Roughwater

Glad you are good to go now. I gotta say though, the 5000 ain't a bad back up. Dated or not, it's a powerful machine!

Lots of great info there Gerry. I think I may have found some of that gold ore and tossed it thinking it was just a hot rock. It was 05 when I first met you and I had bought a GP 3500 from you which thankfully qualified me to a few days training with you at Rye patch. Actually the training was what caused me to make that first purchase from you as you charged the same as everyone else for a GP so it was a no Brainer to purchase from you. That was a great training session too! I found my first little nugget with you at Rye patch on that third day of training. It was in a tall pile of worked dirt and gravel. The next day on my own I found around 8 more nuggets with that 3500, one of which weighted just over an ounce. Some of the other folks there hunting and camping at RP said it was the largest found in the last few years. Unfortunately I didn't have that kind of luck in Alaska but it was a great trip none the less. We also met a few years later when I bought a GPX 5000 from you and you trained me again in southern Oregon. On that trip I also did a little gem prospecting as well. On that trip the gold was small and there were only a few tiny nuggets found with a gold bug. Then this last time I tried beach hunting and bought a 3030 from you and we did hunt Atlantic beach in NC as you mentioned. The Rye Patch pic you have is not of my Rig but I wish it was. When you see the picture of my Rig below, (4 runner) I'm sure you will recall as I remember you saying something about how bad it was sagging in the back. It was sagging too as I was caring gear for 3 people as I was headed to Alaska from Rye patch and picked up 2 gentlemen from Texas in Anchorage who were going to prospect with me at a creek near Anchorage. Unfortunately the trip to Alaska sometimes on gravel roads for a hundred miles shook the ship our of that old Toyota and I ended up buying a Ford Diesel 4x4 in Alaska in order to get back home.

Cute video. Wish my dad could have bought me a 6K detector when I was young, but when I was young you could buy a home for 6k. If I had a place to hunt like that, I'd buy one in a heart beat!

Aerospace Guy, That's a interesting read. Are you saying the Equinox 800 could see some actual gold targets the 6k could not see? I'm assuming you were there, so what were you swinging, the 800? If so what coil? So how did the 800 do at rye patch while hunting for gold? Could you expand? I know the 800 is capable of finding gold, I just didn't know it would be that sensitive to tiny gold? Terry

Great Job Gerry. I been away from detecting for a while but it's great to see you are still hard at it and have found a new detector to play with. I am sure you must be ultra excited about it's potential to find missed gold. I would be more tempted myself to jump at the 6000 but with my age and knees and distance to gold from the east coast it probably wouldn't get much use, but I may be contacting you about getting a equinox 800 before long. Being a Vet like you (Semper Fi) I appreciate the discount you and Minelab provide us Vets. I would tell you "keep at it" but I know you love your job so no chance you won't. Terry in NC

Schoolof hardNox, I've been to that school quite often. I see the three little dots, thanks for the tip!

I don't see an Edit button so for accuracy's sake, I should mention the shooting happened Saturday morning, not Sunday.

Appreciate the reality check Steve. I owned a TDI years ago. I liked it but I felt the discrimination was pretty poor compared to a VLF detector. Doing some basic testing with it, I initially thought it would discriminate pretty well but real world use proved me wrong. I happened to break out my Eureka gold today that I hadn't used in several years. No gold around here but I was looking for my property line stake. This will sound like a crazy story because it is. This past Sunday morning at 3 AM someone knocked on my door. I woke without my glasses and had no idea what time it was and answered the door. A 30ish man was at the door and asked if he could please come in, that he was shot and to call 911. I did, and long story short got him help and the Sheriff and squad out to our place. He had two bullet wounds so I thought he was shot twice but apparently one wound was the entrance and the other the exit. The sheriffs went next door and found another man wounded even more severely and life flighted him to Duke hospital in Durham NC. Well, the property line stake I was looking for with the Eureka was along the property line where the shooting happened and I happened to see a spent 9mm casing on the ground while looking for the stake so I gave it to the Sheriff today and they ended up borrowing my Eureka for a few minutes to look for whatever. I probably should have offered to operate it as it's a bit touchy with that AA battery pack. The man who shot the two men was staying next door with his mother and is a convicted Felon and I learned today from the Sheriff the mother is a convicted felon too! This used to be such a quiet place to live. As to detectors, I'll probably sell the Eureka, skip the AQ and pick me up a Equinox 800 to look for coins and who knows, maybe spent shell casings too? In the meantime I'm keeping my 10mm Glock close and will be more reluctant to answer the door at 3 AM. However doing so might have saved at least one person's life so I have no regrets. Sadly, there were several people next door where the shooting took place and no one called 911? Not even the shooters mother. I imagine they were too busy trying to hide evidence so it's very fortunate that one man escaped.

Joe, I appreciate the info. I imagine this detector wouldn't be the most ideal coin detector. I've been completely away from detecting for a while. I didn't think I missed it that much but when I heard this detector in operation it took me back. It has the sound of a GPX and I've owned a couple in the past. Strangely I miss that sound! This detector even if not perfect seems to have some redeeming qualities. It doesn't cost 5 or 7000 dollars like some of the minelabs. It doesn't even cost as much as a 3030. Someone using one on youtube could see a nickel at 19" in beach sand. I don't see a lot of other machines that could make that claim at twice the price point. It does have some ability to discriminate but hasn't proven it's self and almost for sure doesn't discriminate as well as a top end coin machine. But for the money not bad and seems to be a step beyond the Whites TDI. But if Fisher won't fully field it then I would have to think there are other issues with it that haven't been revealed which could even be things beyond function like patents etc. But of course only the top dogs at Fisher know for sure.

Things have been weird lately. After a long time away from Metal Detecting I suddenly get real interested in collecting coins and have been buying some. So I think again about detecting as maybe I could find a few good ones this way. Of course I gotta go to Prospecter/Detector to see what the latest greatest is. Unfortunately I can't get on the website? I'm thinking what happened? I try for a few days in a row to get on and I'm starting to wonder if somehow I had been banned or something from the website. I did see something on Face book about Steve going to Alaska for a while but I never heard of him shutting the site down while he was away before. I was so relieved when I got a message today about the site being down and now back up. First thing I come across at the website is about the new Fisher Impulse AQ. I start reading about it and watching a couple youtube videos and think this looks great! I see there is a lot of discussion here about it over a year ago so I'm thinking this thing must be for sale by now. I check and see none at Gerrys website and none for sale on ebay so I came back here and start reading up on this thread through all 14 pages where it kinda dies on May 14 2020. But then again that's about the time Covid started hitting hard so I suppose that could explain the delay?

Great article Fred. Thanks for passing it on. Based on the article is sounds like there is great potential in the US for finding diamonds other than in Arkansas. Oh for whatever reason the link didn't work but I get the ICMJ so I looked it up on the on-line version of the magazine. Terry

Nice, but Too rich for my blood though.

Wow. That is one excellent example of a Megalodon sharks tooth. It still has visible serrations. The one's I have seen usually came from the ocean and the serrations are worn off at best. That's a keeper tooth for sure!

http://aurorafossilmuseum.org/post/28/megalodon.html I haven't visited here but it sounds very interesting and I plan to do so this week at which time I will add more info to this post. What interest me very much about the Museum is that they have a pit across the street that contains material donated by the Potash Corp who has a mine in the area. The material is free to explore and contains fossils including sharks teeth. Here is a exert from the website: "Some of the best examples of the fossil record near Aurora, North Carolina are from the Pleistocene, Pliocene and Miocene geologic times are put on exhibit at the Aurora Fossil Museum. One of the most diverse assemblages of marine fossils one can find in these sediments are found in the coarse material separated from the ore at the Mill Operations and donated to the Aurora Fossil Museum by PotashCorp-Aurora. You can collect your own fossils when you visit the Aurora Fossil Museum and take your own journey back in geologic time. You will truly be amazed!" Terry