point where it would no longer be an effective tool for what I do.

Target ID behaves essentially the same. Lowering gain does not seem to make the GR much less sensitive to small gold jewelry, which was a surprise. The signal is softer but still definite. My main question was would small targets be lost, but it looks like they stay in there pretty well.

 

 

 

 

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LOL..... Oh don't for a minute think that I think you are a saint.......:laugh:

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To update:

The suggestions above were incorporated and played with the last couple days to see if something useful could be worked out.

Lowering the gain does seem to help. Sensitivity in the 80s does not seem to lose much depth, 79 and below depth seems to be lost in a linear fashion down into the low 50s where it falls off quickly at some point depending on ground. Sensitivity to the size target I want is held all the way, which is good to know.

The loss of depth while retaining sensitivity to target is a useful in it's own right. If one were hunting recent drops in grass for one example. If you know what depth you want to hunt to and what target you want, you can set the gain to do it.

For really bad areas, lowering the gain and slowing sweep speed to a crawl is helpful. Cannot cover much ground in a given time, but it is more productive and targets are easier to separate.

Digging all for a little while shows which iffy signals are worth digging and is the only way to know. Anything that locks hard at 21 can safely be ignored, anything that bounces in the teens can be ignored, everything else needs looking at. Even if it bounces around quite a bit, if it looks the same in two different directions it is worth digging no matter what the numbers are. If one of the directions looks like iron, it probably is.

Signals soften at lower gain unless they are right on top. They still are distinct and small though, just buzz a little more. Variation and bounce in TID are not a good reason to reject a target when hunting small jewelry. Chains and stud earrings do this quite often and can sound like crumpling a potato chip bag sometimes. Do not hear the chip bag sound often, but it is almost always something good.

Hunting beaches with a Gold Racer is still a ludicrous idea of course, but it can be done.

 

 

 

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On 8/19/2016 at 6:37 PM, SLGuin said:

I have bought and read more of those stupid-expensive books than anyone I know. My dealer says 5% of his customer base buys 95% of the books he sells, and I am one of those. I do not regret the money either, but came to feel differently about it recently. I emailed a question to the author of one of those books, his reply was that he was selling books... not Dear Abby.

In that little anecdote is the difference it makes.

The 95::5 ratio doesn't surprise me.  If you look at a lot of fields of interest I suspect you will find some, even many, with similar numbers to this.  Some people have bad memories of school and other learning experiences.  Some of us can't get enough (and obviously you are in this second group).

I'm surprised at the author's response.  I hope (and am pretty confident) that person is the exception.  In my experience when I get an answer such as this is that the person is hiding something, and usually it is a lack of knowledge, lack of confidence, and lack of courage to admit such.  Since I buy a lot of books too, I'm curious as to who that author was.  In reality, without hearing both sides of the story, it's a bit dangerous to draw too strong of a conclusion and I understand why you don't post the name here.  (I wouldn't if I were in your shoes.)  OTOH, I wouldn't mind if you sent me a message with the name.:wink:

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GB,

Nice to meet a fellow reader, and I appreciate your interest. The fellow's name really doesn't matter, whether he is an absolute tool or just having a bad day is largely irrelevant. The information in those books is good. Good knowledge to use is the important thing to me.

But in truth, even those books are now irrelevant. The question I asked to the impolite person selling books was then just asked to Steve H by pm who answered it in less than an hour and did not mention Dear Abby at all.

We are fortunate to live in the information age where everything is just a mouse click away. The only trick is knowing what it is you are looking for. The value of some books now is that you learn things sometimes that you did not realize you needed to know.

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