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Since there are many members here from different countries and points of the compass, I thought it may be interesting to start a pictorial thread. Show us favourite pics of the countryside you pass through or hunt in for gold and relics. I will kick it off with these from country South Australia. The Flinders Ranges.

Early spring out in the Colorado Desert, CA. Out looking in the sand for opalite, and nearby for jasper, agate and petrified fossil and wood pebbles left behind by the Colorado river in its ancient exposed channels. Some of our goldfields are in places that generally look like this in the Mojave Desert near Joshua Tree, Randsburg, and Barstow, CA.

Cant go past my favourite road sign in Western Australia.

I can't put any up of exact locations I'm doing the prospecting not to reveal where I am going which is a shame but a few photos going to places along the way to my missions. I have to take this road to get to every spot. If only I could show the actual prospecting locations, they are generally very nice spots but these give you an idea of the area.

I recently been invited to hunt this colonial farm. After digging about thirty modern bullets. I found this 1823 Spanish 8 Reale. Still cant believe someone actually lost this coin. Never imagined I would find one.

Good thread, yes often the diggings areas are not the best to look at, but the scenery on the way can be great.

Here's my playgrounds.... High mtn lake and snow pic same mtn 5 miles from the shack.... Kinda neat to see everybody's areas!

One of the best things about metal detecting is the places it can take you.... Alaska Arizona Australia California England Hawaii Nevada

I ran through my photo library and remembered this day! This Chinese Camp was just above the creek they pounded. This day I only found one nugget, some coins and a Silver Chain. I know nothing about the age of the chain. Over the years the little creek and bench gave up a handful of ounces they left for us and hundreds of coins. I’m sure to this day there is more to find!

So far this Easter holiday my ring recovery service is doing well.. As I mentioned before I don't charge anything for my efforts and people pay what they think its worth.. Sometimes people contact me on my Facebook page or otherwise they see their items there.. I was rewarded $100 for the phone, $50 for the car key and $50 for the ring with Roman numbers.. Whilst I was hunting for people's stuff I also found a few other bits of jewellery and $32 in coins.. I love school holidays!

Okay, figured it out. Some of the country I like to roll around in. - Dave

The beach I went to and focused on today is the one where the dock and concrete ship got destroyed by the recent storm. The removal of the dock allowed for alot more stuff to flow in and thus many things have been found near where the dock was. I thought I was too late for all the good finds, but apparently new stuff keeps getting washed in, and the backhoes are still around shifting the sands alot during the weekdays. They prevent people from going into the area while they're working, but when they leave it's pretty much virgin hunting grounds; first come first serve. I managed to time it and get back to the site before the construction crew left and pretty much cleared the beach of most of the goodies. Mostly clad, but some silver as well! 3 silver dimes at least, a crucifix and a grad tassel charm from 1959. Really cool and old stuff. I'll be heading back soon enough as it's been dry lately at all the other beaches.

Wow, I’m loving the response guys..... some beautiful shots of your parts of the world, thank you for sharing. The view from my campsite on the mighty Murray River......morning and evening light.

Hope you didn’t need recovering from that last pic. 😬

This is more fun than should be legal. Miners, you have to love this old time equipment. Love this old mining equipment.

I only found 4 pieces of gold last Summer. Their pale yellow color indicates they have high silver content. As silver rapidly dissolves out of gold, these pieces may have come from up on the nearby ridge. Looking at Google Earth I see what looks like 3 small intrusions with some diggings close by. I'll take a close look this Spring.

I checked this little used park 5 minutes from my house and was surprised to find silver. I'll have to explore it a little more.

There have been numerous threads posted on this subject by experienced detectorists. I always read such posts with great interest as many of my best sites are in some pretty hot red iron ore dirt. About 15 months ago, in an effort to learn and be more successful, I built a test bed using the same mineralized red dirt I hunt in. This test bed has been very educational and helpful. In addition to learning how each of my detectors perform, and how setting adjustments effect that performance, I have noted something unexpected that stood out that can prove to be useful. That is the Ground response signal. It is well known that at a certain depth, coin size targets start to blend into the ground. The coin goes from a good signal & TID, to an iffy signal & poor TID, to gone. The higher the mineralization the more rapid this happens. The ground has swallowed up the coin. What I noticed in my testing is that the coin is still detected, it just reports as a ground signal. Using the Legend, with Disc A you can hear this response. On the swallowed coin it is a good, repeatable report with a solid center & good strength. The TID is a solid 1 and the depth meter will fill. The response from actual ground noise is much weaker and has no center, may or may not give a TID and doesn't show on the depth meter. Having a good Ground Balance is best but this still shows itself running GB at 0. TID 1 must be accepted not notched out. I suppose this behavior is similar to the old way of hunting in All Metal and listening for the Threshold to null over a deep target, just a mirror image. Perhaps like using reverse discrimination on an early TR detector or running a reverse pattern on something like the Etrac. Irregardless, it seems to work consistently and well. The Tarsacci MDT 8000, Vista X and Anfibio Multi using the EUD function also will report these types of masked targets but they do it differently than the SMF Legend and not as distinctly. The next thing I did was to take advantage of the Legend's adjustability and make a special 6 Tone pattern in Field mode M1. I set the first Tone Break at 1 & gave it a nice noticeable high tone with decent volume. The second tone bin runs 2-7 with my normal low ferrous tone & volume. The other bins are set for higher targets. This set up may be possible using other detectors also. Using this pattern, the coin that is swallowed up by the ground gives a good alert & the TID is a solid 1. You can still monitor the actual ground noise, nails still report as iron and other targets give their respective tones. It works well even on trashy sites. In my test bed, the Legend will give a good response on targets at 6,8 & even 10 inches using the 6X9.5 LG24 coil which is surprising. I have only used this special pattern in the field for a few hours. It seems to hold good promise. I did learn that a deep nail will still give the tell tale double hit down the barrel. Also that less that coin size targets give a noticeable weaker response, so the proportional modulated audio works well. There is still more to learn here and time in the field will tell. I think this has good potential to find deeper coins that are masked by the ground and thought others might be interested and want to try it in their mineralized soils also.

Here is a collection of finds that have been published many times before but it is always nice to review them and click on some new links in each of the finds. 8 Discoveries Made with Metal Detectors (history.com)

Overall the 9" is a good start. 👍 May be all you need. My detector store is almost a 2 hour drive one way, but if I'm going to buy a detector, like you, I want to get my hands on it. I will order accessories online. I bought the MI-6 and other coils that way. Looking forward to your exploits with it!

I was able to get out a couple times this weekend to a local soccer complex. I stayed on the sidelines and in the shaded areas. I took the Deus II with the 11" on Saturday and was able to find 121 coins in 3 hours. There were 29 quarters and 29 dimes along with mostly pennies. I have hit this place many times before with the Equinox 800, so I was a bit surprised by the number of high conductors that sounded through the machine gun sounds of bottle caps and pull tabs. I ran the fast program with a few changes. The black ring that came from behind tall netting that stops balls from going into the water, is stainless. The pendant was right in front of a team bench; there were many targets under the coil, but the 72 ID was unwaivering. The other ring is aluminum. Today, I took the Equinox out for old times sake with the 15" coil. I wanted to cover some ground and focus on numbers between 5-12. The gold helmet, the second one I have found (the first was also at this park by the basketball area), rang up a steady 8. I was in Park 1 with the horseshoe engaged and 7 recovery speed.

Hopped out to the beach after work since the weather was immaculate today. Tide was mid range which is meh but I'm getting too fat and needed to get a good walk in. After about 5 minutes i see a very pretty girl walking toward me with intent! Not that "I'm curious about metal detecting walk" and I've yet to get picked up on while detecting so it could only be one thing... she lost her diamond ring! About 100 feet from where I was she had been sitting with her mom and dad and flung her hand to the side... watching as her ring flew off. After frantically searching for a bit, her knight in dorky armor arrived. I was able to nab the ring in about 30 seconds and she was visibly relieved! She tried to pay me, which i absolutely refused but asked her if we could snap a photo so i could share it with my online friends 🤓. I'm doing fine financially and wouldnt ever sell a ring i found so it was way more rewarding making her doomsday into a good story for us both. Photo shared with her permission.

Cool little find. A key ring medallion from the Telephone Pioneers of America. "From the very first, the Pioneer symbol was a double triangle around the words “Telephone Pioneers of America,” and, in the center, the Bell system’s traditional bell. Appearing on the bell is number 174,465, the United States patent number given to the Bell’s fundamental principle of the electric speaking telephone. In 1912, two other numbers appeared on the symbol, flanking the lower corner of the bell. The date 1875 commemorates the experiment of June 2, when Bell verified the theory of the electrical transmission of speech; the second date, 1911, the organization of the Telephone Pioneers of America."

Hi from North Essex, I have been detecting for about 5 years, I have a couple of nice permissions, even though I live on the coast I don't do a lot of beach detecting, as a rule I do a whole day detecting every two weeks. I hope to find something special one of these days and if I do I will keep everyone in the loop.. happy bleeping

first pic, an old miners cabin,1930? San Domingo. back in the late 90s i was on a quad and had to take shelter in it during a hail storm. fire place worked nice. 2nd a rich little rivulet that had a nice bit of gold next to that tree. 3rd a too hard to get to wash that had a lot of small bits in it. 4th is the small hill i think spit out the 6.4 gram specimen i found recently. work in progress. heads down you Arizona boys. snakes are up and moving. i saw my first rattler last Sunday.

If I didn’t know where you are from, I’d swear these are Valley Oak trees in the Sierra foothills in central California’s motherload country! Some of my favorite places I’ve been!

BEWARE the nice divided street with a big strip in the middle with nice old homes in neighborhood!!! Found out the hard way yrs ago that the beautiful green dividing strip is where EVERBODY shits their damned dogs.....lol

JW and I often gold hunt at a spot that has high voltage power lines run smack through it from a hydro dam, it's amazing how different times of day affect the EMI in the area, it's rather remote apart from those power lines, no houses or anything going to cause EMI, not on a flight path or anything like that. We both agree on the characteristics of EMI at this place and how different times of day or even weather affect it. During heavy fog which happens quite a bit at that spot being a gully at the bottom of mountains the EMI drops right down, detectors go so calm, even the old model GPX purrs along. Wind direction seems to affect EMI from the lines too, depending on which direction the wind blows it seems to change the EMI, so weird. Times of day mean a lot, perhaps its demand on the lines but certain times of day have higher EMI, towards the end of the day usually the detectors enjoy a more stable operation right when you're getting tired and hungry the detector starts to purr 🙂 At dusk it's usually a really good time for stability which is odd as that would be a high power load time with everyone at home cooking dinner, so I don't know if it has anything to do with power draw. As it gets dark EMI goes right down. You can be hunting in one spot in the morning (a spot where I not too long ago found a 4 gram nugget) and the detector be frustrating to use, noise cancels all the time and then as the day goes on suddenly the EMI calms right down and things improve dramatically. The GPZ is by far the best detector to use at this spot, it really handles the EMI exceptionally and can detect right up near these massive power lines, especially when outfitted with the concentric coil, even though it's 15" it handles EMI much better than smaller coils than it is, perhaps due to it's small receive winding. EMI is a depth killer so doing all you can to have a detector running without being affected by EMI is important, I think you're better off running a lower sensitivity and not getting bad EMI than running unstable with EMI with higher sensitivity. EMI is also a big reason detectors get unstable or bouncy target ID's, EMI is acting like a target, the detector is detecting something (EMI) so even if you hit a good target but have EMI at the same time it can change your Target ID's undesirably.

I had a couple of hours to detect today after another mini blizzard. I decided to stay close to home and hunt next to a curb at a local park that I have hunted with Deus 1 and the Equinox 800 in the past. The area I was hunting is absolutely loaded with aluminum trash and steel crown bottle caps with various states of rust unless they are recent drops. Very iron mineralized ground on top of the thousands of trash targets. Knowing this in advance I was thankful that I have the Deus 2 (and the Legend and Equinox 900) which do not have half of the regularly found aluminum pull tabs ID's landing right on top of the most common gold ring target IDs and the US nickel target IDs (Equinox 600/800/Vanquish models) both of which I really enjoy digging. In the past I have tried Deus 1 at places like this and quickly became super frustrated with all of the silver target ID range responses that could easily be US copper pennies, clad dimes clad quarters, silver coins and silver jewelry but instead were lowly pull tabs and bits of aluminum along with steel crown bottle caps that were showing up in the upper 80s to upper 90s target ID range due to severe up averaging if they were deeper than 3" or so in this iron rich dirt. Deus 2 using its multi modes based on the Fast program simply does not do that to all of that aluminum and steel trash unless it is right at the edge of detection in the dirt around here, so I had no hesitation picking it for detecting this super trashed area. I was using a saved program based on Sensitive, with 5 tones Square Wave audio, disc on 10, iron audio ON, reactivity 2, Silencer 1, bottle cap reject 1 and sensitivity on 95. Deus 2 was a bit jittery but consistent which is how I like it. The US nickel medium pitched tone was set up to sound on target IDs between 59 and 63. The highest tone for clad dimes and up was set 90 to 99. So, I concentrated on the gold and silver range of target IDs specifically any good sounding target with a consistent ID of 59 to 63 and any target with a consistent target ID of 90 and above and was basically cherry picking for US nickels/medium sized gold rings and US coins above zinc pennies with any silver thrown in. The 1.9 gram 10K ring had a target ID of 62/63 just like the nickels and square tabs in the photo. These targets were in the 3 to 6" depth range. There has been a lot of chatter about using single frequencies for detecting and how they are just "better" especially in reference to the new Minelab X-Terra Pro. I deliberately checked the target IDs of each of the low to mid conductor targets in the bottom half of the paper plate photo before digging them. I used default Deus 2 Mono set on 17 kHz. All of those targets which are normally 59 to 66 had target IDs above 85................. I'm very happy to use Deus 2 FMF simultaneous multi frequency tech, that's for sure since I can at least call the non-ferrous conductivity of targets before I dig them for the most part. Thanks for reading.

Haven't posted in a long time, I have been reading posts from time to time. I was seriously into metal detecting from 2000 until 2016, during that time I probably used every detector that was on the market. I took a 6 year break, and I am getting back into the hobby, only in a smaller way. I am going to try to limit myself to a couple machines. One thing that I have noticed lately, is there are a lot of good detectors just coming into the market, great time to buy a detector, only problem is, which one. I mainly hunt for coins and jewelry in small towns, with an occasional Civil War site. I have narrowed.y choices down to the Nox 900, or the Deus 1. I look forward to reading everyone's posts on what they are using and what they think about their weapon of choice.

I keep my volume on the lower side with the gpz. On the filters on the SP01 I think is a preference to your ears. I turn the volume up on it just below where you hear any hiss.

Tomorrow I'll go to the store, and I'll try the 2 coils and if I'm lucky I'll come home with it hehehehe, tomorrow I'll tell you what my decision was, and I'll upload some photos.

I think you have received good information here. Going to a detector store and getting a feel for the detector and coils before you buy is an ideal situation. My closest XP dealer is 5 hours away so that's not practical for me, but if you can then I think that will help you make your decision. There is nothing like getting to feel the real product. Regardless of which you choose, I think you will be very happy when you get out in the field with it. Best of Luck!

Mr. O.M.C.1; I have analyzed the nuggets and the weight shown in your photo, used an actuary algorithm, multiplied the result by Pi times radius squared and determined that searching for and finding those nuggets has added 1.385 years to your life. Therefore congratulations are in order.

Tell Fred there is no need to dig iron unless you're relic hunting and want to. Manticore certainly tells you the difference between iron and a coin. He will learn the 2D display and iron grunt sound....it's quite obvious. Keep us posted on how you guys do on future hunts.

Yes, the owner told me that she had a quote for $1200 to get it replaced.. She got a great deal but then again so did I with $50 for a 10 minute hunt.. She did have to come back to the island to pick it up..

If you can't get an answer contact Sun Ray directly. PH (856)-825-6009 (If no answer, leave message and an appropriate time to return your call) Sun Ray office hours are: 9am – 5 pm EST Mon-Fri Sun Ray Detector Electronics 2322 Newcombtown Rd Millville, NJ 08332 EMAIL – info@metaldetecting.com To order Sun Ray Products call or email us for an Authorized Sun Ray Dealer near you!

Mostly very good after Simplex and XP Deus. Perfect in modern trash, iron, almost always good in EMI. Reach and great info from sound. Of course lightweight and speed. I dig average 50-80 target per hour, it is impossible with any another detector. I have about 700-800 hours experience with my favourite 4,5,6 programs. Sure, have some problem. Full tones not optimal in XP Deus 2. Not good working in my clay after plowing the land. I find some bugs in WS6, already wrote to XP. Hope for next update and new elliptical 9.5x5 coil. А small part of the finds from XP Deus 2 from last season are attached. But so far, both I and the detector are only at the beginning of the journey.

I am sleepy.......😴

I will try to go to the store, it is far from my city, but I prefer to see the 2 coils and so I can see weights, sizes, etc., but the truth is that you all recommend the 9" one hehehehe

My knees hurt too!!!!! But I still try to average 40 to 50 targets an hour when I am in a really trashed area like that with good coin and ring potential. I don't spend too much time interrogating targets. Once I am fairly certain about the target’s low/medium/high conductivity and depth and maybe even its identity, I'm digging.

The parks are finally melted off and the mud is even starting to get better in some parts of some parks. So this morning I hit one of the oldest and no doubt THE trashiest park around here. It was machine gun everywhere. Decided to try All Terrain Trash Reject. Took my best guess and a manual GB of 15, did a long press noise cancel and the machine was running just the tiniest bit sparky at 22 sensitivity - I didn't try any higher or lower, left it there the whole hunt. Pretty happy with how the Manticore picks high conductors out of the trash with the 11" coil in this mode. Was getting everything from surface drops to 8-9" coins. Ended up with two wheaties and a '46 Rosie. And a bunch of clad. Didn't dig too, too much trash. But was digging a lot of aluminum twist caps for the first half of the hunt or so, before I started getting a handle on how not to dig them (just looking for ID spread on a cross check) and then I only dug two or three after that. My big gripe with the Manticore right now is no wireless options (without a dongle). Warm enough this morning that I was hating on the earphones after a couple of hours. But with so many people around I didn't want to run the speaker either, so I left them on. I don't really want to use a separate transmitter, but I think I'm going to have to. The earphones just aren't going to work for me as the weather continues to warm up. - Dave

Working on my end now!

Yes, pretty stupid wasn't it. He got sucked in because there was an active permit he could use to start mining without waiting. The problem was he was mining low grade tailings. He paid the $100K because it included the permit which proved to be worthless. Gold fever is real & it's scary. People's eyes glaze over & common sense goes out the window.

Nice surprise to find silver in a park anywhere these day's. Got to looking at my home town park list and found a few small ones in 1850's neighborhoods that i never knew about. Just small parcels but surrounded by historical homes. And a divided street with 12 foot wide by 60 green strip down the middle that got me looking at the area to start.

I agree. We decided to lease claims and take our cut right off the sluice in the form of raw gold. There is no risk or cost. I have seen several want to be gold miners lose everything including their wives. Not a business for the faint of heart. We love the exploration end of the business. I also invest in good mining companies.

It appears you are leaning towards the Deus 2 now, 🙂👍 I read earlier that you will be searching for relics and coins and going to the beach, not doing any sort of prospecting. My suggestion to you is that because you will be beach searching, the best thing for you to do is get the Deus 2 9" package, and then get the 13x11" coil either with it or later when you are used to the machine. In my opinion the 11" coil does put you in the center of performance, but consider that if you want to have every opportunity to get as much as you can in the least amount of time you should have the smallest and the largest coils possible. You can see in your example video that they change them very fast. I won't comment on why I think that video is misleading, but I can tell you it is. I've been using the 13x11" coil since it arrived in the USA and have to say it seems better than the 11". I have all 3 coils and when there is not a lot of field stubble (soybean and corn stalks), I tend to use the 13" initially but return with the 9" to see if I missed anything, and almost always find I did not. If I use the 9" first I can be pretty certain that if I return with the 13", I will find coins and relics I missed., This is due to better swing overlap more than separation. Do remember that most of your detection comes from the center of the coil. The weight difference between the 13"and the 11" is so little that the only issue then is balance and attachment. You can shorten the shaft to make even the 13" feel light, but it will not feel as firmly attached as the 11", again only slightly. I often travel far from home and make sure to have all 3 with me in case one does not charge enough, but I almost never use the 11". To me there is no advantage the 11" has over the 13", and the 9" is best for tight spaces and water searching. Regardless of any advantage or disadvantage, you should always have at least 2 coils for the Deus 2.