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Back in the late 60's, early 70's we would metal detect Patton's Desert Warfare training camps. We kept mainly to the camps near Desert Center, CA, Coxcomb, Iron Mountain and Granite. We also did the ones near Hyde and Horn, AZ and Camp Laguna by the Yuma Proving Grounds and one over towards Bouse, CA. Camps Coxcomb, Iron Mountain and Granite were where we did the best. We found a lot of stuff. Blank and live ammo, spent tank round, spent artillery round, 5 gal gas cans, bayonet, jungle knife and a ton of coins. Pretty much everything associated with an Army Camp! I was able to locate some pics of what we found. I also include a US Calvary crossed sabers found at Camp Hualapai up near Prescott, AZ. It was a US Calvary post that protected settlers traveling to the west coast and a New Zealand penny found in my grandparents yard in Walden, CO. My favorite find is the 3rd Armored Division lapel pin!

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.

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.

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.

I just got permission to detect a large piece of land in a well known gold bearing area. It is private land that nobody has been prospecting for many many years. Everything around it is claimed up tight. It's hard to describe how excited I am about this permission. I will have miles, not acres to hunt. 😁😁😁

All I can say is, for the price, I'm impressed after seeing the Nokta FindX. I'm not a fan of the pole mount control housings in general, but this is better than some. The unit telescopes way down which is nice. Hard to see if the shafts are round, but all they need do (if not) would be to make the handgrip/pod rotate into being parallel with the searchcoil folded flat and you could likely get this in a backpack. OK, we have wired headphones, but there are dedicated headphone kits available where the transmitter is hard-wired to the "audio out" and then wireless to the headphones. A wireless pinpointer could then pair with the headphones. If you could put that wired transmitter under the arm cup, you would then have counterbalance for even the minimal 2.6 pounds it weighs! OK, maybe it won't hang with the big boys in highly negative ground (as far as anyone knows yet), but I bet it does just as well or better as most single frequency VLF Motion's in the recent past. Battery source: 2300 mAh Lithium Polymer... Not too shabby. Most of all, I'm impressed with the simple-to-the-point layout of the display and controls in thumb's reach. Maybe the ID number size is smaller than some, but possibly looks to be readable without glasses. I like the fact the lower shaft fastens to the center of the searchcoil. That goes a long way to help lessen "toe heavy" large searchcoils if attachment is below center instead. We have a global economy, whether we like it or not, and competition is a good thing. We as consumers get what we want at a better price it now seems. Like "phrunt" says, "Good on ya Nokta"!

After owning the axiom for about 8months and only using monos with great success I decided to treat myself in a trashy site to only digging non ferrous targets and hey it worked! In middle of about 20 pieces of trash I could clearly hear something shining thru, low and behold 10 or so beautiful gold pieces. Half went with a friend that was with me, my half in the picture. Ended up digging every target in the pike for 2 day as I thought we were on some high grade ore but all the gold was sitting right on top with lots of trash.lol

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!

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.

I've been curious about how lead compares to gold in depth testing. This was done with my garrett atx with both the 11x13 DD and the 8" mono coils. On a 3.8 gram gold nugget, both coils maxed out at 7.75". On a 10.25 g lead slug, maxed at 7.8 ". On a 19.5 g lead slug, max was 8.5". The 11x13 maxed at 2.6" on a 0.23 gold nugget, and 2.25" on a 0.25 g lead shot. The 8" mono maxed at 3.1" on the 0.23 gold, and 2.95 " on the 0.25 lead shot. The 8" mono also maxed at .295" on a 0.13 gold picker. Conclusion = when testing with lead, expect to get better depth on gold. It does show me that the 8" mono out performs the 11x13 DD on gold up to 4 grams and under. So the 8" mono is going to live on the ATX most of the time. The dirt was moderately mineralized, and targets were buried. It's not a perfect experiment, but it's information I didn't have before. Hope this information is useful to someone.

the M8 (small Manticore) coil is very similar in performance to the 6" Equinox coil on small gold although it will likely go a bit deeper as the gold gets bigger, I am not thinking there would be any benefit going to the 18" coil for prospecting purposes, the 15x12" both models have would be as big as you'd ever want to go and that has very limited application. The 11" both models have is a good prospecting coil though as they're both very sensitive detectors to small gold even with the abnormally large 11" coil for a VLF for prospecting. It gives very good depth on gold for a VLF using that coil in the right ground conditions, and obviously the smaller coils have their benefits for tiny gold. The only good coil for prospecting missing from the Manticore that the Equinox series has is the Coiltek 10x5" although the M8 isn't all that much different in size so it's not critical. I was wary at first about the Manticore coil limitations for prospecting, but quickly found because of the increased power of the detector that the shortfall in coil options is made up for by the detector itself, and there is still the chance Coiltek will come out with coils for it, I think they might have a waiting period for doing so, so Minelab can gather up the sales of their coils first so it could be a couple of years.

Yup. The silence is deafening. Is it so hard to just tell us what is coming and about when it will arrive? I have the attention span of a gnat and have already moved on.

I was hoping Nokta would make a multi-purpose PI more so than they've done to capture more markets, The Algo has done that to a degree and their firmware updates since release have even more so improved its general-purpose ability over being a Gold only machine. PI's are incredible technology and largely untapped by many detector users as they've never been made to suit their needs. I'm ony recently seeing how good a PI can be for coin hunting, incredible Target ID's and If this is the start of it, I'd love to see where they can take PI technology for general purpose detectors. If markets are slowing like Gold, having gold dedicated detectors limits buyers, and separating the Gold and Relic into two detectors seems a bad move to me, unless it was required for some technical reason. Gold only VLF's are struggling to survive with multi purpose VLF's taking over them. I could understand separating the General-Purpose and the Beach versions due to the waterproofing requirements. Let's face it though, this is Nokta, this being their entrance into the market, there will be more models in the near future, and they are about to really shake up the PI market. They will shake up the pricing too, maybe more so than they intended now the Algo's out, there is no reason they couldn't sell their PI for the price of a Legend if they wanted to.

On the subject of gold and its value back in 2002 -- gold was anywhere from $310 to $350 an ounce that year. There were several partners that were part of the crew early in the season and left. They got their gold cut up to the time of leaving. When they were there and working it was a 4 way equal split. After they left the gold was being split up equally amongst Jacob and myself. When Conor came to the mine Jacob paid him out of his cut. Gold cuts and percentages can be a touchy thing, especially when there is gold fever in the camp. It can destroy a crew and ruin friendships. We were lucky. Jacob was not a greedy person. In fact, he was quite generous. Did we ever hit the jackpot at the end of the rainbow? Let's find out.

The weather in NZ can be very fickle with 4 seasons in one day. It kind of gets more settled down in Central Otago where you are heading. The West Coast of the south island has the wettest weather in the country. Coming in from the Tasman sea & held up by the Southern Alps. It just drowns the West Coast. D4G

The young lady below lost her favorite sterling silver ring on a sports field playing lacrosse a couple days ago. Once she demonstrated approximately where she was on the field and where/how she was throwing the ball when the ring popped off, it look less than a minute to find it. Right on the surface under the unmowed grass, and multi-repeat 42/43 on the Legend. It took longer to power on and set up the machine than it did to find the ring!

Firmware update notice from Nokta DT Facebook: Nokta Detectors Dear Valued Legend Users, Thank you for testing the Legend software update v.1.14 Beta 1 & 2 test versions and your valuable feedback. We have now removed the Beta versions from our website and we're ending the testing stage here. We'll work on a few more tweaks and release the final version in the upcoming weeks. Please use v.1.13 until we give you the final update of the v.1.14.

Howdy, I've been learning and panning the last year and a half. I've got sluices, wheels, and buckets of material. Now I want to get into detecting too! I'll be working in and around the CA motherlode, Nevada, northern Idaho, and hopefully making a trip up to Alaska. Thanks.

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.

Hang in there - We're almost home.

Texas vs Texas, maybe that’s the storm a comin’. I would enjoy reading future posts about an Impulse AQ and the Axiom Lite at $2,500 US. How about an upgraded ATX WP lite version with TID for coin, relic, jewelry, beach & salt water plus gold?

Steve, This is what I came up with on my air tests for the gold coins that I have in my collection. Very close to Andy's results. Again, this was an air test but still interesting.

The Find-X Is incredible value, cheaper than a Go-Find in NZ, which judging by the name they wanted to have that association. Yet it's more of an X-Terra Pro. Good on you Nokta, this is great. Nokta seem excellent at making detectors, and they're really shaking up the market but there is one area they're failing, availability. They need to step up there. We have a Nokta dealer and that's great, someone like me that wants to buy their products that knows about them knows where to get them, but their products need a broader reach. Detectors like this Find-X need to be readily available, it's an impulse buy price for a family that are out shopping and see a new toy they could enjoy together. It needs to be in a more retail environment, in big box type stores and even the sporting goods stores Minelab has been squeezing into. This I believe is the next important thing Nokta do to grow their business. Our only NZ dealer is a tad odd for their location, they're on a mountain pass road that people would only ever be on if they were transiting that pass, I doubt there would ever be people that drive to the dealer to look around without already being on that drive. Hours from any city and the nearest town only has 310 people. They're there as it's a great location for them to live, but a poor location for a shop 🙂 Mitchel will drive past them tomorrow as he takes on the mountain pass, I bet he doesn't even notice the shop, I've driven it a few times and never seen it and that's with me knowing its there somewhere.

It’s not that hard to find gold nuggets if all a person wants to do is be a hobbyist and find a few. It’s the making solid money detecting gold nuggets that has gotten extremely difficult. In a way it’s too little too late, but drying up does not mean dry, just getting there. Think silver coins. Not gone, but they sure are rarer finds than 40 years ago, even though machines are far better now. But on the other hand high PI prices have been a barrier to ownership for many; a good low price PI will find buyers, as Alfoforce has already proved. Also, rising gold prices is boosting interest in chasing even the crumbs that are left. Occasional large nugget finds keep the hope alive. Long story short there is still a market for a gold nugget PI, but as Minelab knows very well the heyday is long over. It’s just competition fighting over ever smaller pieces of pie 🙂 This is a real problem overall for all detector companies now. There is not one area of detecting that is not facing declining returns. People still beach hunt, still hunt for silver coins, still hunt for relics, still chase gold nuggets. Newbies are still enticed into the fold. But I doubt any of us here who have been at this long think things are as good as they used to be. In a way we are victims of our own success. Long story short Nokta has indeed missed the big bus with this detector that should have come years ago and now they will be fighting for a seat already taken by others. As a nugget hunter I know there is nothing they can do that will really matter except make a machine that clearly blows away a GPZ 7000 and I am not holding my breath for that. In the area of affordable PI AlgoForce is already taking sales from Nokta in Australia, and it’s only the delay in reaching the U.S. that’s giving Nokta any breathing room here. Yes, they are way too late compared to what they might have achieved just three years ago prior to the GPX 6000 release. What the market clearly lacks at this time, the machine that I personally would buy, is one that is a very good nugget detector but that also is a fully submersible water machine. Minelab only offers the SDC 2300 but it’s a joke for water detecting since it floats like a cork. Axiom, AlgoForce… not waterproof. Impulse AQ Gold dead before arrival. What I was hoping for from Nokta was a machine that would extend my nugget detecting by also being an excellent beach detector. I would sell all my other PI detectors to own that machine. I think others would also. If there is not a model that captures that desire, then not only will Nokta be late to the party, but they will have lost my interest in this detector. It’s the one thing really left to do, make a good alternative to the 7 lb Garrett ATX. Not a very high bar, but are they even going to try? The initial ad blurb is not promising. I need something better than this…..

Anyone in the USA selling a used X-Coil? I'm looking for a 17" or larger CC Concentric coil.

September 22 2002 Part Three We finished up our day without any problems or interruptions with 100 yards of washed gravel. We will do the cleanup in the morning. Guard duty will be shared in shifts tonight starting at dusk. I am ready to get the season finished up and head for home. I have not talked with Jacob or Conor about their plan to stay the Winter out here but I think it is a bad idea. TO BE CONTINUED .............

I think they'll quickly have a bigger piece of the pie than the one missing from the gold pie. Still can't see how the piece was taken from the pie with the crust left behind...

Nokta Gold Pie Generated with AI ∙ April 23, 2024 Nokta Relic Pie Generated with AI ∙ April 23, 2024

Today I got the RCDIGS V1 mount. I'm glad I did because I'm going to be giving it intermittent heavy use all this week. I'm headed to a beach campground. It's a pretty popular place but I've found the D2 can hit a lot of stuff others miss, however I'm going to have to dig for it. Just about every dig is 5 scoops or more down. 😵 I'm hoping that going a week later than last year will mean more warm days and fresh finds. My wife wants a diamond this year. 😬 This is the difference - V0 was solid, V1 is not. V0 had no way to use wired headphones, V1 has ample space to plug them in. You could probably even plug a transceiver in there. Next is the angle, I hope you can see it in the photo: It's much more comfortable to push the buttons. Could even be leaned back more. 🤔 Here is the new angle: And this is the old one. It's much easier to hold the button down for ground balancing. My hands are large but not huge. Below I have my 65mm (32.5 radius) circle of vinyl covering the WS6. You'll have to make your own. There are pilot holes for the screws, I recommend stainless. I'll be updating this thread more in the next few days from the beach, may just do a separate post. Ryan of RCDIGS.com has a real winner here! 👍

Said every hoarder, ever 😉 Saying that, if I could afford 10 detectors, I'd have em too...

September 22 2002 Part Two Conor and I were working gravels through the tom when I got a call on my walkie talkie. It was Jacob and he wanted me to come up to the dig site. He said he had something to show me. When I got up there he had shut down the excavator and was standing near the edge of the giant hole he had been expanding. He pointed to the west side of the pit and said he had struck a solid wall of sloping bedrock. He had found the lateral boundaries of the rich material. Then he told me that the bedrock continued to drop in that area with no sign of a bottom. He showed me a test pan from and there was still plenty of coarse gold there. The area of the second stage drop zone was about 20 feet by 20 feet. He figured the best gold was still to be found wherever the bottom of that drop contacted bedrock. There was no way to tell how deep he would need to dig. He had a nice platform sitting on the first area of bedrock to start the next section. He would be able to go down about 20 to 25 feet from there without expanding his footprint. If the bedrock was still deeper than that he would need to back out and come back in from the south side by digging what would amount to a massive trench that would slope downward deep into the channel. If that was needed it might require timbering the sides for safety or digging a very wide cut. In other words, a big project. All we could do was hope he struck bedrock from where he was presently stationed. TO BE CONTINUED ..............

Well, it's interesting "happenings" between Nokta and Minelab 🙂 Minelab has the 800. Nokta tops it with the Legend. Minelab has the Vanquish. Nokta tops it with the Double Score. Minelab has the X-Terra Pro. Nokta tops it with the FindX Pro. Minelab has the Voyager. Nokta tops it with the FindX. Then there is the upcoming Nokta relic and gold PI detectors. I think it's safe to say that Nokta has become the proverbial "thorn in the side" for Minelab. Now, I guess it's about due time that Nokta puts out the successor to the Legend.

You may have missed this Mitchel, "The volcano's last outburst occurred around 250CE and was one of the largest recorded explosions in history, and the largest in the last 5,000 years." The most recent eruption in Taupo’s explosive history, around 1800 years ago, unleashed a pyroclastic flow of ash and lava that swept through 20,000 sq km of land around Taupo at speeds of 600–900 km/h. It also blocked the outlet of the lake, causing its level to rise by some 35 m so that when the natural dam finally broke, the Waikato River flowed at 200 times its current rate, carving a new course for itself across the North Island and discharging into the Tasman rather than the Pacific. Taupō is a global star – the world’s most active supervolcano. It’s studied by scientists everywhere.

We are spending our first night at a hotel in Wellington. The satellite says no signal. It could be the sun that is causing the problem.

Looking at social media a lot of people are getting very annoyed at Garrett and their marketing method for the Storm, people really don't appreciate these hype up marketing then nothing type releases. It's turning people against them, people are choosing to buy competitors machines as they've waited and waited and it hasn't arrived, a lot of expectations were around the Anniversary celebrations for the release, that never happened so now expectations are it's a long way off or they would have done it then. What we do likely know though, is its name is the storm, with a nice little coil for the O in the name. The hats are a bit of a giveaway. I don't think the detector is going to be bumble bee yellow and black, it's blue for sure. I think the long lead up to releases is very damaging for a company to do, they may see it as it stops loyal customers buying another brand in the meantime knowing the Garrett is coming while they get the detector ready for release, but it looks to me like the opposite is happening as very few like the marketing method, and it's pushing them into buying other brands and some other brands are taking advantage of that sentiment with very good price reductions going on now. It went from initial excitement to annoyance about waiting.....

That was a 'minor' eruption but you made me look up when did the lake form and this is what I found: Lake Taupō is in a caldera created mainly by a supervolcanic eruption which occurred approximately 25,600 years ago. Lake Taupo is 234 square miles vs Lake Tahoe with 193 square miles.

6 tone Tone break 1 is 1 to 25, volume is 5(,if you want to hear rejected tones) and frequency is 1 Tone break 2 is 26-28, volume is 10, frequency is 20 Tone break 3 is 29-31, volume is 5, frequency is 1 Tone break 4 is 32-34 (this will catch beaver tails) volume is 10 frequency is 20 Tone break 5 is 35-49( or whatever high vdi you want to start on, can change 49), volume is 5, frequency 1 Tone break 6 is 50-60, volume 10, frequency is 25 or 30 depending how high you want them to ring And I wish there was a seventh tone because I'd eliminate 60 as well 60 is usually a false, but we will have to include it, I guess you could notch it, but I don't like notching stuff And this is my pulltabs and high tones program, I wrote it to do the pull tab challenge where you dig 50 pulltab signals and see if you get anything neat, and I included high tones because I just couldn't skip them, but it got me a lot of bottle caps too

Hi Mitchel. Were you aware that Lake Taupo fills the caldera of of the Taupo volcano. That being a volcano that has collapsed into itself, often filling with water to form a lake. As in this case. Believed to have erupted 2000 odd years ago. A super volcano. Now that you have been there & seen the size of the lake, you can but imagine how that eruption must have been. I hope the weather is clear for you as you travel on from Taupo heading south up on the volcanic plateau & along the desert road past the three volcanoes. Mt Ruapehu, Mt Tongariro & Mt Ngauruhoe. Still classified as active. Don't forget to stay on the right side of the road. In our case that is on the left. 😉 D4G

Today I was at Agrodome and we have showed up at Lake Taupo. I stop late in the day after travelling and not any real time to do anything about uploading a picture. During the day we have been to a McDonald's for some free WiFi but this is the first time I've been at a Holiday Park with enough time to read my email and no time to look and add pictures. After I'm back I'll use this for a guide and add pictures and a bit more info.

Hoping you have a great time. Gold will be an amazing bonus.

Said like a true detector addict in denial, Simon. And being one myself, I don’t believe a word of it.

The translator sometimes plays tricks on me 😂

and the one made of relics sounds like a load of old junk.. 😁

This has gone past a storm. It’s going to be a category 5 Hurricane before it’s over. Chuck

Knowing how Minelab will typically react, I say we call it...wait for it... THE NOKTA LITIGATOR No other detector can do it justice!

Progress, but lets not get too optimistic on the timeline. The last time we went through a Nokta naming contest, the Legend showed up 3 years later. Contest started September 2018 Name picked September 2020 Detector Announced Summer 2021 Detector Released December 2021 Perhaps they learned not to draw this out as much this time....

I’m using the ws6 master on my Steve’s detector shaft. It is a super light combination.

March 26, 2024 view to the south; unless the month of March rolls out with a roar it looks to be a normal run off season. On the 20th of May, 1827 Jedediah Smith with two members of his party, six horses and two mules departed from a confluence on the San Joaquin River returning east to the Rendezvous over Mt. St. Joseph (Sierra Nevada). A quote from his journal "May 26th The storm still continues with unabated violence...The wind was continually changing and the snow drifting and flying in every direction...Our poor animals felt a full share of the vengeanc of the storm and two horses and one mule froze to death before our eyes... the sun of another day might never rise to us." From his journal that crossing may of occurred along a divide near the point of this photograph.

Nice work cool history there strick