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Just a reminder to you nugget hunters dont throw your hot rock's away, these pesky red rocks were showing up where i was working in pocket veins. I was using a GB2. There were red, grey,black, rocks all in this same area,all had gold in them. Being new to this i almost pitched these rocks but then decided i would take them home and look later,glad i did I soaked them in acid and they all had gold. I had been finding good visible gold here and it never looked like these oddball rocks that kept getting in the way of my new find. I know someone (i wont mention names) that had found these pesky hot rocks also around a deep deep mineshaft and he was working around and finding visible gold and kept pitching the red ones down the shaft out of the way. After i showed him my red rocks cleaned of minerals he was very disappointed that he had been throwing all his gold away. I keep everything that im not sure of now,hope this keeps a little more gold in your pocket. RICK.

Hi Fred, I agree and etrex is all you need, they are very good units. I am pushing 'way past the ages mentioned here. I don't think anyone should let their age stop them from learning and using a gps. It will certainly make their detecting experience easier and it's not hard to learn. I agree with those who say it is important to mark your vehicle if you are in a new area. People who don't do that many times wind up doing a ton of unnecessary hiking. Again, this is a simple thing to do with a gps and once you do it you will see what a luxury it is not to have to worry about how to get back to base. fwiw

Concealed carry/tactical shirts are great in tandem with a cellphone or GPS. They have quick access velcro or plastic zippered breast pockets that keep the device from falling in the water or into your diggings and its real easy to pull them out and look at them without interfering with the harness or a hydration pack since the pockets face inwards and not upwards. I haven't noticed cell interference, but the Z will start talking on channel 20 or 22 (forgot which one) on a radio if you get radio within a few inches of the Z control box so talking on that channel might also interfere with the Z. It also interferes with my pinpointer (or vice versa) unless they are about 4-5 feet apart. BCN is awesome, I just record every excursion I take and export to KMZ and look at all my tracks on Google Earth, annotate them, and find those little hidden washes I always missed somehow or avoid backtracking over past unproductive sites. It's not accurate enough for final gridding but it is accurate enough to find little 10'x10' islands of missed land within large patches and humans being humans we all tend to walk similar paths and miss those exact same little patches and they can hide some nice stuff in plain view of real hammered places occasionally.

Buy a used smartphone and load Back Country Navigator via wifi. you can save topo maps that work offline, claim boundries and tracks to the claim - for a lot less than buying a gps. Also you can load a find-my-car app too.

Yes my friends the 2 legged animals are much more dangerous than the 4 legged kind - And the war on drugs has cost more time, lives and money than any other "social program". Prohibition showed that people always find a way to get their vise. Outlawing it only makes the enforcers and the black marketers more dangerous. Then in we come wandering through the war zone with our headphones on and eyes to the ground waving our mine detectors. Lol Thanks for all the comments and be safe out there - I feel ya Ray AjR

I got my hands on a prototype of the new Fisher F75 and was very impressed with the improved EMI (ElectroMagnetic Interference) resistance more than anything. I also liked the new ferrous tones option that allows the operator to set the volume of the ferrous tone lower than the tone from non-ferrous targets. This makes the non-ferrous targets stand out better and is less fatiguing to listen to. The new FA fast mode is something I do not need as much as some people. It is intended to improve separation of adjacent items while detecting. For me I had sold my previous F75 for no other reason than EMI issues and let it go in favor of my Gold Bug Pro, which is exactly the opposite when it comes to EMI. The big attraction for me in the new F75 is the EMI resistance. I had to send the prototype back but was told I would see a production unit eventually. I must have been last on the list because it kept not showing up. Questions raised in the meantime really got me to wondering about things, so while I was waiting I found a deal on a never used 2013 F75Ltd version 7.0A. I figured it would give me a baseline for comparisons to the new unit when and if it ever arrived. Recent posts also got me wondering about the new Fisher F19, and on an impulse I picked up one of those also in like new condition. So I am sitting around playing with these two detectors when my new 2015 F75Ltd2 shows up a few days ago. Only one problem. The ground is frozen here. Now, I would love to say I went out and tested the heck out of these three detectors, head to head, under stringent test conditions, witnessed, verified, and on video. Given the circumstances it seems almost criminal not to. The reality is however that I am about burned out on the whole Fisher upgrade saga and just wanted to make a personal decision and move on. I do not feel like waiting around for the ground to thaw. The F19 is a sweet little detector and does hit tiny low conductors better than the F75. The new F75 seems just marginally better than the 2013 F75 in that regard but still not as good as the F19. Since I have other machines that trump them all for small gold I decided what really mattered to me was larger item performance and overall features so the F19 got kicked to the curb. My only real issue at that point was trying to determine if there was anything about the old F75 versus new F75 that would make me hesitant to upgrade. Again, I wish I could give you some kind of in depth report but I think I have learned my lesson reporting on machines where I have got one for free (sort of). The extra effort is kind of wasted so all that really matters is satisfying myself. I bench tested as best I could and the simple take away for me once again is the new F75 is remarkably more stable and interference free at higher gain levels than the old F75. I noted no significant loss of depth in all metal mode or anything else to cause me concern. I may very well have missed something, not saying I did not but it does look like I got a properly functioning F75Ltd2. I have decided I am happy with the new detector and that it is time to move on. I am getting pretty busy with getting ready for the prospecting season and in fact am headed to BLM right now to spend the day on claims research. So for what it is worth it is new F75Ltd2 for me. If anyone is interested in like a like new F19 or F75Ltd they are both for sale at http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/classifieds/ The F19 I am including my 5" and 11" DD coils from my Gold Bug Pro that I held onto just in case the F19 ended up being the keeper. They can go now also. It really for anyone interested comes down to Fisher F19 vs Fisher F75Ltd2. From a prospecting perspective it is a no-brainer. The F19 is everything a Fisher Gold Bug Pro is along with some extra features like a backlight some people may like. It would be a bit better than a Gold Bug Pro at getting nuggets out of a pile of nails. The key issue is the F19 comes with the coil the Gold Bug Pro should come with but does not - the 5" x 10" DD coil. To get a Gold Bug Pro with that coil will cost you almost as much as just getting the F19 anyway, so I would tend to push people towards the F19 over the Gold Bug Pro for that very reason alone. I also for gold prospecting would recommend the Gold Bug Pro or F19 over the F75. These two models are slightly hotter on little gold nuggets than the F75 and for quite a bit less money do everything a gold prospector might want. So why am I going with the F75 myself? The reality for me is I have other detectors I will use if I am chasing small gold nuggets. They would be the Fisher Gold Bug 2 for low mineral ground and Minelab SDC 2300 for high mineral ground. Having these two detectors makes my having the F19 or Gold Bug Pro overly redundant. What I am more interested in is a good VLF for looking for larger gold nuggets in trashy tailings and cobble piles using a larger coil. The F75 is slightly better suited for this task than the F19 or Gold Bug Pro but more importantly for me it is also a good urban coin and jewelry detector, especially with the new resistance to electrical interference. It used to be the big weakness in the F75 was urban use, and all of the sudden that is now a strong point for the machine. I am glad to have put that all aside as the whole F75 thing has been dragging on for far longer than it should have. As seems to be usual for Fisher these days they need a bit of time to sort things out when they release a new model or even an upgrade to an old model. At this point it is probably safe for anyone wanting a new F75Ltd2 to get one or if they have an older model and want to have it upgraded I also think things seem to be sorted out on that end also. Those who are interested in upgrades can get details at http://www.fisherlab.com/hobby/upgrade.htm

This coil is identical to that on the Fisher Gold Bug 2 but a little heavier since it is a DD coil. It was introduced last year with very little fanfare and most dealers do not even seem to know it exists. Yet it would be a great nugget hunting coil for these detectors, less prone to hanging up on sticks and a bit narrower profile. I have a shiny new one sitting in front of me to try on my F75 up against the F19, which has the same coil stock. This one feels heavier though - epoxy filled? I will weigh them both when my F19 shows up.