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That is a good idea and I wish I had known about it earlier. I found some live ammo rounds and some other artifacts I would have dropped off. I've only been out to that one spot and found the buttons I posted and the one lapel pin.

We spent a 'free' night in Tekapo looking across at the shops. We woke up in the morning to some friendly Mallard ducks. Then we have gone to another lake town, Wanaka where I am now. We'll be in Queenstown tomorrow!

I purchased a brand new Troy X5 with both the stock coil and 10x5 coil,certainly not a cheap detector here back in 2004 or when ever i purchased it,build quality was absolutely the best you could get...but boy oh boy even after using it for nearly 3 years it was the worse machine that i have ever used,it absolutely loved iron,even after countless call to Troy and even on the forum we still could not get the X5 to run smoothly. Someone wanted one urgently so me agreed a deal and i only lost about £25 after 3 years which on a £1000 machine i was totally happy with,the Troy X5 is the only detector that i have ever sold and also the one that gave me the most nightmares.

The side of the clip has the groove, is the adjustment side. In other words make sure that the plain side of the clip that has NO groove is the side you attach to the rod of your detector. The side of the clip that has the groove is the side where the bungee should not be attached to anything. This is the end of the bungee that you pull up into the groove to lock the adjustment in. This is precisely why I designed the QWIPPLE clip with adjustments on both sides. May I suggest that you take the loop that you attach to the rod of your detector, on the side of the clip with no groove and put a piece of colored tape on the bungee down by the loop. So you always grab the right end to attach to the rod of your detector. Then use the other end to pull up into the clip groove. Doc

Wow, those are really nice collection of artifacts from the camps. Being that it was found just 20-some years after the camps were active, your collection is in one of the best conditions and most interesting I’ve ever seen. I’ve conducted surveys and mapping at the Desert Training Center (DTC) under contract for BLM, including at Iron Mountain. Due to their historical significance, the DTC camps have been nominated for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places to ensure better protection against (now illegal) collecting and other disturbances. The desert in these areas still contains artifacts and has sites left from past military exercises performed out there, but unfortunately, like the Sherman tank tracks left from General Patton’s North Africa Campaign practices, they're rapidly deteriorating due to the passage of time, as well as from looting and off-road vehicles damaging the landscape. If anyone is interested in helping to preserve the history of these camps, please consider anonymously donating (or bequeathing) your collection of DTC artifacts to the General Patton Memorial Museum at Chiriaco Summit, CA. They will accept donations for curation without asking any questions. Thank you!

Hey Dean, just my experience, afters years of trying all sorts of matting, door mat, rubber, carpet etc. the conclusion I came to after lots of testing with a known gold amount was they all catch gold, i.e. most of or all that you put through them. I have no experience with high bankers, so excluding them what I know about are simple stream/ river sluices whether set up with a pump or in stream. What became important for me was portability, so sluices that don't use matting. I've ended up with two Angus MacKirk stream sluices, the AU trap and a smaller back pack model, they are simple drop riffle types, no matting, they catch gold, including small gold. The key is setup, depending on flow and what size material you are processing, the angle needs to be as small as possible, while still moving material through it. Keep it simple, because it is. A said at the start, just my experience. Happy gold hunting.

I found this very beautiful stone on the banks of an Australian (VIC) river. (Merrica River) It took me by surprise as it was stuck in a root and is perfectly smooth and egg shaped. Does anyone have any ideas of how this was created? And what stone it is? Our theory was that the roots grew around the stone, it was exposed and then the water smoothed it into shape. Or the rock was originally a larger shape. It was able to spin around inside where it was sitting. Any ideas welcomed.

Wow! It's been well over a year since I posted to the forum! Anyway, I came across two other finds detecting in Patton's Training camps in CA. A bayonet and jungle knife. right now I'm waiting on snowbirds to clear from one camp out by Pilot Knob, CA to detect.

Has anyone put Dream Mat in there dredge? Is it better than Miners Moss? I see alot of advertizing about it , but can't find any one to tell me if it is better on small gold. Thanks Dean

A little late reporting on the trip, but here it is. We got a late start (did I mention my wife was coming with?) . First spot we tried was a dry tributary creek. I quickly gave it the proper name of "can slaw creek" I was using the atx, so there was no cherry picking targets. After about an hour, and 5ft later, we abandoned that spot. Next spot was a small tributary creek running about 3ft wide. Took the gold kruzer out and grabbed the gold pan and put the coil in the water. Got some targets behind a bigger rock, and just scooped what I could out into the pan. Every pan had several specks of gold. I forgot my snuffer bottle in the truck, so most went back to grow bigger. My last pan I decided I better save something, so I went and grabbed my snuffer bottle . These were the biggest pieces of the day ... Nothing to write home about. We finished off the day checking some tailings piles that the rancher used as his gravel pit. No luck there. The main creek in the area was running like a river. I will definitely be hitting that later this year. I wasn't able to get back to where I wanted to be on that trip. The roads (and my wife) would not allow it lol I'm hoping to find some bedrock in that area. It's a big place. We didn't even scratch the surface. I'm still very optimistic about the area. I might even sneak out there tomorrow without the wife lol

Welcome from East Texas.

The new normal by the looks of it, they're working out what people will pay for them and going with it. Once this method starts to slow down for them they'll probably just set the new website pricing to the price they found people are willing to pay. It does seem a decent price for the detector though, especially with 2 coils. The new going market rate for a single frequency detector with 2 coils.

I know someone who uses one in Arizona. I've never heard of anyone having an issue with hot ground, or ground balance, as it has a ten turn pot. His ground is as bad as it gets. The only complaint I heard was maybe with hot rocks. If I was you, I would have kept the comment to myself.

That's a great price! If I didn't already have one, I'd be seriously considering it.

See if you can get lidar imagery of the area. Prospect pits/spoil piles are easy to see on those, but they have the be high resolution imagery. In the US a lot of the lidar is still the low resolution and the prospects are harder/impossible to see on it, I'm not sure about Australia resolutions.

Nokta seems very innovative and puts out good products. As long as they don't pull "a storm is coming" time frame, they have my interest on this one. I was leaning towards an axiom for my next purchase, but finances are giving me time to lurke a bit longer. Hope it's a quick release, and someone on this forum can fill us in on their time with the test model! 😁

As there aren’t very definitive and more recent egress tracks leading to those I think they may be natural- to determine wether they’re mineral outcrops or places where cows hang out will take boots on the ground or at least some better aerials than that image.

"I usually use General or ATLC and the ID is the same on both of those modes." These are my two favorites unless I'm on the beach... WTG on the gold coin...cant tell you how many 22 brass I've dug looking for that elusive $1 gold coin...Nice work! strick

Anybody interested, make them an offer. Might even go less.

A coin/jewelry/relic detector with fixed pulse delay set for larger coin sized targets. It will ignore the really small stuff A gold prospecting detector with fixed pulse delay set for 0.1 gram nuggets and larger. Personally I would like both options in one detector. Waterproof would be awesome.

That's a heckuva deal on a great machine!

Mine was purchased Dec 9th 2022...it same hardware version Steve...I still need to do the up date just so I can try it out...sorry for the dirty screen 🙂 strick

I've seen this behaviour when air testing for the first time some targets. Bad weather outside, being inside home, forced to keep no more than 7 as sensitivity level, in beach LC and prospecting audio mode... No matter the items, an amazing faint treshold wisper was giving a clear chance to listen for a target by a third more of distance before an ID and a proper trace showed up. It happened with a silver 0.37g ring so thin to be hard to believe. With the 8x5" coil this means like almost 12" without ID but clear treshold variation. I repeat, 7 sensitivity on M8 coil and prospecting audio mode. Soon realised that wasn't the ideal setup for me in saltwater...But on the wet and dry sand, keep an ear on those "pre signals"....

My experience is that different modes create different IDs not as much with coins as with trash signals, but a shift of 1 or 2 IDs up or down is common for me on coins. Trash seems to generate + or - 5 on the IDs, I use the difference to decide on dig or no dig.

This is an awesome upgrade for the 600 or 800. I use this rod with a 600 and use the counterweight with the 11 inch coil and no weight when swinging the 6 inch coil. The s-rod shape is great!