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Nice Day In The Yucca Dca


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It was a beautiful sunny day with a nice breeze in the Yucca Dense Collection Area, formerly known as the Franconia strewn field. A large part of this area has plagued detectorists since meteorites were first discovered here, as the landscape is littered with basalt hot rocks and is completely carpeted with them in some spots. Fortunately the Minelab GPZ 7000 can eliminate the vast majority of them, while still hitting hard on the space rocks. While most of the finds are on the surface, some have become buried over time, like the one I found today at a depth of around 8 inches, or 200 mill. In addition to calcium carbonate deposits forming on the stones's exterior, most of  the fusion crust is being stripped away by chemical weathering and the surface metal grains are oxidizing, staining the surrounding matrix a rusty orange. Mass of specimen is 166 grams.

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Fred, I figured it's more advantageous to swing th 14" coil since it can fit between a lot more of the boulders than the 19".

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I snagged this map at https://www.researchgate.net/figure/258804552_fig4_Figure-1-Map-of-recovered-meteorites-in-the-Franconia-area-in-Mohave-County-Arizona

"Map of recovered meteorites in the Franconia area, in Mohave County, Arizona. Cascadia Meteorite Laboratory (CML) sample numbers are shown for the meteorites included in this study. Non-CML samples include CMS 1516 (Center for Meteorite Studies, Arizona State University) which is paired with Palo Verde Mine (CML 0185); SaW005 = Sacramento Wash 005; and WSW = Warm Springs Wilderness. For CML 0490 (Buck Mountains 004), the combined mass of 29.5 kg for various stones that may be paired was assumed. Dashed lines show elevations above sea level. “I-40” is interstate highway 40."

 

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Nice find Lunk.... Franconia sure can be a nice strewn field to hunt. I am interested how the 19" coil would do on the south side, as a lot of the larger pieces found on the south side were buried pretty good.

Dave.

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7 hours ago, DolanDave said:

Nice find Lunk.... Franconia sure can be a nice strewn field to hunt. I am interested how the 19" coil would do on the south side, as a lot of the larger pieces found on the south side were buried pretty good.

Dave.

Dave, I think the GPZ-19 coil would be great on the south side with its flat, open areas and few obstacles. A guy could cover a lot of ground in a day. 

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Scored a lovely 94 gram stone today in the same general area. This one was only slightly embedded in the surface of the ground and is in much better shape than yesterday's find. This individual stone displays remnant fusion crust with only a couple of chipped areas.

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Congrats on some more very nice finds...

  Did you run into Mike, and Robby... I got a text from them with their finds, and they said they ran into you...

Dave.

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5 minutes ago, DolanDave said:

  Did you run into Mike, and Robby... I got a text from them with their finds, and they said they ran into you...

Dave, Mike noticed my truck and came over to say hi. Real nice guy; hope they found lots of space bits. 

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I believe they got  some nice pieces like yourself also, including sunbakers...

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