Garrett ATX vs Fisher Gold Bug 2

[Keith Southern]

See if you can tell what's wrong with this guys ATX video. I am pretty sure what wrong with the first part poor performance and its not got to do with the disc/delay...

see if you can see anything..

I know I'm not crazy..

Keith

[fredmason]

One thing I noticed is his coil wire is loose and flopping about as he swings...there were other things too..

fred

[Guest Paul (Ca)]

Keith,

 

I'll have to watch it again got distracted but at the beginning notice the threshold wasn't loud enough with the ATX,  I'll re-watch it again this week. 

 

Thanks for posting it, We can learn from others.

 

Paul (Ca)

[Steve Herschbach]

I have no idea what the settings are on the ATX or Gold Bug 2 so not sure what you are seeing Keith. Nothing surprising though. Some detectors do better on some things and other detectors do better on other things.
 
Meteorites grade imperceptibly from pure stone (detectors can't find them) to pure iron (detectors go crazy on them). Weaker grade meteorites would in effect be a hot rock to a PI and a good PI should tune out hot rocks by their nature. As the percentage iron content increases to where the meteorite basically becomes an iron target, the PI affinity for iron targets takes over. The ground balance setting on a GBPI would have a huge impact on weak meteorites as targets.
 
I would expect a Gold Bug 2 to do better on the stony meteorites. As the percentage iron increases along with size the ATX will catch up and pass the Gold Bug 2. In an area with hot rocks you run into a problem with the Gold Bug 2 sounding off on hot rocks the same as the weaker meteorites. The trick as always is to find the machine that best ignores the ground while getting the desired target to stand out as well as possible. There is no right or wrong answer per se as potential target types and ground conditions grade imperceptibly from one extreme to the other.
 
I would also expect the Gold Bug 2 to excel on small gold. No surprises there. I guess the video more or less reflected what I would expect so in that regard I do not see a problem. It is when people show things that run contrary to what I would expect that I start getting suspicious.

[Keith Southern]

Hey Steve i am thinking the Machine in the begging is in non motion since I hear no echo report...

 

I have messaged  the guy though and he says its in motion so it will maybe be that it is acting more like a mineral ...

 

I have never had a meteorite to test or even found one...But does seen logical  that the p.i. would cancel it instead of report it if its weak..

 

I had it in my mind He is in no motion mode to start with and has not re-tuned it.. the threshold seems way to high..

 

He says he is in Motion. though so maybe the sporadic noise he does get is just mineal false since hes not tracking...

 

Whats weird is he has another video were he digs one up pretty deep but maybe its of different makeup...

 

And thanks Steve for the insight...

 

Meteorite hunting seems fascinating but sort of hard top do around these part's...I actually had it in my mind they are like a nickle construction or very irony...never dawned on me that they can be low grade ..

 

 

Keith

[fredmason]

Just to clarify, it is the metallic nickel/iron that is easily detected by vlf metal detectors in stone meteorites.

There are three very basic types of meteorites; stones, stoney/irons and irons...the last two have so much metallic nickel/iron that any pi or vlf should detect them. Stones are usually "ordinary chrondrites" and can have almost no metallic nickel/iron grading up to high percentages...

 

and can as Steve said be seen by the detector as mineralized hot or cold rocks...

 

this is way too technical for me...read any of the books by O. Richard Norton to get a basic understanding...

 

fred