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Ever Take A Magic Carpet Ride While Prospecting?


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Now that I've got your attention ...

One interesting alternative I've seen to traditional walkin' 'n swingin' metal detecting is called the Hot Foot Rug. I'm sure many reading this have heard of it. Basically, from the looks of it it's a search coil apparently embedded into a flexible, rectangular carpet-like piece of material measuring from 18" to 6'. The carpet must, of course, be attached to a box, which the user can keep by their side or clip to a belt.  The carpet itself can either be attached to a harness and pulled while walking or dragged behind a vehicle, enabling detectorists to cover a lot more ground -- and with less walking required -- than traditional "stick" detecting. The only thing that makes me not even consider buying one is what I consider to be the excessively-high price (then again, in my opinion MOST metal detectors and search coils are way overpriced.) 

Especially when dragging the carpet behind a vehicle I would assume the user absolutely must use a good set of noise-canceling headphones.

I'm very surprised that the device mentioned above is about the only one of its type I've seen for sale. In my opinion -- and especially with so many detectorists being middle-aged and/or retired folks who aren't as mobile as they used to be -- you'd think there'd be quite a variety of such carpet-like search coils available.

Does anyone here prospect with such metal-detecting rugs? My main interest is in prospecting for large, deep nuggets and this technique -- especially with my bad knee -- really appeals to me, as the rug search coil can be several feet wide, which dwarfs even the largest traditional round/oval coils. Any feedback or information on such carpet-type detectors would be appreciated. 

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Hi guys, long time lurker here,  havent had much input lately as I very seldom have the opportunity to prospect these days, but enjoy thall the articles and feedback from a really great forum. So , as for the magic carpet ride !, I wouldn’t give it a second thought. But what I did do when I was swinging my first detector was go big on the coil, a 20” DD on an 8klz ft 16000 ,now at the time i was recovering from a prolapsed disc operation ,so swinging a coil that big was pretty ambitious in fact as it turned out to ambitious as I just couldn’t do it . So what I did was I made a wheelbarrow. I used a child’s plastic rimmed front bicycle wheel and a greased wooden dowel as the axle . Basically a wheel barrow frame made of light wood such as pine with out the tub, suspended the coil behind the wheel facing forward and Bobs you’re uncle, worked a treat’. When you hear a target just rock back and forth to pinpoint, obviously you would have to make the frame of the barrow to suit your height and arm length. If I could get my hands on a SD2000 and had the time ......

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  • 3 weeks later...

I've seen them used for hunting meteorites. The guy had to stop digging and bring in a backhoe. A target he was digging turned out to be a basketball sized meteorite.  This was on open ground in Nebraska. Western Australia would be perfect for that if you had a tow behind excavator for your quad.

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