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Steve Herschbach

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Posts posted by Steve Herschbach

  1. Paul, all it is was is a mention of his using Normal at http://golddetecting.4umer.net/t22791-more-than-40-deeper#220355

     

    I had been mulling my post about running hot for some time and the fact Normal was working well for Dale triggered my post. Part of the problem we face prospecting is the differences between Oz and the US and stuff being posted in one place being misapplied in another. Dales post gave me confidence that the GPZ can be run hotter in Oz than I might previously have assumed and that therefore running hot might have wider application than I had thought.

    • Like 1
  2. Hello schiara,

    I have always run exclusively in ground tracking mode. It has always worked well for me, even before the recent update, and so I have seen no reason to use manual. I was a manual only guy until I got my hands on the SDC 2300, which is always tracking, and it is obvious it does not hurt its ability to get the faintest targets. With the confidence built there I just decided early on to go with the tracking system from day one on the GPZ and have never regretted it.

    JP made mentions about going to manual whenever digging targets but I have not. I do try and make sure my coil is well away from the hole and pick when I dig but I have not worried about it all that much. Seems if the pick was a problem then going over a can or big nails would be problematic also, and I sure go over my share of those with no seeming ill effects. Maybe I have been too lackadaisical in that regard. The good news is the update was designed to help with those sorts of things so it is doing nothing but get better.

    I am no electronics wizard but I do not see anything about the way the GPZ operates that would preclude discrimination being a feature we see some day. For now I seem to be able to cherry pick fairly well if I have to just by digging sweet tones. No doubt things get missed but in a field full of nails it is either do that or break out the VLF.

  3. Gold Hound, your post on the other forum inspired me to make my post here. Interesting on General and like all things just seems to depend on the ground. The ground I have been hunting as a rule is rather mild but sadly also rather shallow and gold not so large either. High Yield just seems to do the trick better here but then again it may just be my bad hearing does not allow me to equal you skill in that regard. I think I am a fairly good detectorist but never regarded myself as being top notch when it comes to getting my settings dialed perfectly. I rely on my prospecting skills and long hours to make up what I lack in tuning skills. I will try more with General however as I tend to get in a rut sometimes. Thanks for the tip.

    • Like 1
  4. Hello Steve, I have been running the same settings as you recommend now since day one. I also looked at the ZED as an oversized VLF as far as the audio goes, but a VLF it is not. I am very happy with performance. Here in my neck of the woods the ZED is really hitting on the irregular shapes of the local alluvial gold, especially the smaller stuff. I dug a one pennyweight piece last weekend that was down twenty two inches and it sounded very nice, nothing iffy about it. No Smoothing, Normal, High Yield, Gain at Twenty and keep your swing mode low and slow. Just my thoughts, TRINITYAU/RAYMILLS.

    Check my book out, Detecting for Gold, Adventures, Trips and Tips at

    TRINITYAU.COM

     

    You are the perfect example of a truly knowledgeable VLF operator Ray so no surprises there. I think a good VLF guy like you has a far easier time learning a GPZ 7000 than somebody who has only used Minelab PI detectors. I am glad to hear the Zed is hitting a sweet spot for you. Really an amazing machine. I have to have Chris weigh my smallest piece as it is too small to accurately weigh even on my digital powder scales. He has some analytic scales. It was no accidental find while digging something else either. I used to walk away from some tiny gold signals with the Zed in early days but have my pinpointing down pat now, and it is crazy how small that big coil will hit. I have no doubt when a smaller coil comes out for the GPZ it will match or beat the SDC2300 on small gold. And as you know it gets the depth on the big stuff for sure.

  5. Norvic, I do have poor hearing and in fact wear hearing aids at times but not when I am detecting (they freak out) so who knows what other people hear compared to what I am hearing. No doubt some of this is to harsh for others and sounds fine to me? Again, that is why they give us controls to adjust. Even if we were all in the same location we all have personal differences to account for.

  6. Don't say I did not warn you. I don't keep close track of my hours but I know I have well over 500 hours on the GPZ and probably took me 300 hours of listening to the machine to get to where I am now. I have used those settings up in your neck of the woods though so it is not just a northern Nevada thing. If the andesite is not giving you good enough signals this will help!

    Some places, especially in Nevada these settings actually run pretty quiet. More than I let on really. Problem is I have nothing even hotter to run now so maybe Minelab needs to put in a special "Insane" setting just for me. It would probably make a person sterile running it but I don't want any more kids anyway.

    You must be headed for the foothills. Froze up solid over this way this morning. Good luck!!

    • Like 1
  7. No, in fact I have not seen the episode myself and I am not going to join the GPAA just to watch it. That one we met Kevin at Rye Patch a month ago. There is another one, from when we met Kevin at Gold Basin about a year ago. Never saw it either. Bummer.

    Thanks for posting Scott. I pretty much quit Facebook so I would not have seen the picture. And looking there I see that the good news is that some of the Gold Trails episodes are released on YouTube.

  8. Yeah, 2015 was the year of the GPZ. But it was also the year of the Minelab Go-Find, Teknetics Digitek, Fisher F22, and White's TreasureMaster. Lots of people chasing the low end.

    Not much has changed since I last stirred the rumor pot in December at http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/topic/478-best-metal-detector-rumors-2015/ with the exception of the Minelab announcements. As expected the top end offerings from First Texas are slipping into 2016 and for me personally are the units I am most curious about. The Makro Gold Racer will still happen before year end I am sure. Garrett and White's are secretive as ever so who knows. And Tesoro I still don't care - looks like Nokta/Makro has supplanted them as the people to look to for bang for the buck.

    • Like 1
  9. My CTX went back about a year ago - GPS never worked from the day I got it. I sent the whole thing, had it back in less than ten days. I called prior to sending to confirm what I should do and how long it would take, etc. and I recommend you do the same. They contacted me even they received it and let me know when it was on the way back. Couldn't ask for better service, hope you get the same!

  10. It may just be easier also to use SQLite Databrowser or one of the other couple freeware alternatives I am playing with to write a SQL script to do the same thing but I need to play a bit more with using SQL to generate kml. It looks like those programs can save SQL scripts and if so then they could be shared and run by anyone.

    If anyone is following any of this at all please, please use saved copies of mldata and GPZ7000.MLX for any and all experimenting!!! And before anyone asks who does not know what or where those are it is looking more and more like a hacking the GPZ thread is in order.

  11. The GPZ has 32MB to play with I think, but some artificial limits, like 10 tracks/paths. And maybe 1000 find points? More stuff to double check but it is less a memory limit than limits imposed in software. They certainly could have put in more memory, cheap stuff these days, but then again you run into the issue of just how much stuff do you want in that GPZ in case somebody "borrows" it? Probably best to dump every couple days like I do now, even if it could hold more.

  12. You got it Jason, I was thinking just plotting lines in Google earth than using the kml to import the same lines into the GPZ.

    I am a computer nerd from when it all started, but I learned long ago investing much effort in learning stuff was lost effort as things change so quickly. So I just figure out what I need to do what I need when I need it, just like you. I use a very obscure and no longer supported program called GDIdb Pro http://www.gdidb.com that can tap into any database and output almost anything. I used it to tap into our in store system for price and inventory information, add details held in an access database, and combine it all into html that automatically loaded every day to create the old online store at AMDS. It built the entire website from scratch each morning and uploaded changed files, so price and inventory information always matched the in store system. It ended up being a very long and very complex script but I had a ball developing get it as it exceeded anything I could buy off the shelf. The main thing about GDIdb Pro is it is dirt cheap, simple, powerful, and very well documented. I own a licensed developer version that lets me create runtime executables but they would be needlessly complex. I was looking at alternatives last night and had pretty much decided Python would be easy enough to learn and use as a mainstream alternative but sheesh, like I need something else to do! I can do what I need to do for just me already - like I say and as you can understand producing something that works for others is definitely more work.

    If you are interested the site above allows the shareware version to be downloaded. It has been superseded by modern languages but is ridiculously powerful for such a compact little program.

    GDIdb Pro has some native connectivity but for SQLite it uses ODBC. So somebody like Norvic would need a PC. Then they would need to download and install the SQLite ODBC driver from http://www.ch-werner.de/sqliteodbc/ They would then have to install the GDIdb runtime and execute my script. Like I say, kind of clunky but it would work.

    I have been thinking of starting a thread on hacking the GPZ/CTX but I am frankly concerned about somebody not using proper precautions hosing their GPZ so I am not going there yet. I want to see if I can purposefully wipe my GPZ and if it then reboots with all needed files or at least can be restored from a generic backup first. The last thing I want is Minelab getting service calls because people mess up the files. It would not be warranty either so best to be cautious. As usual I am juggling lots of stuff but I am "on it" now so will sort it out quickly.

  13. Just curious Jason, what do you mean by outlines? Property line? Previously recorded tracks or paths can be reloaded up in the GPZ and viewed. It would be fairly easy to import an artificially created path into the GPZ that would represent a property line.

  14. You gotta start somewhere and they did. There is certainly room for improvement and no doubt there will be. But Minelab moves slowly when they move at all so my advice to folks is to not be holding their breath. Remember this is not new, it is a carryover from the CTX 3030 and so when you look at it from that perspective there has been no real attempt made at upgrading the GPS capability for a long time.

    There is nothing we can do about the GPZ side of things ourselves but somebody out there could easily develop a replacement for XChange that would work for all CTX and GPZ owners. When you add CTX users there are a lot of people out there who might pay a few bucks for a decent replacement. I am nowhere near being a programmer and I think I could do it if I put in the effort. For a genuine programmer it should be a trivial project.

    Where the GPZ shines for me is in being able to track my ground coverage on screen as I go to insure I leave no gaps. I can go back at any time later with old tracks loaded up and simply take up where I left off. Marking nugget finds has also paid off seeing patch patterns develop. It is just far easier to do it with the GPZ than with a separate GPS unit. I did not trust the thing and was using both my Garmin and the GPZ for some time, but now that I have the workflow down I finally gave up on the Garmin.

    I am not trying to sell anyone else on this so please understand I fully accept whatever reasons people have for not using it and complaints about all the things it could do but does not. I get it. But for anyone interested I am really, really going to be doing up a set of articles on the finer details very soon. Been on the back burner all summer for obvious reasons.

    • Like 1
  15. Yes Chris, onX Hunt is fabulous but to let people know it is a per state subscription service. Well worth it for me and I subscribe for both California and Nevada. The good news is you can try out a fully functional trial version. It is really invaluable in California where there are private property parcels all over the place.

    It has the ability to preload and use maps offline but it was not working worth a darn for me until a recent update. Seems happy now.

  16. Hello Dave,

    I have pretty well cracked both the GPZ7000 and the XChange databases using the tips I provided at the links above. Both as you note are a SQLite database but in slightly different formats. I am writing a script to export XChange data to Google Earth kml format which is fairly easy, and another to export directly from the GPZ7000 itself. That way data already in XChange can be exported, and, once that is done, data exported directly from the GPZ without even using XChange.

    I enjoy scripting, which I used to do a lot, so it is a fun little project. I am considering making the scripts available but what works for me can be pretty basic. Making something that works for others is quite a bit more work though as it requires a lot more polish to make sure others can't screw things up. Lucky for you to have a son to do it for you!

    The other nice thing is once in kml format it is easy to convert to use in almost any mapping software. I just bought OziExplorer to experiment with importing into it. Importing into Garmin Basecamp was very easy.

    The problem with scripting is it can get addictive. I was fussing with the code last night customizing the find point information in Google Earth to modify the icons and pop up balloons that display the information on nugget depth and weight. I ended staying up way past my bedtime.

    I will be writing about using the Zed GPS system a lot in the next month. I am comfortable enough with it now I stopped using my Garmin. I agree - I like the Zed GPS system and having it has become a key part of how I prospect now.

    • Like 1
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