Jump to content

Leaderboard

Popular Content

Showing content with the highest reputation on 05/28/2023 in Posts

  1. I had some fun hunting a couple of 17th century English home sites, that were located on an earlier Native American site. 2 days hunting, with the first day working with field school students teaching them how to detect and the use of metal detectors for their Archaeology work. I was a bit surprised since all we could find that was relevant were 3 pieces of lead. All the detectors had issues and the GPX had weird spike sounds sporadically killing the threshold. 🤔 I thought it may be the storm that was coming in later in the day. Day 2, the noise remained, so talking with the owner of the property, I asked him where the nearest electric fence is, and his reply was …. right over there! 😡 He was gracious enough to turn off the fence and the GPX worked better than ever. I did not take photos of everything found, but some of the finds included 4 musket balls, 2 scrap pieces of brass, some eyeballed pieces of early pottery, a silver decorative buckle and these 3 items…. cylindrical lead shot (no it’s not a sinker 🙄), an early 1-piece brass button (cat on it?), and a surface find quartz point. (maybe Levana – around 1400 years old. 🥰) I planned on doing a bit of water hunting, but I never got around to it. I may head back there one more time next week to finish off areas I wanted to do. It was fun just getting out. Finding the time lately to do anything other than home and work stuff is almost impossible, so I was grateful to get some time off.
    9 points
  2. The river I prospect was high today, and my usual spots were under water. So, my buddy and I shifted gears to another place, which is not as ripe as my usual spot, but, gold is gold. He used his La'Trap mini and I used my favorite river sluice, the "Itty-Bitty" sluice. Click on the photos to see today's hunt.
    8 points
  3. I bet to some it's golden.
    6 points
  4. Not the kind you want to find. Nowadays you can find anything and everything at the beach. I’m glad I wear gloves during my hunts. Stay safe and protected out there. HH
    4 points
  5. Hello everyone from Boise, Idaho. I was a member of this forum 9 or 10 years ago, hanging around in the dredging forum; but of course lost THAT username and password (maybe even the email too). About a year ago, I bought a GPX 6000 from Gerry. What a great guy! Met him at his house for the purchase, couldn’t have had a better experience and can’t say enough great things about the guy. I’ve “mostly” always been a dredger since my grandfather introduced me to mining forty five years ago – geez, longer now that I think about it lol. I did have a gold bug back in the 80’s and poked around a bit then got discouraged. All because I didn’t take the time to learn the machine properly: I want to emphasize, that was 100% on ME. I got a Whites GMT ten or fifteen years ago, love that machine, but failed to find any gold with it. Again, the reason for that is time behind the coil. I just couldn’t dedicate enough to get after it. Well, now I’m finding more time for detecting and oh my how I love the 6000. Haven’t found any gold yet with it, but that will change any day. I have a new puppy on the way, so it will be a few weeks before I can get back out there. I haven’t been able to get out at all this year yet, (I know, I know) I’ve been busy. Last year about this time I got up to the mountains for five days, then in august another 9 days straight. I tell you what, with the 6000 in hand over that 9 days I dug 204 targets: boot tack’s, buckles, fragments of wire I can barely see, a chisel, square nails, and then... “Story Time”. I heard the perfect “Zip Zip” way down inside a bedrock crevice. I’ve always found it a bit comical how the fever takes hold on a target like that! The new pick wasn’t going to cut it, I had my own heavy tools back at the truck, an 8 pound sledge and 3 foot pry bar. I had that bedrock so clean the crevice was screaming “HEY, I’M GOLD! CATCH ME IF YOU CAN!” “Oh, I’m coming little fella!” I kept zipping the coil over the target, “zip zip zip”! And the more bedrock I broke off THE LOUDER IT GOT! “This can only be one thing!” I became frantic, “Finally, after a lifetime of looking for gold, could this be my first nugget with a metal detector? It’s got to be a TOAD!” I broke away more bedrock, only to get louder and louder, “zip zip”. “This has to be it! Ahhhhh!” I’m shaking as I wave the coil over it one last time, “ZIP ZIP!” “Oh this is going to be ENORMOUS!” I finally popped it out of its hiding place, the end of an old timers pick stuck way down there in the bedrock. Hahaha! The hunt was just as fun. The enjoyment of the hunt will never end. Thanks for having me.
    4 points
  6. Money talks. That is all Minelab cares about. They don't appear to care about people & us the consumer of "their" products. Their silence is deafening on product quality issues. They are bound by law on warranty replacement but when there are so many continued issues without a peep from minelab, that is a concern. Their PR sucks. D4G
    4 points
  7. Last night after work I went to the beach with my Terra Pro to search the dry beach. My beaches are fairly trashy and full of all types of metals and targets. The machine worked well and I don't have anything to report on water use. It found me as much as I think any other machine would have found me if i used another machine. I found its first Silver ring and a junk ring, 1 small foreign coin and £9.33p in spendable coins. If there is anything at all that i can criticize it would be the inability to knock out crown caps. (The one in the picture) They constantly come in at a high number and as the Terra and the 900 and the Manticore by the looks of it aren't the most stable on numbers , it would be an absolute dream come true if Minelab would just do something about that one thing. Then the new Terra will turn into a proper Terra'ist of beach detecting. My next hunt will be in the week if i can but not so sure which machine to use. 800 , Legend or the Terra again ? I think without looking the tides are a bit longer then. Could do with the sand showing.
    3 points
  8. Update: Hunt # 2 with V1.1 So rather than start a new thread I decided to just show the results from my short 2nd hunt with V1.1 yesterday. This was about a 2 1/2 hour hunt at an older park that one of my detecting buddies told me had been hammered hard since the 70s and lots of old silver coins came out of there. I was hoping there might still be one hidden there, so I made a quick run before the afternoon rainstorm came in. This very small park is well manicured and clean as a whistle. There was no surface trash and the daily rain has made the grass about 3-4 inches high and the ground is damp. I ran V1.1 in the same config as the first hunt a couple of days ago, Fast, Disc 6.8, Notch 7-30, Full Tones, High Sqr, Sensitivity 95, Reactivity 1.5, Silencer and B.Caps 0, Iron Vol 7, Audio Response 4, FE TID on, Audio Filter 0. There were almost no signals anywhere except for occasional deep iron grunts. I played with lowering my Reactivity to 0 but there just weren't any signals. I figure that place still gets detected pretty often. When I got near a grove of trees I started geting the familiar ring pulls and pull tabs, but I was able to call each one before I dug and also the few bits of canslaw I dug by also checking them with Deus Mono in the XY screen. That was dead on for every bit of trash with squiggly lines and wildly jumping numbers. The only bits that fooled me were the broken off beaver tails which rang up and sounded very much like nickels. However, one signal I thought was another beaver tail ended up being a 6 inch deep 1964 nickel. There was still minimal iron falsing and most was really easy to tell with a 90 degree turn on the signal and also by the iron tone being right with the false. I was also able to trace the end of the iron object with the pinpoint mode and if the high number was at the edge it was obviously iron. The big rusty nail I dug was about 7-8 inches deep, oriented with the head up, and threw an occasional 90-91. It was very iffy but I had to check it out. The iron washer was also deep and just gave an iron tone but sounded round so I dug it partly because there were so few good targets. As I was heading back across the open area to my car I got a solid 80 which I thought might be a bottle cap, but just sounded too good for that and it was a foreign coin of some type. I haven't figured out where it's from yet, so if anyone knows, please let me know. About 10 feet from there, I got pretty solid 76-78. It was just a little too solid sounding to be a ring pull so I popped it up and out comes a .925 silver cross pendant. Woohoo, silver # 11 for the year. I've found 6 pieces of silver since January before the update. I've found 5 pieces of silver since the V1.0 update (3 with V1.0 and 2 with V1.1) so far this month. I only found 15 pieces of silver last year with the D2. That may not mean anything, but then again, it might. 😏
    3 points
  9. With all of the new updates that keep coming and wiping out my previous settings for custom programs, I have generated a form to put all of the settings for each program. It's a Google document and hope it will help you because I think it's helping me! When you click on the link, it will automatically force a copy, so that you can edit it. Hope you're able to access it. Let me know what you think. Custom Program Deus II
    3 points
  10. Just come back from the high mineralized area, I wanted to show that audio filter feature is really important to go deeper and have a better signal also in mineralized soils. I had a weak one way signal with audio filter 0 and a 100% better signal with audio filter 5. Very low conductive target in the bottom of a 9” hole.. Here is the video. Sorry for the low quality, used again the mobile phone but I have to buy an action cam..
    3 points
  11. I'm sure AI or even someones pet donkey could write a better top 10 best detector list than most of the ones I've seen on the Internet.
    3 points
  12. I use the stock coil, it's perfectly fine and works great, very sensitive too but the little 6" is just more sensitive and for me that's a big deal because I primarily live in an area with very small gold.
    3 points
  13. And then the damn thing wouldn't let you hold the nugget...
    3 points
  14. If it's weight you're concerned with, the Deus 2 is the lightest detector out there. With the 13" coil on a carbon fiber shaft (SteveG) the Deus only weighs 2.7 pounds. That is lighter than the Equinox on a carbon fiber shaft with a 10x5 coil. The 11" is a tad front heavy but you will get used to even the 13" in no time. Look at the long haul for what you want rather than short term gratification. Additionally the WS6 Master you can put together by getting an extra shaft and using the 9" is so light it's barely noticeable. Don't forget you can also put the remotes on a wrist or arm band and only swing the coil. No other system is this variable. I have all 3 coils and prefer the 9" and the 13" elliptical. I do most of my hunting with the 13". The 11" goes along in the 280 backpack if something goes wrong.
    3 points
  15. I find the audio filter should be used with caution. Higher levels 3-5 take the iron buzz out of the deep targets, let's say ground saturation at depth. Also I have been told higher levels can offer advantages when hunting in the surf. The downside is higher levels can soften iron signals and you may be fooled into thinking they are good targets. Also shallow targets can sound a little wooly. Lower levels 0-2 can give better iron identification, as they are "pure" unfiltered signals. Lower levels are best for iron contaminated sites, I find my go-to settings are mostly 0-1 for UK inland. But I have some deep pasture and will be testing higher levels once the grass is cut. I would love to hear your thoughts. Hope this helps Gary
    3 points
  16. Sales in Africa down, up in other places. Remember as the report notes these numbers are 52% metal detecting, 48% communications. https://codan.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Codan-Limited-Annual-Report-2022.pdf
    2 points
  17. I basically do the same. Every time I have dug a signal that is fairly solid one way, then turn 90 degrees and I start getting a red line under the numbers it has been iron. I was basically wondering if that had been everyone's experience.
    2 points
  18. It was coated with something resembling silver. Makes you sort of wonder if all the wear on it is from the tumbling on beach or the crappy craftsmanship 🤔🙃
    2 points
  19. Or you have also this custom program form at the end of this XP document : https://www.xpmetaldetectors.com/documents/0/gb_rc_deusii_v1.0_changes.pdf 😁 Have a great day !
    2 points
  20. Thank you! Machine was obviously ground balanced but when I’m on the field I always forget to do things...like to test the other program I had set for myself and audio filter vs iron. Next time I’ll do other tests but I hope I’ll use an action cam, not the mobile phone. Anyway I’m still happy with the result..
    2 points
  21. I think it's great, one of my first college projects in the 70s was determining what kind of computer a local business needed. I gave them a note pad and pencil and told them why, Computers were too expensive and unreliable back then, it was a small business. It has also proven to be true that computers did not lessen the need for paper backup, I proved that again and again until I retired a couple of years ago. I believe paper consumption about tripled with the advent of computers. 🤣 At this point keeping a spreadsheet of your favorite flavor on your cellphone is pretty reliable, and changing it is easy.
    2 points
  22. Very nice days reward on the gold, and I am glad that you had another place to sluice. Good luck on your next hunt. Grandfather used to use a couple of burlap sacks with some weights to catch some gold when the water was to high. He said that the water moved faster and would also move some of the gold when things got high. When the water went down some we could pull the sacks out of the water and sure enough there was some gold in them. We kept the sacks close to the banks and held in a position with some nylon cords. I would like to know if you had ever tried that method and if so did you catch anything.
    2 points
  23. I didn't know what it was made out of and that scraps both of my thoughts on it. Being on the Gulf working I don't have my grandfathers old books to look things up.
    2 points
  24. No, it would stick it in its mouth and take a selfie with it!
    2 points
  25. My first run with 1.1 got me a nice ornate silver and a plai looking small gold ring that were less than a foot apart. Also the usual amount of coins etc. The thing that I'm finding with the deus II while trying to test these updates, is that I really can't expect it to behave the same way in the same soil day to day or, Daytime vs night-time. The signals that I expext to hear just keep changing. Maybe it's just that time of year where the soil is really dry, especially during the day. I wish I could manually adjust the ground balance. (JUST TO SEE). But for now, I find that testing a few targets from my test pack in the soil really goes a long way to helping. So far, I'm just putting in the time...
    2 points
  26. Is it silver at least? 🤣
    2 points
  27. My Manticore had a blue film over the screen, this made it more obvious it needs removed, I can see how people may think the clear film is part of the screen itself. The blue was obvious it needed removed as it tinted the screen blue 🙂
    2 points
  28. I think it's fair to say that changing the LiPo battery in the WSA headphones, the WS6 and the D2 Remote is quite a lot easier than changing the battery in a cell phone. Changing the battery in an XP coil is slightly less easy, but perfectly do-able (there are YT videos out there). I would not let LiPo-phobia hold you back! 😀
    2 points
  29. That's the great thing about the GPZ 19" coil, most hold no value in it and sell them very cheap and you can buy it to make adapters out of 🙂 I have two 19" coils, although both have had the snip. I kept my 14" coil original in case I wanted to get rid of my GPZ someday, in hindsight I should have cut it and not bothered with the 19" coils as I'm never getting rid of my GPZ, it's my favourite detector.
    2 points
  30. You make me want a Deus 2, although my Deus 1 experience wasn't all it was cracked up to be, a year or so ago it was the greatest thing since sliced bread to some people... so I got one, and well, big disappointment..... I'm tempted by the Deus 2... but also after my Deus 1 a bit iffy on it for my needs. All I want is deep with reliable target ID's in mild soils and my Ace 300 towers over the Deus 1 for this.....
    2 points
  31. Jeff, My guess is a powder measurer for filling cartridges
    2 points
  32. June 12 2002 The night had remained quiet and we got to work shoveling gravel into the tom. When we broke for lunch Jacob had the concentrates all cleaned up and there were 6 ounces of gold in the pan. He grinned and told us to shovel like hell because we were in a sweet spot. If only we had our trommel we could make a real killing I figured. But we went back to work and did the best we could. The heat was relentless. By the end of the day we had processed 35 yards. I figured that to be a very good days work in the heat. We were all worn out. Jacob took a few scoops of the concentrates and told us they were loaded with gold. He said maybe we didn’t need any trommel and had himself a good laugh. The rest of us looked at him and I thought he had gone mad the way he was laughing so hard. Jacob stopped and told us we didn’t seem to understand and that we had hit a jackpot. An area of concentrated gold deposit. Sizeable tonnage. Whatever you want to call it he said. Then he began to laugh some more. He said he’d seen this kind of thing several times on these claims. We might just have ourselves a gold strike. TO BE CONTINUED ...................
    2 points
  33. I loaded up V1.1 this morning, and took it outside to check it out. Loaded up Relic Reaper, threw a board on the ground and did all sorts of air tests with nails, coins, and other junk I've found including the trusty beer can bottom. The D2 has the 13" elliptical on it. First thing I noticed with the update is that I didn't have to update the WSA II headphones. 🥳 Updating to V1 was all they needed. Observations: I did not have to back off to 24 kHz to mitigate iron falsing. 🥳 Iron is iron is iron now, almost scary for me. Used all sorts of forged, hammered, square, bent nails from the 1600s to the 1800s. I'm using square high tones now for that PWM brassy tone on aluminum. They cleaned full tones up too much. 😭 Some aluminum did an up/down tone passing left to right then right to left in V.71, that's gone. Oh well. Put a silver dime down, got its VDI, and then put a hammered nail on top of it. I'll be darned if it didn't hit cleanly on the coin sweeping over the width of the nail, and even along the length it blipped 91. Disc and notch independently to 10 had no effect other than to quiet the nail. I'll have to try both. I run Relic Reaper at 0 disc and no notch. Want to hear it all. Put a pull tab down, and got a handful of nickels, the pull tab was 62 and the nickels 60. Slightly different less brassy sound with the nickels, lifting didn't have much effect unfortunately. I was glad to see nickels ID'ing differently. Beer can bottom was way brassier sounding, and lifting helped. It also drew a square on the XY screen. Tried a nickel next to the pull tab and was shocked to see both VDI's even with Reactivity at 0. 👍 Wow. I didn't find a huge amount of difference adjusting audio response, but the tones were more defined the higher it went. For some reason Silencer does nothing for me. 🤔 Didn't help with iron at all. Iron was iron. I run bottle caps at 3. Conclusion: Definite improvement over V1, I'm happy to have my Relic program back, real ground experience will sharpen me up. The deer flies got bad so I quit.
    2 points
  34. That was me, and I only mentioned the WSA II headphones. They will not update. 🙂 I don't have the WSA II XL.
    1 point
  35. And I thought I was bad chasing a target down. Welcome from East Texas.
    1 point
  36. Good advice VL, but the 600 is just as waterproof as the 800 🙂 I've dunked mine a lot and had no problems.
    1 point
  37. Too true, I don't ever use my GPZ Minelab coils, both my 19" and 14" coils are basically new just used them to test if I wanted to use them, My GPX 4500/5000 Minelab coils are still basically brand new and as found out quickly I didn't want to use them 🙂 My 6000 coils are now closet queens, except the DD as I need it for it's EMI handling sometimes, If I had an option to buy my detectors with no coils I'd certainly do it.
    1 point
  38. What makes me mad with Minelab coils is I have to buy their coils with each detector even when I know it will remain unused, as my choice of detecting does not favour the most general ML size coil. Most of the committed prospectors over the "Minelab era" that I have known had to pay for a ML coil that they did not want and the resale of them is very low as most customers have one also sitting unused.
    1 point
  39. Has anyone on here updated to the new 1.1? I have done so and it is a big improvement over .71. The discrimination is pretty good and fast. I like that you have so much access and can run it red hot if you feel bold. I don't see it as a gold machine but it's so light I carry it with me when swinging the GPZ7000 to help keep my old ass from digging an open pit mine for a bottle cap or 22 shell. Be interested to hear how others like the update.
    1 point
  40. Hi-Square 1.00 vs old Square 0.71 in pitch tone: - In hi-square more information is now heard in an iron tone. And how deep the nail is in the ground, size, shape, etc. - In hi-square there is less dynamics and amplitude in the pitch tone. It is more difficult to determine the depth of the target - for this only the speed of the sound response. When digging to the surface, the signal can be even quieter than in the ground, as strong sounds are muted by the algorithm. - Because of the differences in the first two points, it's a bit more difficult to distinguish between iron-mixed targets and iron-falsing. Now in hi-square we either trust the algorithm and dig everything. Or we listen to how stable the pitch sound is and decide to dig based on its behavior. - The new pitch hi-square is more comfortable for long time use. You can walk for many hours without feeling discomfort in your ears and brain.
    1 point
  41. That's a good start. I dug some relics with mine this past weekend. Great machine in the right places.
    1 point
  42. Summary of Issues/Observations Identified Since Public Release of Ver 1.0: Ver 1.0 Silencer Filter Response appears to be more aggressive at the 0, 1, and 2 levels (and above) and step increases in silencer settings appear coarser than the equivalent settings in Ver 0.71 adversely affecting 3-D ferrous/non-ferrous target separation and causing masking even at high reactivity levels. See questions in next section regarding whether the Silencer filter is disabled when set to “0” or was changed from ver 0.71. (Addressed in the Ver 1.1 Update to restore Silencer behavior at levels 0, 1, and 2 to Ver 0.71, Note that Program 3 - Sensi FT retains the aggressive low level Silencer Settings introduced in Ver 1.0) Ver 1.0 Audio Response appears to be amplified over the equivalent settings in Ver 0.71. Deus 2 Micro/Sub-gram gold performance of D2 in gold field mode still significantly lags Deus/Orx Gold Field performance. XP should consider providing a selectable single/mono-frequency Gold Mode factory program in a future update. Enabling mono-frequency adjustments above the current Program 7 max of 45 kHz, perhaps in conjunction with a D2 small, elliptical high frequency coil (see more on that below). Bug (ver 0.71, ver 1.0, ver 1.1) - If the Big TID Display option has been invoked in any mode, accessing the Equalizer from the Audio hot key shortcut (long press of "+" key and then pressing the middle "^" key reverts the display to normal sized horseshoe screen. Big TID can be recovered using the Big TID hot keys (pressing and holding the "+" and the right hand "^" keys at the same time. This does not happen if any of the other audio options are selected or adjusted from the shortcut and if Big TID is your saved default display mode (such as in the ver 1.X General Program), it will return on a power cycle. Anomalous Clock operation appears to still be an issue. XP Needs to update the User Guide to address increased coil battery drain at lower Max F settings. Possible Bug: Remote parameter adjustment locks up after frequency scan or Sensitivity, Reactivity, or other parameter change, requiring a power cycle reboot of the remote. (Potentially Addressed in Ver 1.1 Update to restore Silencer behavior at levels 0, 1, and 2 to Ver 0.71) Odd Behavoir: If you go directly to bone phones as the audio output device, you can only select Square. Go to another audio device, change it to HiSquare and then back to bone phones, and it will then say HiSquare which can’t be changed directly back to Square unless you repeat the audio output switch procedure again. Switching a another device to PCM and switching back to bone phones audio is ignored by the bone phones output. It is difficult to tell if the audio is Square or HiSquare when it says HiSquare. (New: Added 6/29/23) Update issues: Various reports of WS6 lockups (requiring battery drain resets) or puck bricks during the update process or during version rollback. (Potentially Addressed in Ver 1.1 Update to restore Silencer behavior at levels 0, 1, and 2 to Ver 0.71) Questions: Is the only difference between FMF profiles used in the base factory programs the Max F setting and whether FMF uses Frequency Addition or Conductive Soil Subtraction or are there other Min F or frequency combination or signal processing differences? Put another way, do similar programs that utilize Frequency Addition or Conductive Soil Subtraction behave the exactly the same if set up with the exact same Max F and other user adjustable settings? Examples include Dive, Beach, and Beach Sensitive at the same Max F or Sensitive/Sensitive FT/Fast and Park and Deep HC at the same Max F and all other parameters adjusted equivalently. This is important information for users trying to determine the most appropriate base program to use for developing custom user program profiles. Is the Silencer filter disabled when set to “0”? If not, was Silencer at Level 0 modified from ver 0.71? (Answer to second question is yes, but ver 0.71 behavior at Silencer = 0 was restored in the ver 1.1 update except Program 3 - Sensi FT which retains the Ver 1.0 aggressive low level Silencer filter) Were Ver 1.0 non-ferrous ID ranges/segments (especially high conductivity TIDs) adjusted vs. Ver 0.71? When will the Go Terrain App be available in all geographic regions? Will it be possible in the future to delete some of the redundant factory programs to enable more custom user program slots? Ability to apply updates and reload/re-program custom user programs via a mobile device or PC interface as an alternative to programming via tge remote’s limited interface would be a welcome new feature. Expanding the number of Characters that can be used for naming custom user programs would also be welcome. Is a D2 compatible small elliptical coil (or enabling existing HF elliptical coil compatibility with D2) on the table (even if it is not-dive rated) or is that just out of the question as far as XP is concerned? A lot of prospective and existing D2 users have expressed a desire for this popular coil form factor for D2.
    1 point
  43. Hi all. We are a married couple that started detecting in 1988. We started with a Fisher Gold Bug and we now own an Ace 250, an ATMax, Garrett carrot, Vibraprobe pinpointer along with Scoopal and Nokta sand scoops. We have always used Garrett and I never upgraded past my 250 because it works for me. My husband likes his AtMax. We have done beaches, water, parks, tot lots, you name it I bet we've done it. Lots of travel (full-time RVers), lots of fun and LOTS of stuff. I used to be a contributing writer and photographer for Western Eastern Treasures magazine. Too bad it's gone now. We are both retired and have detected the daylights out of our area within 100 miles from where we live here in Oregon. Been here 22 years. We used to be on other forums but kind of stopped doing much the last couple of years now. Getting old. Got back into the swing (pun intended) today after a hiatus and found this site. Looking forward to seeing your finds and meeting people.
    1 point
  44. I took a minute to update @Brad Plohman's awesome D2 Program log to make it V1.0 friendly. The new features are added and you might want to punch in your custom user programs before you update. It will make life a little easier. 😏 Enjoy! DEUS II FACTORY and USER PROGRAMS-V1.0.xlsx.zip
    1 point
  45. These language based AI's are not good for that stuff. But clearly we have self driving cars, delivery robots, etc that can handle spatial coordinates and real time visual data. But those are specialized cases, not stuff easy for the public to access like ChatGPT, etc. The problem is anything wheeled runs into rocks, bushes, etc. Anything with a coil that needs to touch the ground runs into the same issue. And anything flying drone based cannot get a coil real close to the ground, plus it's own motors create a ton of noise that makes things like detectors hard to use. I have a few other solutions to larger scale, semi-automated prospecting. But it'd require a lot of tinkering/research/building/failures, and at this point in life I doubt I'll ever have the time to do it since the payoff isn't that great compared to other things I could spend time on.
    1 point
  46. The purpose is to make access to the products easier, and a business decision to increase sales, Amazon gives them massive exposure to a big market of customers, a little dealership running out of their little shop or even garage is hardly comparable and not going to give them near as many sales and can't even be compared to the exposure they could get from Amazon. As someone that lives in a more remote place with harder access to many products Ebay, Amazon and the likes have been vital for me. Dealers in the US have been able to ship me product they otherwise wouldn't and I simply had no way to buy any other way as they joined Ebay's global shipping program, they just ship the product to Ebay who takes care of getting it to me, not another worry in the world about the sale for the seller, if they get it to Ebay, then that's their job done. It also helps with the costs of shipping with the bulk methods of shipping they use. "The Global Shipping Program makes your items available to more than 60 million buyers worldwide. You're protected from negative / neutral feedback, and have control over which items you want to ship through the program. Send your eligible item to our domestic shipping center, and once it reaches us, your job is done: We'll manage the international shipping and customs process for you." I don't know as much about Amazon but they appear to have a global shipping program too and a fulfillment option where businesses send products to Amazon fulfillment centers and when a customer makes a purchase, they pick, pack, and ship the order. They can also provide customer service and process returns for those orders. Yes, it's all part of the slow death of the dealer, it's been slowing happening over time, but the best way we can ensure our local friendly dealers survive is to buy from them when we can, although most dealers internet buying options are pretty basic and amateur so they're more targeting their local market with the retail stores than taking advantage of the huge customer base that is the internet. Many need to take a good look at their online stores and bring them up to be modern and easier to use, and more like the big players if they want more internet sales. It's really not difficult to make a good online store and if they can't do it they should just pay someone to do it, it's not a massive job. The internet is the biggest customer base in the world, take advantage of it!
    1 point
  47. Fresh picture 5 minutes ago>I know we got it covered here!! 😎
    1 point
  48. Busy day today, started out at 23 degrees, it was 36 by the time I got out there. Today I was testing SteveG's Carbon Fiber Deus 2 shaft. Sure looks nice. 👍 The 13" is the heaviest Deus 2 coil to date, and is what I intend to use on it. It's great for both beach and field, I've used the coil extensively now (almost 20 hours) and it even holds its own in corn stalks. Mounted on the shaft it feels tough, solid as a rock and light. The D2 with the 13" weighs 2.7 pounds, compared to my Equinox with 10x5 and Steve's excellent shaft for that it's .2 pounds lighter! (2.9 for Equinox) The only modification I made was to use a 1/4" neoprene pad in the cuff instead of the 1/8" pad supplied. Just for fun I also weighed the WS6 Master rig with the 9", it came in at 911g - exactly 2 pounds. 😀 The one thing I noticed right away is that the cuff legs and longer arm shaft don't catch or snag on anything, the XP shaft did frequently. 🫤 I set the shaft length so that the coil "floats", I can do that with the XP shaft but it's shorter, and it's always snagging on my shirt or gear. If you want to get the coil straight, simply set the detector on the floor, the coil has "legs". Loosen the camlock and adjust it so that the coil "legs" and the cuff legs are flat. That's it. Get your length, lock the camlock and go. I spent 6 hours in the field today and didn't experience any more arm fatigue than usual. I like the feel of the carbon fiber, and it cleans up much easier than the rubber coated XP shaft. I was also using my new Wire Free headphones, it was cold and I was going to be closer to the highway, so I decided to use over ear phones. They have a recess for the WSA II puck. They're not the greatest audio in the world, I had to tweak the equalizer a bit, but they're fine for me. I could hear everything. They only cost about $120 so you get what you pay for. I'd have bought the WSA II XL headphones but they don't have a removable audio module. This is better for me. Didn't find much today but I tested a lot of settings in different places. One thing I found is just how much depth you lose when using higher reactivity. I went over a spot where I searched with the 13" with reactivity 0, didn't get anything and it was suggested that I had reactivity too low. Went back there with reactivity at 2 and still got nothing, what I immediately noticed was that I also heard less targets, and what it did get wasn't as deep. I have audio response at 3, combined with R=0 you'll hear more, the separation is pretty much as good, and you don't have to swing much slower, just inspect what you hear that sounds good. Try it sometime. 😎 Case in point was this copper ring I dug later at 8", it was a loud 92 with R=0, and a faint 86 with R=2: I'm sticking with lower reactivity, out of the ground it was still a 92. 😁 Here's the haul, pretty scant but satisfying: Got the most boring two piece button I've ever found, no discernible backmarks and no front decoration, just a pit: A musket ball, a mangled thimble, some sort of finial or very weird bullet, the ring, a wheel for something that I first thought was a button but the "axle" goes through it. Got a gold plated cufflink: Looks like it had something attached. Last find was a Tombac, seriously deep and a wavering 47. And that's why the trash was horrible. Lots of aluminum going over 85 today. 😡 The small pieces get dug because Tombac buttons. 😀 Very little falsing iron!
    1 point
  49. Thanks, yes comparing to the Pro Pointer AT is all I'm interested in, I don't particularly like any other pinpointer, and I've just about got them all. The AT is currently the only one I like for my purposes. If I was more of a beach hunter I'd be more interested in using my F-Pulse over the AT but in my inland gold and coin areas the AT goes just as deep as the F-Pulse but more sensitive and just works better for me. Every other pinpointer I've been disappointed in, other than the XP which is good, but just not as good as my Carrot for my purposes which are small gold and coins in mild soils.
    1 point
×
×
  • Create New...