Steve Herschbach

Wow, great to see you here Monte - welcome to the forum! I was out running the new FORS Gold+ myself yesterday. Comments soon.

Nice shot and nicer nugget!. I have got my best results with natural sunlight or flash photography. The beauty of digital is just try lots of things as they is no cost of processing. I would hate to see the bill for all my lousy photos!

Risky business. Let's say a guy is doing that, just refiling at county every 90 days. I become aware of this. So I go in and quietly stake the ground just before the 90 days runs out, except I go straight to BLM and file with them also. If guy waits until the 90 day mark and refiles at county level, the chain to perfecting the claim breaks and they are now my claims.

I have had federal claims and even though I qualified for the small miner exemption I elected to pay the fee. Does that mean I was a "big miner"? I still have state mining claims in Alaska. Alaska state claims there is no exemption. You pay annual rental fees, and they escalate every five years.

Yikes! Sorry to say Barry I was not trying to be a league beagle or make legal definitions or any such thing. I'm just think like an old timer and to me there is prospecting, and there is mining. I am a prospector myself. I do appreciate all the effort you make and your deep knowledge of the subject.

Fabulous finds Ringmoney, thanks for posting! As far as I know the TDI Big Box is as close as you can get to a Deepstar for beach detecting. The problem with the Deepstars is they are almost impossible to get, and they are getting old enough servicing batteries, etc. is an issue. I think the TDI is a much better option for that reason. If I lived closer to the coast I would get another TDI for sure.

Commander coils are top notch in my opinion, just heavy. The 12 x 15 DD is not bad at all but the 18" round DD is a beast.

I can only assume that with the introduction of the GPX that demand for DD coils dropped off. I stopped using them myself and so did many others. Have you seen http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/topic/1361-new-detech-15-dd-coil-for-minelab-gpx/

I guess it depends on how you define small miner. Most people with claims filing a small miners exemption are doing no mining at all. Many that are active are more involved in what I would define as exploration and/or development. A better gauge would be number of people mining under approved plans of operation filing small miners exemptions. I would guess Alaska has the largest number of genuine small miners or what Alaska would call "family run mining operations". There are about 300 placer operations in the state, average employee count of four, many of them family run businesses http://www.alaskapublic.org/2015/01/13/placer-mining-big-business-in-alaska-report-finds/ Good information though and I do not want to come across as a critic - thanks for the effort!

iMask is indeed an adjustable attenuation of target responses on the disc side of things. The intention just like with iSAT is to tame the chatty responses that can occur with a high frequency, high gain device in severely mineralized ground. Just like everything there is a trade off that occurs between stability and sensitivity when using iMask. It is late and I will be involved in detector testing all day tomorrow. Not air tests, I rarely do that at all any more except to gather basic reference information. Out in the field, so will be offline all day. In case nobody has guessed I have quite a few hours on Gold Racer prototypes and will do up a detailed report for you on Saturday. Yes, in my opinion the detector has been worth the wait. I have never had the pleasure of using anything quite like it before. A lot of work from a lot of people around the world went into this one.

No this unit is not modded. To be frank I have far more powerful detectors and no amount of modding is going to change that. I just bought it in a whim and will be tossing it in my rig with a bunch of VLF detectors tomorrow to get a little self educating done. Since the warranty can be transferred to the next owner I do not want to mess with that. If something wows me tomorrow maybe I will keep it otherwise it will go up for sale with several other machines soon. Remember the real goal of the SPP was to clear a warehouse full of unsold units made for Africa. White's is basically blowing them out and any money spent making changes to them just gets them farther in the hole. I am really speculating here but maybe units shipped to Oz are modified now to fix the hiccup and so White's raised the price on them? I have never heard of anyone having the hiccup problem in the U.S., has anyone else? So units here may be cheaper base units and ones sold in Oz had to have every box opened up, unpacked, mods made, reboxed, etc. that would drive dealer cost up fast. Again though, pure speculation on my part.

What if the pinpointer is wireless and links into the headphones, how great would that be? Just speculating but seems very possible.

First kid on your block! Thanks for the great photos.

Hopefully there will be a model that comes stock with just the new coil for the nugget hunting crowd - those that do not already own a DEUS anyway!

I got to see one of these recently and it is the best cover for the GPZ 7000 I have seen and at a very reasonable price. Retail is $129 but most everyone seems to have it for US$109 which is a really great price in my opinion. Cheap insurance for a 10K detector! According to Doc: • Covers are made of durable heavy duty green canvas like material with a neoprene lining to cushion your expensive metal detector. • The kit includes the control box cover, the control head screen cover, and a cover for your Wireless module. • Easy access drop down rear panel to easily change the battery without having to take the entire cover off. • Easy access flap to plug your headphones directly in to the detector secured by hook and loop. • The bottom of the cover is made with single ply conveyor belt material. This makes the bottom tough as nails and easy to wipe the dirt and dust off with just a damp cloth. If anyone has one on their GPZ now would be a great time to post a photo!

Scott sent me this Google translate link on what appears to be a credible source discussing a detector show in France. https://translate.google.com/translate?act=url&depth=2&hl=en&ie=UTF8&nv=1&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://www.tousapoele.fr/xp-deus-v4-et-nouveaux-accessoires/ Big news includes a two box coil setup to take the DEUS to the cache hunting world, a pinpointer, phone app, but most of all, that new mystery coil. Version 4 of the DEUS operating system brings with it a new coil that allows for 10, 20, 30, and 40 khz operation. (2/10/17 update - the new frequencies will be 14, 30, and 59 kHz plus 14, 30, and 81 kHz. Go here for latest info) The old coils will not run at these frequencies so this new elliptical will take the DEUS to a whole new level, one with obvious implications for nugget hunters. It is also in this leaked dealer video starting around 19 minute mark....

You just think you are seeing cracks and inclusions because you are looking at the exterior of a diamond in the rough Tom. The diamond is classified as a "IIa," which means it has almost no impurities.

Yeah my ATX will run twice as long on 8 AA batteries as the TDI SL or SPP. They suck down the power. Some of that is getting lost as heat however. White's excuse for never making a waterproof TDI was too much heat buildup in the control box if the sealed box was used above water. I don't think the Infinium is any better at prospecting than the TDI SL or SPP. The ATX on the other hand I would rather use gold prospecting than any of the TDI variants, even given its weight and touch sensitive coils. So far it comes closer to giving a Minelab a run for the money than any other brand PI I have used but Garrett made a major strategic error with the physical design if their true intent was to make a dent in the prospecting market. Despite that the ATX has what I believe to be better across the board performance as a gold prospecting detector the TDI still beats it in the real world from a practical perspective. I would love to hear some TDI success stories from you.

Oh, I get it. You are talking about batteries. Frankly, I was talking more loosely in terms of actual performance in the field as prospecting detectors. There is a correlation when it comes to battery power and PI performance but battery power is not everything by a long shot. Probably more important is ground balancing efficiency and the sensitivity of the receiving circuitry. The original TDI and TDI Pro do have higher power batteries and do pack a bit more punch than the TDI SL and SPP so it is unfair of me to lump them together. I modified that line to read "TDI SL and SPP models" instead of just TDI. Thanks for pointing that out.

So what was your question? I was talking about the Infinium and TDI but if you want to toss the ATX in there that is fine by me.

I will sell it all as a package one of these days and frankly having the 5x9 as part of the package will make it attractive to the prospective purchaser. I appreciate you asking however.

There is detailed review information on the coil from Nenad Lonic in Australia at https://www.prospectingaustralia.com.au/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=203964#p203964

"Lucara Diamond Corp. said it recovered a gigantic 1,111-carat, gem-quality diamond from its Karowe mine in Botswana this week. To put that in perspective, it is believed to be the second-largest gem-quality stone ever found. The only one known to be bigger is the legendary Cullinan diamond, which was recovered in South Africa in 1905 and weighed 3,106.75 carats." Full story at http://business.financialpost.com/news/mining/canadian-miner-lucara-uncovers-1111-carat-diamond-believed-to-be-second-largest-ever-found

Yup, and first time we met Chris I was swinging a TDI SL prototype. Of course you soundly trounced me with your Minelab but I had a ball swinging the SL nonetheless!