Leaderboard

I work for a resort that has 1400 acres and two youth camps. The resort was started back in 1909 so I’ve found some silver here over the past three years that I’ve been working here. However it’s been pretty slow for the past year as I’ve cleaned out most of the grassy areas with my equinox. This weekend is the first time I’ve had the D2 in the older youth camp which dates to the 1930s. Yesterday I hit two mercs, a 1920 and a 1926 just inches apart. Today I went back and got my third (and nicest) walking liberty half for the year. The areas where these coins were found had been hit with my nox multiple times. Is it the deus or did I just miss these three with the nox? I don’t know, but I’m definitely going to hit more of the non-wooded areas with the deus II. I hadn’t taken the deus to these areas before today because I had hit these areas so many times with my nox that I didn’t think I’d find much. Hmmm, I might need to re-think this. LOL!

Got some areas that I want to hit but can't really use my regular digger as the ground is really dry and want to be bit more discrete. Made a mini digger/probe using 1095 high carbon steel. Thinking I may use a lower carbon steel as this can be brittle but it is surprisingly strong and holding up well even on packed dirt. Still have to get my technique down but it does a pretty nice job.

Thanks, Jeff, and I know you are headed back to see your Mom. I hope she is doing well and that you get some time to detect while there. Regarding my experience with the Deus 2 w/9" coil (and thanks again for letting me use it for 2 hours), I really am not in position to say much in terms of my evaluation/review of it, but here are a few comments. 1) Because I was swinging the lightweight Tesoro Vaquero w/6" concentric I didn't notice a contrast with the weight. I likely would have if I had been swinging the Equinox, though. But with 9" coil I found it nicely balanced. I had no problems reading the VDIs (small format) nor did I have any trouble viewing them before they disappeared. I didn't notice EMI except when other detectors were really closeby (a few feet). 2) Jeff set everything up (General program, 5 tones, 95 gain, 2.5 reactivity) and I never touched any of the buttons other than increasing the volume of the headphones. 3) I wanted to see what the VDIs corresponded to so I dug a lot of targets when that was 60 or above. (USA 'nickel' 5 cent hits at 62.) Jeff warned me that pulltabs can be all over the place, and they were! Beavertail-only were ~60 and ring only were in the mid 70's but modern 'racetrack' seemed to be in muliple places. Ring+beaver had different VDIs depending upon how the beavertail was bent, whether or not anything was broken, etc. That is more/less typical with my other detectors. 4) The square tones were much more pleasing to my ear than the PWM tones, but I don't know which (if either) conveys more information on the target. 5) Jeff mentioned separation, which is what most interests me about this detecctor. In one case I found a copper Memorial cent (VDI = 91) and a Zinc cent (VDI = 84), each about 2" deep, separated by 4.5 inches. The distinction (both audio and VDI) was super clear regardless of what direction I swung the coils. Obviously this result means I could have distinguished them if closer but it's nice to get a real world example of separation as compared to a test setup (which has value, too). 6) The headphones were surprisingly comfortable, at least for a 2 hour hunt. 7) My main disappointment was with the signal strength/depth indicator which seemed to show everything as weak/deep (assuming I was understanding it). Jeff pointed out that the grass was kind of thick but the ML Equinox does considerably better (although it's not perfect, either) in my parks with even thicker grass. But please don't take this criticism too strongly as maybe I wasn't reading it correctly or ?? The proportional audio did better, IMO, at indicating signal strength. I only scratched the surface of what this detector is capable of. For me it's all about the separation and that will have to impress me (so far, so good 😁) in order for me to invest $1600. Thanks, again, Jeff for letting me test drive your new hot rod!

No Hey fellas, Hope everyone is getting along well and stumbling across a few happiness finds! I'm still learning the D2 every chance I get. If fulltones hit targets in the thickest co located messes equal to pitch or 2,3 tones to me it'd damn near be perfect! Still have work to do as the brain behind the unit when it comes to silencer,iffy and broken signal chasing when I know better the excitement gets the best of me! Recently I've made a handful of stops by the field of dreams with blessed every trip success and very fortunate blessing by landowners of permanent permission! Original permission died with the owner but the gentleman being downright amazing coupled the land gift with my permission to swing! I feel very lucky and grateful for this is why it must be told! I tell the lady what I find and possible value and that I will pay her for half value of things I may find that are 100% in this ground! She chuckles and says "you do all the work why would i get rewarded!? And maybe you'll be finding stuff when your old with a beard like previous owner!". So as I've said in previous post I've been stopping by this place for 4,5 years now atleast 20+ trips now and up until last august with my detecting,work buddy and long time friend which has to be up toward 300 hours at this point! 5 hour trip yesterday like all other trips pass with a blink and darkness falls on me still hustling for 1 more find! After all those trips bullets,buttons and at 1 time seemingly no more quality signals left I've come to the conclusion that was ignorance on my behalf. Lately I've found box plate,scabbard parts,buttons never before dug,bullets of varieties not seen,poker chips and other things over 100+ personal hours never seen at this site. All that said added with the fact every target is co-located with the nails scraps in these pics I have no doubt more amazing top tier finds will come up sooner or later! Some of y'all would undoubtedly call bs if you saw the small areas I stumble around for 4-8hrs at a time over and over always finding something good! Its mind blowing to me and areas I havent even swung until yesterday took a line around every quadrant and found something cw everywhr! Poker chip is awesome I love it. Tip and finial where 1ft apart cleaned up nice,officer button is awesome my first,burnside bullets are my first and first from site after so many others withing ft I've had to walk over many many times,rivets,cleaners bullets are welcome finds and add to the collection. Pin fire cartridge is cool wish it was in better shape but hey beggars can't be choosers! Like I said and I'm dead honest no good find comes with a clean hole not 1 and my pinpointer frustrates me so bad sometimes I feel they are broken because it's tough as hell when it beeps everywhere you stick it. I think the big round iron is from a cooking wood stove? Oh what say you about the tiny buckle I like it! Cute! Lol I'm certain the triangle sliver is cut one cent it is copper! So D2 has done me well on same sites I've found more in 3 months then 5 years and I've taken the nox to check virgin targets at this site. The nox as we all know a top notch unit and if I'm using fulltones mostly equal but pitch and 2,3 tone pull away from the nox both machines opened up all the way no silencer or iron bias! I was using pitch with great success for unknown reasons I've caused myself unnecessary struggle for parts of recent trips pushing buttons I should leave be but I reckon wasting prime time experimenting in the wild also gains oneself knowledge right!? Lol or looses valuable time not easy to come by one of the 2 or both are true! Have had amazing success with fast pitch filters off descrim factory reactivity 1.5-2.5,deephc descrim factory,everything factory but sensitivity up a few,audio up 1 on all programs and iron audio to 1 on all programs. I use sensitive the most I'd say and something about sensft with the tweaks stated above and silencer to 0-2 depending on my confidence levels I love the here everything of descrim -6.4 but I'm almost sure it doesn't hit in the thick stuff anything close to fast/deephc on pitch of 2 tones and if any arguement is relevant or close to true is the audio of ft and swing speed needed to hit thick iron co-located targets are widely different from pitch or 3 n under tones! That's what I think anyway and I want to use fulltones alone and it be as good it's just not in the every hole has pieces of iron situations! Having a damn good n fun year of detecting though and I hope everyone finds some happiness in swinging,family and stays strong in these strange times of America and her seemingly sabotagers! Until the next time dont let your meat loaf! Oh I'm almost 100% that is a rifle barrel ring of a Enfield of some sort but could be wrong let me know please!? Happy days,I'm buzzin oh no that's said I'm joe!

Brad, Regarding the notch function, as I stated in the OP, I never notch any range of numbers as the variation of gold metallurgical composition spans a wide range of TID numbers in the mid conductivity scale. You could easily notch out a nice gold ring when trying to eliminate some forms of junk.

I posted a few questions about the Deus 2 before I bought one. My worries and questions about comparing the Deus to the Equinox have been answered great by this forum, ( I think Chase explains thoroughly) but most of all just me using the Deus. Between reading your forum and the user manual the Dues 2 seemed complicated. It’s not a scary as I thought.

For many years, I detected our Florida beaches with various Minelab detectors set up in a custom 3 tone setting based on low, mid and high conductive targets. This combination served me very well over those years in the Minelab world so when I bought the Deus 2, I programmed Beach and Beach Sensitive the same way--3 tones. However, in my on-going effort of transitioning to the XP world, I quickly learned that the Deus 2, being the sophisticated detector it is, was apt to be more chatty on a saltwater beach if not set up properly beyond just my 3 tone solution. After experimentation with sensitivity, salt sensitivity, reactivity, silencer, bottle cap rejection and discrimination, (more options than I was used to with the Minelabs,) I was able to stabilize it to what I thought was at least a somewhat satisfactory level...again in 3 tones. But thanks to some educational exchanges, I was introduced to the Deus 2 Square Pitch option. Coupled with the right levels of discrimination and silencer settings, this set up is essentially a nuanced 2 tone program. Since I always dug both the mid and high level tones of my 3 tone set up anyway, this wasn’t all that much different in terms of dig/no dig decisions except now there was the same tone frequency for all non-ferrous targets. Although still in the early stages of learning the finer points of this Deus 2, I’m impressed with the square pitch option. These settings hit good targets hard and ID’d bottle caps and ferrous targets much better than my original 3 tone option. Additionally, it proved to be far less chatty on my Florida saltwater beaches than the 3 tone set up. Bottom Line; I’m a square pitch convert. If you’re a Deus 2 saltwater beach hunter also, I recommend you at least give this set up a try. My preferred baseline settings for saltwater beaches in Beach and Beach Sensitive are now: Discrimination 6.5 and Silencer 0 Square Pitch The remainder is a combination of situational needs determined through on-site experimentation, testing and actual use and finally, personal preference. Adjusted as conditions require: Sensitivity: 95 Salt Sensitivity: 7 Reactivity 0-1.5 Personal Preference: Notch: Off (Gold falls anywhere along the mid level spectrum so I never notch out anything.) Bottle Caps: 3 Iron Volume: 3 Audio Response: 5 or 6 Audio Out: 9 My next step is finding the best combination of settings for detecting 19th century artifacts in fresh water. I’ll start my search with square pitch in a custom Park program—but only actual use in a fresh water environment will tell the tale. Just the view from my converted beach front foxhole. Your analysis and conclusions may differ.

I was using program 2 (sensitive) when I found the walker. Three tones but second tone break set at 86 and I upped the frequency of the high tone to 881 hz. I also think I set the sensitivity to 95. Stock settings other than this. I don’t think that half was on edge although I think it was tilted slightly from horizontal. I need to pay more attention to what I dig. I see shiny in the hole and just want to get it out! Lol

I use the detecting doodads charging clip with the voltage reading. When it's 5.15 it's done.

An action adventure series based on a true gold strike. The journal is fiction. Like reading a book.

I agree pitch mode is a great beach option. I've been using square pitch in fresh water and I'm really liking it so far. Gold rings are what I'm after at the beach and their target ID's run the gamut so it doesn't bother me if the remote is submerged and I have no indication of conductivity. I dig all clean sounding targets which seem to be obvious in pitch mode. There's lots audio information there, I don't know what it all means yet. Some of my observations; Many junk targets have iron edges to them or maybe an overlaid iron tone, like our plated steel Canadian clad and bottle caps which I've been digging to see, but have now started leaving. The pitch & magnitude of the tone gives a great idea of the depth (and or size?) of target you're on. I think pitch mode combined with a higher audio response does a great job of bringing up and IDing deep targets with the lower pitched response. I find I have to take a couple scoops out on those deeps before I can tell if it's a clean target or iron edges or broken signal start to appear. I have been using a notch from the point of discrimination 08 to 25 which I'm not sure is a good idea or not? I'd certainly appreciate any opinions on that.

From an old news paper. HOW TO RECOGNISE BEDROCK. A very brief inspection of old workings will toon enable the "new-chum" to recognise the bedrock of a river when he reaches it in sinking a shaft. It Is usually soft and decomposed just where the alluvial deposits rest on it, and in that condition is often known as "pipeclay" on account of its whiteness. A few feet further down, however, the slaty structure become visible, the rock gets harder, and the colour changes to yellow, grey, and other darker tints. Down to this bottom the prospector sinks and takes up the stuff immediately resting on it with a few inches of the bottom Itself, as gold often lodges down in the crevices. In very shallow ground open trenches in various directions, or a number of holes at short intervals, are sufficient to enable the ground to be tested, but in deeper ground it is necessary to open drives from the bottom of the prospecting hole so as to try the stuff along the bottom in any direction desired. The object is to test the gravel resting on bedrock, as that is the most likely to contain gold. In some ground not a foot should be passed over without panning it, as it is not at all uncommon for gold to occur in certain narrow "runs," while promising looking stuff on either side is valueless. While the Importance of working the gravel on the river bottom is greatly stressed, It is always advisable to pan any layer of gravel passed through In sinking a hole. Old, abandoned ground, If it has not been too often reworked, will frequently be found to afford a living, or an occasional patch or nugget, if again carefully worked. The Sydney Morning Herald Saturday 28 February 1931 http://newspapers.nla.gov.au/

I'm PCM pitch myself, but definitely pitch tones on the beach all the way with D2. Thought I might be switching over to Full Tones occasionally to interrogate for aluminum, but frankly, saw no need to do that. Just scooped it and moved on. Pitch gives you a sense of depth and footprint for the target you are about to scoop (or not). So Beach Sensitive Pitch is my go to on dry, wet salt, and ocean surf.

my AQ set up. Float to keep the back end up if you have to let go of it. the foam also acts to keep the lanyard positioned. the lanyard keeps the unit under control and clear of any of the jacks / cables. I also have a plastic power jack guard made from a shampoo bottle. I also wrap the power jack and coil connector with rubberized tape to be on the safe side. cjc

Thanks for adding to the volume of knowledge about getting gold from bedrock as chasing the gold on and in bedrock is something I've done for a whole whack of years, and I've really enjoyed it. One of the anomalies of gold deposition where I usually chase the gold is that glaciation sometimes messes up the general rule that gold is found on or in bedrock. Sometimes it's stratified in many layers well above bedrock, and the bedrock itself is barren! Thanks again, and all the best, Lanny

Looks like your missing the 42. Might have to get back out there 🙂

Single discriminator with a concentric can be tough in a trashy park unless your just chasing the coppers and silver and have everything else disced out. Looks like you guys had a blast.

Good location , nice finds , clean up with the D2 and do it all again with the Nox1000 and the D3 later ! Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr show no mercy. !

I’ve been using pitch square tones in beach program for turf hunting. Notch and bottle caps at zero, Magnetic ground on accept and salt on 7 or lower. Works well more stable in bad ground. Better than park program.

I am guessing you are dirt hunting? I would not buy the Legend for Salt Water use [yet] I think the Deus 2 is too expensive to justify for Dirt Hunting. The Equinox 800 [used] would be my choice. Unless you are going under water there is very little issues with the Equinox out of warranty, the pods and electronics are solid. The coil choices are fantastic for the Equinox. HH

Pitch works well on the west coast beaches also. We have lots of black sand. Haven’t been out to the beach too much but summer and the crowds are coming.

I'll try it too however I do have a concern with a single tone in the water IF you can't see the screen due to depth or murky water.... Cliff

Bedrock Tips, Part 1 How many of you have had the chance to work virgin bedrock? By virgin, I mean bedrock exposed by modern mining, bedrock not seen since the dinosaurs ruled the earth or perhaps even earlier. Furthermore, a chance to detect bedrock like this is a rare one as it needs previous, special connections with the large-scale placer miners to get access to such bedrock and claims, or knowledge acquired of former placer mined areas that now lie abandoned. Moreover, it's downright expensive to remove forty to sixty feet of overburden from bedrock which financial output stops some miners from granting access. In addition, some miners simply won’t allow others on their virgin bedrock. Added to this are insurance and mining regulations which might result in a hard no even if there’s a personal relationship with the miners. This makes the chances quite slim to none for access, unless a nugget shooter is lucky enough to find abandoned sites through research or word-of -mouth. But if such an opportunity pops up, for either scenario, there's a few things that will help find that bedrock gold. First and foremost, ask lots of questions. Find out where the heaviest run of gold was in the excavation. For example, was the gold deposit heavier in a dip in the bedrock, on at the start of a rise in the rock, heavier on a shelf, or at the bottom of a long drop before a steep rise, etc. As well, find out if there were certain colors in the dirt that indicated better pay: oranges, reds, grays, purples, blacks, etc. With the answers to a few questions like these, you can improve your odds of checking the most-likely places in an open-pit excavation. For instance, you'll find areas that were barren by asking the right questions (areas of loose wash, glacial striations where gold was gouged out, smooth bedrock, heavy sand, sloping rock, etc.), and you'll locate areas that were hot spots for nuggets by asking enough questions to get some tips. All the best, Lanny

When I was using the BH-01 headphones the detector put me in square pitch. It was different, going to try this stuff tomorrow at the beach. 👍

Having been in business thus dealing with customers my complete working life, other than my initial apprenticeship, 20 years of that manufacturing as a sole trader, thus salesmen, floor sweeper, fabricator etc I got a bit of a handle on customers in that time. Genuine faults were easy to rectify and did not add a lot to the finished cost of product but customers emotional outburst added a lot to the cost of the finished product because they took a lot of my time (time is money) to address without achieving any progress in the products suitability for the market. I have had very little trouble with the 6K (problems and workarounds posted on this 4M), it has earnt itself many times over, in fact I have had not sent a ML product back on a warranty claim except for two 18" coils on the initial SD2100. To me ML detectors have been the backbone of a very successful hobby and I usually buy on release each new one pronto, going right back to the VlF days, ML detectors are thorough breds and as thorough breds they require the rider/user to give them their head with each successive one having more productive capabilities providing the user learnt how to operate. Now what I`m going to say next will not be popular, stop expecting perfection unless you give perfection and you don`t if your human because I am tired of paying for your human emotional outburst that manufacturers have to spend time thus charge me for in each new product I buy. Whilst here I like ML have 40 plus year old products I produced still operating as they did when manufactured. That`s my emotional outburst from the other side of the fence out of the way.

Beach and water only here...Since all of us have different needs at the beach, your going to see many different opinions of what is important to find treasures. For me... my hunting depends on knowing what my machines are capable of (And the competitions) ..... which raw depth is the most important. One reason I bought the Fisher AQ (PI) and I modify a few things my Excaliburs to squeeze every last inch of depth I can get from it in all metal. Got to keep up with the D2's..😊

Got you two characters on my most wanted wall now! I'll PM where to send any good finds!!😁👍👍

Old-Timer’s Did Not Get It All (From my notes, May 25, 1998) I wanted my son to have a good experience gold panning, to find gold big enough to see, and to hear it hit the pan when he dropped it back in. (There's something about that sound that never gets old.) We drove up a logging road through thick stands of pine and spruce, then down a steep slope to a spot where the river cut through some black bedrock narrows. The old-timers worked this place hard and cleaned off the bedrock at river level, as well as high above the current stream which held an ancient channel. We picked a place far above the stream and started to snoop around. (In fairness, I’d snooped earlier in the week to know we wouldn’t get skunked.) There were hand-mined stacks of boulders and large cobbles all over. (Nearby lay the ruins of an old steam powered winch, one used to pull freight and ferry goods across the river in the 1800’s.) At every ancient gulch and pinch point in the bedrock, all the rock was stacked to get at the coarse gold on and in the slate. This hard work made me think, what if some of the miners were tired, homesick, were in a rush to get to the next gold strike, hated their boss or were forced to work for someone else? If that was the case, they might have done a poor job cleaning the bedrock. So, my son and I moved a bunch of rocks and began to look closer. We found places where the old-timers had left small patches of virgin dirt! This was the stuff that could produce good gold. However, the spots were small, cup-sized and smaller. (But small volume can still hold coarse gold for exciting finds.) The missed dirt was easy to identify by the material it held. If we found a little depression or crevice in the rock and the material was tightly wedged in place (packed clay with sand, little rounded stones of various sizes and often accompanied by a red, orange or bluish or purplish stain) we carefully removed every bit of it. (Stuff that had already been worked was loose with numerous gaps, usually had lots of powdery clay with decayed vegetable matter, sharp broken pieces of bedrock, etc., as well as randomly placed rounded stones of all sizes.) We spent about an hour and a half gathering the material with small sniping tools. It partially filled three pans with material, then we made our way down to the river to pan. We panned out nine chunky pieces that each made a sweet sound when dropped in the pan. Did we get rich? If the only concern is a dollar value, then no. But who can put a value on one-on-one time spent with my seventeen-year-old son? Furthermore, searching for missed virgin ground taught us valuable lessons that paid off handsomely the next summer we went mining. All the best, Lanny

Thank you for reading and responding. Please feel free to jump right in and offer whatever your experiences have been. I got to hunt for a short period of time today with my Deus 2 for coins and jewelry. It did not disappoint. I have hunted this area extensively with my Deus 1 recently and a little with an Equinox 600 a couple of years ago. It is a school/city park site that had new sprinklers and sidewalks put in about 4 years ago. I have found some older nickels including Buffaloes and Wheat pennies so I knew silver was a possibility. I sure didn't expect silver Washington quarters however. These two quarters and several of the other quarters were on edge in the 4 to 6" depth range. So were the other coins. I was really glad to get the silver ring also. The nickels also really get me excited since they are so easy to hear on Deus 2 by setting up a small tone bin for them. The little pile of trash in the top right of the photo are the square tabs and beaver tails that also can be found in the 60 to 64 target ID area. So can rusted/bent Corona steel crown bottle caps which are found a lot in my area. The "gold" ring is gold plated/Avon bling........too bad! The XP Deus 2, even with basic General program settings, is proving to be quite the coin and jewelry detector.

Great little tool, well done!

If enough nails,iron,hot ground are about its impossible to hunt out and in this area every swing is blanket signals so ,sweep speed, direction,program many factors lead to pulling good stuff out the same general area for hours at a time and I've been over and over and over same ground! I dont grid I just sweep,dig and wonder letting the detector lead me lol put the deus in pitch audio and it's almost unbearable pop pop pop pop pop every damn swing! Also the original fella I got permission from first words when I asked were "go right ahead,its been hunted for 40 years probly wont find anything!" Also a college in the 90's was there doing something! I have only saw 1 other person there one time and they dug junk and left. This place is tough but I put maximum effort in and go hard to be honest just my nature. Knowing things are there is all I need to not lose hope and call it dead site! I've dug cannon ball pieces as well and when one day i run outta 2 way signals I'm gonna start digging iron and every iffy which are in the thousands that's no stretch at all. In a perfect world I'll be there many more times if I'm lucky but we can't count our eggs before they hatch I reckon. Another thing the ground is so hard grey clay and flat sandstone these targets up to canister shot"really heavy" are 3,4 inches at deepest and sometimes double beeping barely under the ground. No turn over not a field or farm field just THE FIELD OF DREAMS.

Guess who has an Arrow in the mailbox waiting for him to get off work? My F75 does! HA. HH Mike

Great post! I totally relate to what you are saying about going over and over the same area and getting the trinkets hiding among the iron and foil. I may be out for 2 hours and get nothing good at all and then pull a cool old button out. I attribute it to being new to detecting in general, new machine, and tough targets. In fact many of the good items I find start out as sketchy signals that hint at a relic. And most of the finds I am getting are all within 10 or 15 feet of each other in one area. I am planning to go over it several more times, learning the ground, seeing what the detector likes, etc. Cool finds. My older daughter wanted to see me detect so we went out to the front lawn and searched for 30 mins or so and she found an old maybe 1800s lock plate. She was thrilled. And I had been over that area many times and that is the oldest thing I have found on my lawn. I am starting to think that no area is ever truly searched out.

Brass pins hammered down.

Nice bunch of silver. Congratulations on the half!

Nice goin' Toad !👍

That's a nice tool you have made.

Bill and Tammy are wonderful people, and their Patreon trips are fun adventures.

Found it this morning, thankfully it didn't make its way into the washing machine. 😅 Shown next to the corroded nickel. May be a drain rivet.

The only real detector that I have used is the 800, and yes you are correct about taking time to learn it. I have only used the factory settings and it has served me very well, and I can tell you that after a while you will learn the unit for what you are looking for. The Equinox section on this forum can help you a whole lot if you really want to learn about the unit. Carefully read the different articles in that section like I have done and you will learn more than you will want to know about it. Keep it simple with the factory settings for about the first 100 hours of use and you will see that it is a really good detector and that all you have to do is turn it on, balance it to the ground and go. Good luck and I hope this helps as I am a newbie to detecting, and only get out there a few times a year.

What's all this rubbish I read about young Steve thinking he's getting old? Still wet behind the ears! When I was a young bloke I used to be able to pee over a six foot fence. Now I have trouble avoiding my boots, but, I can still swing a coil. An all terrain mobility scooter to tow a coil might be on the drawing board for the future. It could be a project for Beatty and me. All we need then is some young buck to dig the signals. Let's not hear any more of this getting old crap. Remember, you are only as old as what you're feeling. (think about it)

I did an entire thread on 6000 X-coils as they were being prototype tested and the sizes that made it through were 8" round, 10x6", 12x6", 15x10" and 12" round, you might have been awol at the time, they're not releasing them for public sale now though. I don't think extra EMI would be the reason they're not making bigger coils, that's just something that would bother me where I detect.

Rats!!! If Steve's generation is fading from the screen, mine must be gone. He was just a kid when I lived in Alaska.

Don't misunderstand guys. someone didn't publish this, I did it myself. I thought if a company like Gold Rush Expeditions thought it was good enough to publish in their Christmas magazine I thought maybe it was time for me to put it in book form for posterity. Let's face it, it's not some epic novel. It's just a short feel good Christmas story. I mean it probably reads at the second grade level. 😄 I've never been much on correct punctuation. (Actually I did pay to have it professionally proof read and corrected. Not sure how good a job they did.) I know most of you have read and enjoyed this story over the years. It is still up on my website and you can read it for free. This wasn't a money making project, but as I said many of you have asked if I had it in book form. It would probably make a good Christmas stocking stuffer for your favorite prospector. Doc

Tried the Arrow at playground today before it got busy. Best little hunt in a while. So much quicker to cover ground and focus on anything on the surface and quickly retrieve from the mulch. Best finds were the rosary and a beat up silver ring. Otherwise some junk jewelry. But if gold had been there I think it would have found it. Definitely motivated me to get familiar with the Simplex and its target ID scale although I only looked at it to guess what I might dig and dug everything shallow anyway. The coil seems really sensitive to the smallest things and so easy to pinpoint with the tip. I dug the bottle caps knowing most of the time I was going to dig them. They ring up around penny range but you can get the iron grunt good on the tip. It is very tell tale. I’ve been running Park 1 with sensitivity on 2nd notch and first when getting too close to playground equipment. I like the tone breaks on Park 1 but Park 2 might be more ideal on Simplex as it is supposed to be faster but maybe not even necessary.

We are at the point of Jed's season winding down. I will begin posting more frequently all the way to the dramatic ending just as promised. I know I have lost some of the readers but there are still some of you out there that like the story. I will also post the winner of the total gold count. I have given up trying to figure out what makes people tick. It has been my pleasure to post this. So with that being said, here we go.

It's hilarious the crazy Aussie thinks this is something the FBI would handle, what a joke, I never understand why people care so much about what other people are doing that they feel its necessary they get involved when it's nothing to do with them, if they don't want to read it, don't read it, pretty simple. Aussie TV is full of "reality" TV, it's their most popular genre, from farmers finding wives to endless dating and other rubbish shows, if they're so worried about something being 100% factual perhaps they should be sending the FBI after the people making all these reality TV shows, at least that's in their own backyard. Some people just like sticking their nose into other peoples business with their negativity.

Thank you Steve. See you on the most wanted list along with my mug LOL.

The way you are handling this in good humor, and continuing on, reflects well on you. Only guilty people go into hiding, and your only crime seems to be having provided some much welcomed entertainment. Yeah, some nuts think the FBI and more care about, and have time for, stuff like this. I got an email saying the same, legalistic threats, implying I was culpable for simply hosting the site, and that my reputation was at stake. I'm too old anymore to care about what other people think of me, so good luck with that line of thinking. And if anyone gets trouble from the FBI, it will probably be those wasting the FBIs time with their inflated sense of truth police importance.

A bucket from Jed's dig site. Similar in size to a 5 gallon bucket. It's 14 inches high & about 10 X 9 in at top.