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Knowing The Best Size Coil For Your VLF To Produce Gold


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Confidence is the key, having confidence in your own ability along with your equipment is very important, as without it you'll struggle.   Knowing how your detector responds to gold is also important, knowing that gold might come up as ferrous on Target ID's or "gold change" indicators is also important.  Small golds right at that break point between ferrous and non-ferrous so detectors can and do get it wrong.  When I was learning I was missing so much small gold because I relied far too much on Target ID's and gold chance indicators on my detectors.  Unless it's a very obvious iron target it's always best to dig it out, you've got more chance finding gold by digging most targets than you do swinging the detector around and avoiding digging as many targets as you can trying to avoid junk, doing this you'll miss gold, a lot of it from what I've experienced.

If you're capable of detecting shotgun pellets, especially smaller ones and pellets with some depth that's all you need for confidence, you can find gold if it's there.

This massive chunk of gold came up ferrous on the Nox, until it virtually touched the coil.

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I can't stress enough Target ID and Gold chance indicators like on the Gold Monster are there to give you some idea and should not be exclusively relied upon, if in doubt it's always best to dig it out!

While I agree small coils on the VLF's especially small elliptical coils are wonderful for prospecting with a VLF there is something refreshing about using a PI/GPZ with a larger coil in a more open area like an 15x10" or 11" or like I mostly use 12" and 15"  or whatever size you prefer on these powerful high end Minelab's while maintaining sensitivity to very small targets, that extra ground coverage sure speeds up detecting an area over messing around with a tiny little 6" coil.

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I agree 100% that confidence is key.  In my experience to help build the confidence, you need to find some gold.

Well said Simon

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Yes, once you find gold the confidence builds, even now if I find one piece my confidence sky rockets for the rest of the day and I usually end up finding more, that first one is always the hardest even on ground you know has gold.  Your first nugget is the biggest confidence boost of all though and one you'll never forget.

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5 hours ago, phrunt said:

Yes, once you find gold the confidence builds, even now if I find one piece my confidence sky rockets for the rest of the day and I usually end up finding more, that first one is always the hardest even on ground you know has gold.  Your first nugget is the biggest confidence boost of all though and one you'll never forget.

Grasshopper I knew you would master the art when tou first started. As you say confidence is one of the most important factors in finding gold. If a newbie is in an area were the gold is tiny it is very hard to get that confidence. That first nugget is important but the second or the next nugget is the key in being successful to finding many nuggets. 

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If your lucky enough to be hunting with a successful nugget finder tis easy mimic him, his coil size but particularly his technique  and I`m betting it`ll be low and slow.

If your not that lucky best to start in bony (near bedrock) with as Gerry suggests a small coil and low and slow, but get lucky and go with someone that knows the go.😉   

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4 minutes ago, Norvic said:

If your lucky enough to be hunting with a successful nugget finder tis easy mimic him, his coil size but particularly his technique  and I`m betting it`ll be low and slow.

If your not that lucky best to start in bony (near bedrock) with as Gerry suggests a small coil and low and slow, but get lucky and go with someone that knows the go.😉   

That worked well for me, JW was immensely valuable in my efforts to learn how to find gold.   What to look for, where to look, how to work out the best spots to fire up my detector and usage tips and settings for my GPX to suit our area.   He virtually had to beat me with a pole before I'd slow down enough but he got me to the right speed eventually, I think 🙂  I'd gone some time with no success at all, on my first day with him helping me I popped up 6 nuggets.

So yes, I'd say having an experienced friend help is very valuable, lessons from someone like Gerry and his team would be very helpful for someone too.

 

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Thanks for the useful knowledge on what coil I should be using, I just have to get out there more and hammer those creeks near me.

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I began with small coils as advised by Gerry and Lunk. After two years with only one large nugget found, I was out on my first hunt with Lunk along (we were going up the same creek and general area) and as I recall he found 16 pieces that day covering less than 50 feet - compared to my 3 pieces, but I covered the whole hill... At that time I was using only the small coils, but I learned it wasn't necessarily the coil size equalled a level of success, it was certainly the technique that I learned that day watching Lunk dig nugget after nugget (Nox that trip) with only moving a few feet. I  have now, years later switched over to 75% time using my larger coils, but using much better technique which was learned over many trips and still having as much success as with the small coils.

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Yes, with VLF's small coils will give you the best chance of finding something, unless: 

1. Your ground has 4-5 inches of top soil/leaves/pine needles etc.

2. Piles of hot rocks 

If you are using a VLF to utilise the iron disc that many models are equipped with, that usually goes with the plan to attack some trashy spots where the PI machines are just very hard work, then often in these spots there is a good chance some decent gold is left behind. Now if there's 3 bits of iron on every sweep, then sticking to a smaller coil is wise. However, if we are talking 1 bit of iron every two or three sweeps, then I would rather be swinging a bigger coil - more ground coverage and better chance of hitting that 2-3 grammer at depth. 

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