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My Noka FORS CoRe showed up this morning 2 days after I placed my order with Chris at AOBP, I have basically a big goose egg of experience at running a detector but have been crash reading everything I can find about these machines since reading Mr Mills Detecting for gold book. I took the machine to a town park and it seemed to be giving me constant signal's with every swing of the coil but one sounded a little zipper than the other grunts and I dug this ring literally 10 minutes into the park and my first dig. I had the sensitivity at 80 in D3 and cant remember what it came up on the target id as. I have so much to learn, I am a bit overwhelmed. But I was pretty happy to find the 10k gold ring no matter the half doz pull tabs I dug afterwards. Maybe in a year or two I will figure out what they sound like LOL. Now to find me a little nugget

Arrived home after a quick trip north of Perth, just seven days and three of those taken up with driving there and back. Set up camp on some likely looking ground and keen to try out my discounted GPX4500 with the Coiltek Elite 14 inch coil I managed to get in two hours before dark on the second day for nil return. I have a Zed but my reason for buying the 4500 was for patch hunting, sweep speed being the determining factor. The GPZ 7000 is unbeatable in the sensitivity stakes but she likes a slow swing so I figured, find the first one with the 4500 and then put the Zed into action. Next morning I'm off on a four kilometer loop from camp and bugger me my first find is just 100 metres from camp on my return! A nice little .8 gram piece six inches down, the 4500/Elite combination gave a very definite dig me signal, very happy with that setup. Had a late lunch and then put the Zed into action, several more small nuggets and a nice nine gram piece before the heat got the better of me. I just kicked back and relaxed for a couple of hours before getting back into it, another couple of little ones for a total of 14 grams for the day. Just before knockoff I had what I thought was an iffy signal with the Zed, six inches down still iffy, eight inches and the signal was better but it had been a long day so I knocked off, time for a cold beer, left the hole open to check with the 4500 the next day. I also left another very faint Zed signal undug to compare the 4500/Elite combo on tiny gold. Here's a pic of my smalls for the trip

He was referring to the type face(font) in the original post, which was very hard to read. I have converted it to standard. I hate to dash dreams but I have done it a lot over the years. If you are looking to make some money, this is not the way to do it. At best, you are going to spend a lot of money getting an education. I can give you the same education for free. This is not something that thousands of people have not already tried. If dragging big coils around found gold veins than big mining companies would have crews out doing just that. Without getting into details the issue is simple. Detectors see the number of square inches or square feet of target as seen looking straight down. Here are the depths attainable with metal detectors on large items, whether a PI or specialized VLF. These are depths under perfect conditions in non-mineralized ground. Your problem is not the equipment, it is the nature and reality of how gold occurs in gold veins. It is normally near invisible to the naked eye. You would need masses of gold as large as the items in the chart to get similar depths. The sad reality is you are not going to be finding gold as large as one gallon cans and larger. Therefore, the depths that can be obtained on these large objects will not be attainable while looking for naturally occurring gold. Large drag coils are employed to look for single large gold nuggets and meteorites and could be employed in very specific area to possibly look for extremely rich gold veins at shallow depths. But it would have to be in the middle of world class gold country, like Australia or now Africa. And even then the odds of success are very slim. The TM 808 above is a VLF and as such cannot deal with high mineralization. The depths are likely to be half or less of those published in bad ground. Similar results can be had with a Minelab or other PI and very large coils in more mineralized ground. But the target size rule remains. Beware, you will find people willing to tell you otherwise if it involves parting you from your hard earned cash.

Great advise! Thanks!!

This Guy must be one of the most successful prospectors In OZ , check out the Video and see the rocks and watch it til the End,,, Enjoy john https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOB-7j8JQa4

John, great video, thank you!

Hi Steve, Good explanation of a difficult topic. It is difficult to guess just how hard finding gold can be without first-hand experience. It is also hard to realize just how much ingenuity and money has been spent trying to come up with ways to make it easier. The age-old solutions seem to be research, hard work and direct experience. It is also many times misleading on these forums when highly experienced detectorists write with unusual modesty about what they find. They can make it look pretty easy. It's not.

Both are excellent choices for the Anchorage area. The Gold Bug 2 has a minuscule edge on the tiny gold but the GMT punches deeper on big stuff so a bit of a trade there. If you are staying close to Anchorage I might lean Gold Bug 2 but for nugget detecton all over Alaska I think the GMT is the better choice. Can't really go wrong with either. Unfortunately no training I am aware of in Alaska but good news is none really needed. Just get out and dig everything that beeps.good luck!

I found a "Reg modded" TDI for under $1000. The threshold is lovely now.

It's Only about $1800 US which is way cheaper than the 4500 which is about $3847.50 US,, but it has no way to disc out junk which is a shame coz I really wanted to buy it but my 3500 Tortured me over here in the UK. john

Hello After a couple months of too much going on and too much forest fire smoke to even see, finally got back out detecting with fors gold. We hit an old hydro mine that we only detected a small part of last year. The place has alot of iron junk but was able to pull gold and a bunch of lead out regardless. Detected for a couple hours for a 5.4 dwt day. It was a nice day, the skies are finally clear of all the smoke, and it was so good to see the ski blue again. Thanks to all the firefighters for doing a good job on the worst fires in 50 years. Amid the drought conditions on top of all that. I think fors gold was happy to get out aswell. Good luck

Time and motion. Mountian get worn down to hills, hills rise to become ranges, valleys fill then rivers scour them to bedrock. Gold not only concentrate in drainages, but scatters on alluvial fans, re concentrates and scatters again. This process is never ending.

An interesting thread on an OZ forum on interchanging coils. Lots of back and forth, some misinformation - the Ismael - a long tome modifier of ML PI machines, chimes in and says - "no problem"! http://golddetecting.4umer.net/t22372-coil-question-for-the-sdc-2300#216436

Ha, I kind of have a different thought on coil changing. Lets say one goes and buys a new detector, first day out finds gold second time out finds gold (boy are we dreaming) ect. ect. Now why would ya even think about buying a new coil? Which leads me to think, when you see a detector for sale with a half dozen coils with it, they never found gold in the first place. PS: Am I right or am I wrong? Ivan

Nice man! Thats my favorite stuff. Do you have Max Belles book? If not, I will shoot that pic to a buddy, and try and get the info for ya. Heres some of the relics Ive found lately.