This X-coil Will Hunt

[phrunt]

I wonder if you were in General the other day too, not ideal for small targets.  Glad you discovered it while you still had some time in the day. 

I generally run mine in High Yield, Normal and 18 sensitivity, I do tend to use Low smoothing or no smoothing depending on my mood.    JW runs HY/Normal/20 on his with no smoothing and he of course does better than me, but that's not just because of his settings 🙂

This is a video I did on a patch the 15"CC found me, you may have seen it before but it might mean more to you now you have one.

 

[mn90403]

Oh, I need to add that my iron finds were from .9g down to unmeasurable on my scale.  I got screamers that are near the surface that were .10 and .06g so it will find small.

[phrunt]

yep, you should be finding down to around 0.03 of a gram with surprising depth, 0.02 if its the right shape bit.

The 15" CC has become very popular in Western Australia in particular.  Here are a couple of big lumps found in the past week both with the 15"CC in WA.

This guy uses his SDC 2300 as a pinpointer 🙂 Good way to keep the holes smaller in hot soil.

And his nugget.

And the next guy was also a 15" CC

Also about 500mm down, both nugget found in the past week.

[rvpopeye]

 

Nice noogies !👍   🙄 ..... ?

Or nuggies . 🤗 

My spelling AI is off today....... 

[Norvic]

On ya Mn, way to go.

[mn90403]

Simon said 'Go Back' and I did for perhaps the last time in a long while to this spot.

I cranked it up to 20 and tested it in various combinations of auto, semi-auto, manual, ground smoothing, hy, general, salt, etc.  I used the ferrite ring and not also.

The first place I went was back to where I found the largest nugget on my first trip.  I worked my way slowly there without finding anything.  Then I took a circle around the spot where I found the nugget and I got a nice mellow 'dig me' signal.

I went back and got my phone to take pictures.  This was the area.

If you notice there is the fresh hole that I dug near the detector and just to the right of it less than 10 feet away was the hole I dug for the other nugget.  My phone had lost power and I couldn't take a picture then.

Here is a different angle with the previous hole at the bottom.

Now I'm on the new hole.  Notice how I bungee and support my 7000 from the handle with a hip stick.  I do the same with my 3030/17 on the beach.  I don't understand why this isn't the support spot for all 'heavy' detectors!

There is the nugget from this hole.  A bit flat but I think it was sitting on edge.  It looks bigger than its .25g weight.

Looking back where I parked.  It was not much of a distance.

Later I found a piece of trash under a bush.  I took this picture to show that you don't have to be directly over a target to hear it with a CC.  I heard the bullet casing and dragged it from under the bush with my foot.

Tiny, tiny screamer that was getting blown away by the wind.

That was it as far as nuggets went.

This was the picture of the snake I saw in the road on the way in.  I'm going to post it separately to help us be aware of them.

 

[phrunt]

They're really cool pictures and give a good idea of the area you hunt, the snake trail on the road looks neat.

If you're able to hunt in "normal" which it sounds like you are you'll find the edge sensitivity problem far less than if you have to hunt in "difficult".  It's still there though and if you require edge sensitivity it's not the ideal coil to be using.

In normal you don't lose near as much of the edge sensitivity, in difficult you have to account for about the outside 1/3 of the coil in your swing overlaps to get maximum depth with the cone shaped signal it sends into the ground, this can reduce a bit in normal. 

I filmed this video in normal as that's virtually all I ever use, in hindsight i should have filmed it again in difficult to see the difference if any.  This was on my first day using the 15" CC when it found its first nugget.

You can see where the hot spots are from the windings. 

The previous video I posted at this patch I found with the 15" CC showed how the 15" CC was getting great depth on small gold and finding plenty of it, but this video shows all the gold I missed with the 15"CC because of either the edge sensitivity or the coil just being too big to get up and into the thyme bushes.   My wife walked with me this day to see the spot where all this gold was coming from, I'd put the 8" on and zeroed in on a spot I couldn't go with the 15" and within 1 minute I'd found a nugget with her watching, her first time seeing a bit of gold found with a detector, she then lost interest and went for a hike 😛

So, yes your 15"CC will find gold even sometimes right up against bushes but it's not ideal for that and you'd be better off with your 15x10" for that job.  No one coil can do it all 🙂

Where your 15" will excel is finding the smaller bits others have left behind as they were out of their range for the nugget size and depth.    Think of anywhere as new ground and go back, yes all the big ones will likely be gone unless you're very lucky but you may find lots of little stuff that was missed, that's how it worked out for JW and I.  Although JW found what I call a big one right in the area we had hunted to death, the exact spot I'd been to the most and he'd been going to for years and to contradict what I've been saying it was right up under a bush.

This is a good photo of JW, he was so happy as he found a decent size lump right up against a bush with the 15" CC when we were in this heavily hit spot, If I recall correctly this was his maiden voyage with his 15"CC, neither of us could believe it, a coil that lacks edge sensitivity finds a nugget up against a bush we'd missed with all these coils and detectors that have edge sensitivity and we honestly have been to this exact spot more times than I can remember 🙂

You'll see in the top right corner of the dig hole photo where it was under the bush, it was 3.06 grams too. 

[mn90403]

Simon,

You have described your experiences well.  It's as if you are a fortune teller.

Now I have gone to the same general area but a different spot that still holds a lot of trash.  My settings have been refined between the volume of the detector and the SP01 and it really makes a difference to my ears.  

I was out on an overnight trip.  The first day I found one little nugget, the largest at .22g and then the next day I found 3 more for the total of around .7g.  Some of these pieces were just as you described, small and deep with one getting near 5 inches.  None of them were surface nuggets.

I did go back to the previous location and it seems that even with the dumbed down settings I've gotten it all there.  This new location is quite different even tho it is near.  It has had much more digging activity and other trash has been added and it is still left.  You had to 'pick and choose' what to dig.  It's a club claim and we also didn't want to spend so much time on it that we took it all.  My total hunting time for the two days was about 4-5 hours.  Two other detectorists had lesser results than mine.

What I was able to do was 'hear the gold!'  I didn't dig everything after a time.  There were some targets that had a 'sharpness' to them that didn't say 'dig me.'  And I can clearly remember each of the 3 targets on the second day with their nice mellow sound.  After a scrape with the pick or a boot scrape you knew it was the sound you were looking for.

That didn't mean it was going to be a quick recovery.  Once the dirt gets moving then it becomes difficult to focus, scoop and recover.  I'm a bit of an impatient scooper.  I've had to change my style so I don't scoop, wave and throw out the target and have to re-scoop.   Anyway, that is my story now, but the bottom line is that there is more gold at this new place than the other places nearby.

Thanks for the videos, tips and advice on this coil.  I wouldn't have it without you.

The .22g first day nugget.

 

The .11g 1st nugget of second day that took me 15 minutes to scoop.  I thought it was smaller but it had the nice mellow sound we all like.

 

I was on my way to take a break and 'show off' my tiny nugget and I got this flat .18g.

 

And finally getting near stopping time for the day before we were off to do other stuff I got this .16g that said 'dig me!'  It was down a bit over 4 inches.

[phrunt]

Good to see you getting some results already, once you get some miles on it you'll get to really know the coil and how it works, the Concentrics often give sharper tones than other coils on small gold and remember always use your scoop near the middle of the coil when recovering small targets, not near the outside 1/3.

Now you've joined the 6000 owners but in a different way, they're going around finding the small bits the GPZ owners missed, you are doing that now too, without having to buy a 6000, that's why I suggested perhaps just get a Concentric coil rather than fork out the money for a 6000, a coils a fair bit cheaper and seeing you already had an adapter it makes sense.  The advantage you have over the 6000 owners is depth so that may end up being the real benefit over time with any luck if there is a bigger deep lurker and you don't have to feel like you're missing out on the smaller crumbs like you would with the stock coil or Z-search as you should get a bulk of them too.

The 6000 will still do better on some targets, and the Concentric will do better on some targets over the 6000, there is always give and take but I think you'll end up pretty happy with your choice.