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Showing content with the highest reputation on 04/24/2020 in all areas
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Spent another day out in isolation in Gold Basin, it was warm at sunup but thankfully never got unbearably hot. I picked up a few more meteorites including one so tiny I didn’t realize what it was until getting home and seeing it under high magnification there I could see a tiny and tinier nickel sphere fused together with a small bit of the brown matrix circling the seam where they joined. At the end of the day frustrated with no gold to show I went exploring for someplace new to hunt and just a few minutes before sunset hit a nice signal in a wash under the edge of a small bush and roughly 12” down out popped a bright yellow chunk weighing 2.7 grams to chase the skunk away.
14 points -
Hello Everyone, Hope everyone's Health is well with this virus still holding on out there. A friend and I have been doing a little bit of placering in a wash bottom for gold nuggets. We happen to hit a crack that had like 4 gold nuggets, biggest one was 6.0 Dwt's, just over 1/4 ounce. The other nuggets were about 1/2 to 1 Dwt each. We were using the Minelab GPZ 7000 and GPX 5000. The GPX 5000 is shown in the video with the Nugget Finder 14x9 EVO Elliptical Searchcoil. I shot a short video of us recovering the larger piece of gold. Video below -11 points
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Well, perseverance, study, asking questions, and dogged desire, are slowly paying off! I was going to go to an old park this morning, but the weather was crap, so I didn’t make it. Things settled down in the early afternoon, so I went and hit the parking strip here and the next door neighbor’s house. I wanted to apply some of the things I’ve learned from some questions I asked here on the forums, and from reading Andy and Clive’s books. It was a good afternoon! I found my second Merc - a 1943D, my first nickel - a 1963 Jefferson, AND my first Buffalo nickel - 1928. I’m feeling much more confident, and starting to correlate what I’m seeing and hearing from the Equinox to what’s coming out of the ground. Looking forward to getting out to that park!
7 points -
Patience in life is a virtue! But, even I was running low. Nice Spring days run into hot Summer day’s fast to be sitting around tinkering. Truck was all maintenance up before the lock down, RZR with new oil and filters, it was eager to roll. My detectors had a little dust on them, but batteries charged. I touched base with the Crew and 6 of us loaded up and stormed the desert of Northern Nevada. Heading to our camp spot, I noticed the desert was full of other Freedom Seekers mending their Soul for the need of the outdoors, a normal calling shared by all on this Forum. We set up camp and hit the nearest patch to Camp, with the skunk off our backs and with the setting Sun and cold breeze we headed back for some conversation, food and libations! 🥃. We strategized the following morning Gold Mission over the flickering flames 🔥 of our campfire. We decided to leave Gold to find more gold, not always the smartest move but, it was the first full day of the hunt. We hit the dirt roads to a spot I had in mind, leaving a dust trail seen for miles. Even the Antelope and Wild Horses wondered what the rush was about in the mornings cold temperatures. We finally arrived to a spot, I eyeballed years ago. We geared up and spread out amongst the hip high sage brush. 15 minutes or so, someone breaks on our Walkie Talkies, I got one as I seen a waving coil in the distance! The hunt was on, as our seasoned crew swung our coils to the first location of color. Another, call on the radio was from someone behind me and below in the dry wash scored a nugget! Well long story short, we all had a great time and I found the perfect rock to name the new patch “The X Patch”. The Crew slowly departed back to their Critical Jobs and the Weather changed on me, rain and wind I tossed the towel in. I did manage to flatten the curve of the lock down with 5 pounds lighter on the scale. Always, good to be back home, yet can’t wait to get out for the next hunt! LuckyLundy
6 points -
A rare bird so far. Here is my 24K with the second hand 4" x 6" DD coil from a GMX. Presumably White's will make these with 24K style decals at some point instead of GMX decals. I'm half tempted to peel the decal off but my better sense tells me I may sell it someday and then I'll wish the decal was still on it. We'll see. But the good news for me is I now officially have all four coils for the 24K. I have asked forum member Jim McCullough to let us know when he gets these coils in stock. White's Goldmaster 24K with 4" x 6" DD search coil 8" x 14" DD, 6" x 10" DD, 6.5" round concentric, and 4" x 6" DD search coils for 24K and GMX
4 points -
Had an unusual, and great day. First thing that happened was I found a silver ring...my first! 30 minutes later Dave dug his first Barber dime, an 1893 S in great condition. 30 minutes later I got a nice, clean signal, and was amazed to unearth a 14k gold ring! How weird is that on that old trail. And the stretch we were working has almost no traffic now, other than the occasional hunter. So hunting along about 15 minutes later, and the DFX gives a solid nickel reading, and out pops the 1903 V nickel. All of this in about 250 yards of road, of the .77 miles we covered today. My best day, EVER! Jim
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Hi everyone, Been real busy lately, but put together a video from last weekend coin, and relic hunting... let me know what you guys think?? Thank you... Dave4 points
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The battery is easy to replace. Just four Torx screws to open the case. No soldering required. Several batteries are available on eBay. Have a good day, Chet https://www.ebay.com/itm/0303-0036-New-Battery-for-Minelab-CTX-3030-WM-10-1100mAh-Equipment-Survey/133298441706?hash=item1f0934cdea:g:k78AAOSwtgNeFn6v
3 points -
I have quite a few detector things on my to do list right now, but have my last couple weeks of online college classes (poor substitute for the real thing I signed up for), assignments, and finals plus some other stuff all piled up. So I will get too it but might be a week before I get around to it.3 points
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As soon as the factory reopens and production resumes I will have them in stock. When that occurs "Spud Digger" Johnson will post a video that we (Rob, Craig, and myself) made comparing all four coils on various size nuggets in-ground at Dale. Wait until you see the performance of the 8x14 on sub-grainers.3 points
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I’ve talked a lot about the differences between High Yield Difficult and General Difficult in the past but still find people tend to stick to High Yield because it offers more regular gold finds. If I‘m using the GPZ19 coil I am almost always in General because to justify swinging such a large coil I‘m solely chasing a decent sized chunk at depth in deep worked ground. The target signal differences are quite astounding especially when the size of the target increases. The following is some audio I captured on my hunt yesterday where I targeted a well worked gully that has produced a lot of gold (the area was too tight for the GPZ19 so was using the smaller coil). The aim was to single out in General Difficult at least one deep target that had been missed, I was quite prepared to go without and go home gold-less, such is the nature of this style of detecting but the rewards are right up there for satisfaction when everything comes together. I didn’t win on this one but that type of disappointment goes with the territory. 🥴 If you look to the right of the picture there are a lot of rocks thrown out on the bank near the tree, they came out of the hole while I was digging, that should give you an idea of the depth. Audio was captured after the loose surface material was removed and the target signal developed.
3 points -
These newest two updates add a lot to the Simplex's already great performance. The new Park 1 one mode was awesome--very clean audio that gave a nice centered high tone on coins. Kind of reminded me of the Anfibio in how it brought up the round, solid objects really well. Actually had to turn down the Gain but the machine was still getting nice depth. I was working with a pinpointer and used the Mute feature several times to prevent any sounding off. My favorite set of phones were actually too loud on the higher Volume settings settled on "H2". By checking my targets on the cross sweep and in pinpoint for size I was able to dig mostly coins including this '35 King George the 5th cent. This is an amazing detector--and not just "for the price." It has a lot of punch, great audio and the features to make for pro-level versatility. Can't wait to see how this machine does in the salt water. Great job, Notka Makro!
2 points -
We're done with that portion, but there's about 60 miles left to do in our local area, and if we want to travel a bit, the cutoff goes all the way to Boise, though some of it is covered by existing hiways. There's enough Oregon Trail, and stagecoach routes to keep me busy the rest of my life...LOL Jim2 points
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Quite a day! Hope you have more time there -- garden spots like that don't come up often.2 points
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The charge socket for the WM12 is a Universal Serial Bus (USB). The international specification for USB version 3.0 limits the charging current to less than 1.5 amps per socket. So the WM12 and USB charging cable is designed to comply with this standard. The battery charger circuit is designed by Minelab to safely charge the battery at a higher limited ampere rate that will not overheat or damage the battery. Have a good day, Chet2 points
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Nice finds! I remember my first Reale dug up on the old Los Angeles/Stockton Spanish trail.2 points
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I have the 4x6 also and its a hot little coil I like it better than the 6 inch concentric Mike C...2 points
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Hi kac, I don't have an opinion on the Tejon. My Lobo Super Traq handled mineralization very well with its preset ground balance. I had lots of trouble manually ground balancing my former Vaquero so.......... Personally, I have moved on from the older designed single frequency VLF detectors for my area. I have the XP ORX which has two of the best all metal modes available and I can run it in 35 different frequencies. I also still have a G2+/F19 which has a fantastic threshold based all metal mode. Between those two and the multi frequency Equinox and Vanquish, I think I have enough detectors after I say goodby to these NokMak detectors. Jeff2 points
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I took the15" coil off the Equinox today to try some relic hunting in a very trashy area. The 11" seems so small! I found this along an old railroad located in a city environment now. In front of the red coloring is glass. My thought is off the center of a wheel. Any ideas?
1 point -
The Garrett Ace Apex is a new multifrequency metal detector released in September 2020. It redefines the number of features available in a metal detector for under $500. The Ace Apex is very light weight at 2.5 lbs and has built-in rechargeable batteries plus proprietary wireless headphone capability. There are two multifrequency options and four single frequency options to choose from. The price without headphones is $424.96 and with wireless headphones $492.96. The built in wireless is Garrett’s proprietary Z-Lynk system, which is faster than low latency Bluetooth. The Apex features a new coil designed specifically for it - the 6" x 11" DD Viper™ coil. The new Ace Apex is currently shipping to dealers and customers worldwide. Garrett Ace Apex metal detector - new for 2020 Garrett Apex Full Color Brochure Garrett Apex User Manual Garrett Metal Detector Forum SPECIFICATIONS Multi-Flex™ Technology Single Frequency Options - 5, 10, 15 and 20 kHz Multi-Frequency Options - Simultaneous MultiFrequency and Multi-Salt Integrated Z-Lynk™ Wireless Headphone Technology Fast Target Separation/Recovery 1/8" Headphone jack Backlight Ground Balance, Auto High Resolution, 175 points Iron Audio™ Iron Volume Control Notch Discrimination, 20 selectable segments Eight Iron Discrimination Segments Volume Control Pinpointing Water/Weather Resistance - Waterproof coil/stem and Rainproof control box Six Search Modes, with International and US Coins modes Large Digital Target ID, 0 to 99 scale Five Audio ID Tones included with hybrid binary and proportional audio system Eight Sensitivity / Depth Adjustments Target Depth Indicator 2" / 5cm segments Standard Searchcoil 6" x 11" DD Viper™ Length (Adjustable) 43" to 56" (1.09m - 1.4m) Total Weight 2.5 lbs (1.13 kgs) Battery Source - Rechargeable Lithium Ion, built-in Battery Condition Indicator Warranty 2 Years, Limited Parts/Labor Garrett Ace Apex multifrequency and selectable single frequency metal detector Garrett Ace Apex metal detector with backlight, rechargeable battery, and wireless headphones1 point
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Well, I have about fifteen hours in with the Equinox 800. This is the entirety of my metal detecting experience. All my detecting so far has been in the yard, alley, and parking strip of an 1890 Queen Anne style house in an older neighborhood near the downtown core of Helena, MT. I’m having a blast learning to detect, while trying to unravel the idiosyncrasies of the Nox. I’ve found some cool stuff, the pinnacle of which, so far, is a 1917 D Merc dime, in reasonable condition. (Pics are included) Needless to say I am hopelessly hooked. But… I have questions. Lord do I have questions. 🤣 So I’ve been perusing the forums to try to learn as much as I can from previous questions here, and I also picked up Andy Sabisch’s book, which has helped clarify several points. Following much of the advice given here and elsewhere, I’ve been sticking to the stock settings in PARK 1, and FIELD 1, though I have also played with one of the programs for coin shooting in Andy’s book. (That’s the settings I found the Merc with) So my first two questions: 1. What is the detector telling me when the target signal is erratic? ie. The signal bounces from 21 to 29 to 18 to 39 etc. with the depth indicator also jumping. So far when I’ve dug targets exhibiting this behavior, they’ve usually turned out to be some heavily rusted piece of metal - nail, chunk of iron, etc. What am I missing? 2. What is the detector telling me when I get a strong, high VDI number when swinging one direction, but nothing coming back the other direction, or when swinging 90 degrees to the original swing, the target disappears, but reappears when swinging the original direction. Thanks for any insight you can provide. I know the Nox is pretty sophisticated, and I am inexperienced. I understand I need way more time on it to begin to not only figure out the machine, but also the mechanics of detecting in general! Here’s some of the stuff I’ve found so far:
1 point -
from Whites Electronics.........enjoy, Jeff1 point
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Now that I’ve had one in my hand it’s a lot easier to spot them, before everything was a meteorite now just half of everything looks like one, the golds a lot tougher but can’t help but love to see even the tiniest flash of shiny yellow after a long day of hot rocks, lead and bits of iron rust.1 point
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Now thats a great day 1515Art... congrats... That last pic with a little piece thats shiny, what is that, meteorite ?? , hard to tell from pic. Did it respond to detector and magnet different that the other meteorites??? Thanks, Dave1 point
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Actually I didn't. I bought it that way from the miner who did the roasting. Someone here may be able to say how it's done, though.1 point
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Your lucky my wife keeps everything she finds in my pockets.1 point
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Hunted Paul’s neck of the woods for 5 hours in search of that gold or bust coin. No luck only dug up the usual targets you find at old settlements.The last time I dug up old coins here was back in 2005 when I dug up a 1816 2 reale which is rare to find here in this part of California (Central Valley) and a 1850 French coin with the explorer Xs. Both coins now at the county museum with Paul’s finds. The ground here is fertilized dirt 700-800gb and the MDT handled it well. The iron isn’t as bad as the dry river dump site where I get overload message on the MDT over large iron. It was great to get out to do some hunting, beautiful weather and weeds were not a problem. Better luck next time. Denny
1 point -
Congratz on the semi-key date barber dime. Looks like that after some spit and tin-foil, that could turn out to be worth some $$1 point
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The color is accurate, I was just going on other pictures found on google and there were pictures of silvery deposits on white matrix they called hydrothermal shock pyrite so without knowing I guessed the pyrite I Have no idea?1 point
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WTG!1 point
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One of these days I will find a really nice buffalo like that, great job and keep up the hunt!1 point
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Some very nice 1st finds,well done.1 point
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Jin You can't tell a story like that without 'evidence!' haha Mitchel1 point
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WTG! That’s one of my favor places out there! Just wish it was closer! Rick1 point
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Xtra awesome!1 point
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The decal adds a nice bit of colour.....I like it 👍1 point
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Real nice finds.1 point
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Mitch, I’m so happy, your learning what rocks are associated to a gold region! Your spot on! Brian, Always a small World to run into Folks you know out in a vast desert! There’s gold out there, just have to spend the time 👀ing and swinging! Come hunt with us next time! Rick1 point
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The land used to be owned by a Dr. that took care of Civ war soldiers. Then land was taken over by Nuns and the old camp area was used by the BoyScouts for good number of years. The camp area is still used and has a fire pit going back as long as I can remember. It is now a town forest/park. I never disc out nickels. Worst case I will trim at the foil range on the Tejon but MK and AT P I just disc the iron as it they have VDI's to junk check for the most part. I also don't notch either machine.1 point
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I'd say we can!...LOL Fortunately for me, the alkaline soil here may turn them red, but it doesn't chew them up. The first coin I ever found was an 1889 V, and I found one other just inside the CA border from Nevada. it was laying on gravel and not in contact with the soil, so is nearly perfect. It's a1900. Jim1 point
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First of all, "power" is a wrong metric for metal detectors. A single-frequency VLF with a perfect TX coil will transmit zero power since all the current gets recycled. A traditional PI has a total loss transmitter but even then "power" doesn't make much sense. For the "transmit strength," yes, it is current that matters along with the number of turns of the TX coil. We call that the "ampere-turns" (N*I) and the TX magnetic field is proportional to N*I for a given coil size. It doesn't matter what the driving voltage is except that it is part of the system design. As Pimento suggests, you can't look at the battery current and tell anything. TX pulse width and pulse frequency also combine with peak TX current to determine average battery draw. And once you know the peak current, that doesn't necessarily reflect actual performance. For small nugget detection you need to be able to sample early and the higher the peak current the harder it is to do that. Early sampling isn't important for an Atocha bar detector so you can dump 100 amps of current through the coil, but that same system might not be able to detect any nuggets smaller than, say, an ounce. At all. Finally, there are methods of energy recycling in PI detectors, although not yet prevalent in production models. Another reason why you can't look at battery consumption and determine anything.1 point
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I agree, power is just one part of the equation. Circuit design, especially a well designed noise eliminating receive circuit using the highest quality components.... there is a lot more difference between a TDI and Minelab than just battery power.1 point
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Nope...LOL I noticed it weeks ago, and almost contacted the seller to tell them, and then I decided you can't fix stupid, and let it go...LOL Jim1 point
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I agree, TDI or GPX. Skip the ATX. When the ATX came out a GPX was a LOT more expensive, but price decreases since then no longer make the ATX very attractive compared to the GPX given its various limitations. And a GPX is not any harder to learn than a TDI. You don’t use 70% of the settings, just the pre-sets with a few minor adjustmments.1 point
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So far, I like the MJ 8 x 12. I'm not having any issues with GB, either. I really like the 8 x 6 Sadie, and the 7.5 DF is pretty close to the Sadie. I see no need for a larger coil for prospecting, but am starting to like the Super Pulse 8 x 14 for coins and relics. Most of what I'm searching, the targets are pretty shallow, and it lets me cover a lot of ground. Jim1 point
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I’d like to try this coil on my TDIBH
1 point -
Looks like a Civil War era or Indian War era cartridge box plate. The cartridges used were typically paper cartridges with lead minie ball projectiles. However, US Cavalry did use a variety of carbine rifles that used large caliber metallic cartridges and carbine minie balls. They were typically .52 to .54 caliber. Look for fired or dropped large caliber minie balls in the area where you found that box plate. It looks like it was hit with a plow blade or shovel while it was in the ground.1 point
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Well things have changed since this was written because ML has come out with an update that includes two different iron bias filters - The Original called FE and a new one called F2. F2 seems to have a greater range of effect than FE so I use that as my iron bias filter instead of FE. The default setting for F2 is 6 for all modes (EQ 800) or 2 for the EQ 600. The primary purpose of the Iron Bias filter is to force probable iron to sound like iron (low tone) instead of falsing high which tends to happen with bent rusted nails and larger, flat pieces of iron. It is not 100% effective. If you push it to high levels, you are more likely to get the iron to false less, but as with any filter you may also suppress the ability of the detector to separate true non-ferrous targets from nearby ferrous junk. I think running F2 between 4 and 6 (F2 = 4 is approximately equivalent to FE=0) is a good balance between getting less iron falsing while still providing some ability to separate non-ferrous from ferrous targets. It is not an exact science and any time you use either discrimination alone or in combination with an iron bias filter you run the chance of missing a keeper. I like to run with the horseshoe button engaged to remove all discrimination even though I use F2 = 4 to 6, so that I can hear the iron tones and decide based on what I am hearing whether I want to dig the target. An F2 setting of less than 4 tends to get noisier, with F2 = 0 really not a pleasant experience in thick iron. HTH. There is more discussion of the effect of the latest Equinox update on the iron bias settings here, advice on how to adjust iron bias by trial and error here, and video showing the difference in iron bias settings FE and F2 in mineralized ground hunting relics here. Avid beach hunter discusses how iron bias affects beach hunting here and here. HTH1 point
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I’ve had good luck getting access to ranches to detect by offering to help with work around the ranch. Fixing fences, gates, and helping with other work has gotten me into some very productive areas that haven’t seen a detector. Ive found if you show your willing to take care of the land and leave not leave holes all over property owners rarely say no.1 point
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Minelab Equinox 800 and 6 inch coil. XP Orx with white high frequency 9”coil or 9X5” coil. Nokta Makro Multi Kruzer, Gold Kruzer or Anfibio Multi. Jeff1 point
