Jin

I bought one of those a while back. Tried following the manual but couldn't get the thing quiet. I think the ground was too mineralized. These are the coils that came with mine. Sorry the pictures are a little grainy. The lens on the iPad was dirty.

Interesting that in 1989 Kevin Hillier said "he went back to the spot over the past 12 months and only found 20gms" - but that was using the same detector he found the hand with. You would think that 9 years later he could afford an upgrade. Wonder if that spot gave up much more over the years since. 

Is this the one?

Cheers Northeast, I wish I was finding a lot of gold. Just have a few good runs now and then, but the truth is only getting out 2 days a month makes it pretty hard to find new patches. Sometimes I have 10 or more spots marked on the GPS and give each spot 1 hour and if nothing turns up or I don't like the look of the spot I move on.  I love prospecting and the thrill of the hunt. The golds a bonus. Just happy that the wifes taken a small interest in my hobby.  

After 2 years going solo on my prospecting trips I found out that by buying a caravan my wife would finally come prospecting with me. Originally we bought the caravan for trips away but she said she didn't mind if we took it away to prospecting areas now and again. The only downside is I had to buy something to tow the van so I bought a new jeep and she said no bush bashing in it as she doesn't want scratches or dents. My Prado is slowly getting destroyed with all the rough tracks and river crossings I do in it.  So it looks like ill be doing lots of walking for the time being.

The next door neighbor had an electric powered mountain bike which I bought but it needs a new battery. The bike does 80kmh, but I think I'll stick to 20kmh and at least get there in one piece. Should be really good to be able to ride across the country looking for potential gold bearing ground. Walking takes too long. 

Anyway, we took the van for its maiden voyage 6 weeks ago and the wife loved it. She reads a lot while I detected which seemed to work. Hopefully one day she might even have a go at detecting. 

There's nothing better than coming back to the van for a hot shower and a home-cooked meal. Usually, my solo trips consist of detecting from dusk until its dark, eating dry bread and a can of soup for dinner. Then crawling into the rooftop tent and going to sleep. As I only get to the Golden Triangle once a month I need to make it count. I found cooking/cleaning wasted to much time. Heck, i don't even have time to butter my bread so the butter stays home. A good day detecting for me is around 11 hours straight. And that's swinging the 18" Elite. Usually can only manage 2 days of that and then i want to go home. Besides, i think the family doesn't mind me going every month because there short trips.  

We're off again next week this time to Daylesford which is a nice little town. I'll probably get up at 5:00 am and detect until 10:00 am then take her out and go for a few walks.

Got a new "SteelPhase sP01 Audio Enhancer" coming this week so that will be good to see how it compares to the B&Z booster.

Heres a picture of our last trip. It was a stopover at Waanyarra on the way home. Ended up finding a few bits near the campground so that was a bonus.  

A question to either Reg or jrbeatty if they care to answer.

I was wondering if there is a lot of difference between the prototypes you were using and what's available today? Now I know that today's detectors are better at finding the small stuff and probably handle hot ground better,  but do they actually go deeper? Let's say for argument's sake that you had 5 patches of gold-bearing ground that the prototype handled ok and you grided and worked those patches to death, did a later model detector find gold "AT DEPTH" that you missed with the prototypes? (Surely you would have revisited some of those patches with new release detectors.) Or did those prototypes do a pretty good job?  

I've been thinking about doing the same to mine also. I reckon the pointier end would be much better at digging than the original design. Thanks for the pictures Dave

Cheers Rick

Once again thank you Jrbeatty and Reg for sharing your story and those awesome photos. I especially liked the 27 ouncer (found in recent times) as I got to see that one in real life. Good luck on the goldfields to both of you.  

thankyou jrbeatty, very informative and helpful advice. 

Started overlaying some geo and old parish maps onto google earth yesterday. It's a bit disheartening when you're looking for particular things on a map and they always turn up on private property. Might have to approach a few farmers and see if a free days work on their farm beforehand will get me on for a detect. Then a percentage of the gold found split between farmer and my self.     

Finally got back to this little patch but only managed 2gms yesterday. All up I think I did 6 days of detecting here. What a learning experience it was. The gold was scattered in so many directions. In the end, i started to look at the rocks at the bases of the trees to try and follow the flow of the gravels that was carrying the gold. I even started to randomly dig holes to make sure I was detecting ground that had the sort of gravels that id found most of the gold in.  I've hit this area with many different coils and settings but think its pretty well done now. I do know one guy that went over the area with a 7000 (2 days after I showed him my 40 grams of reef gold) but looking at fresh holes I don't think he got much.  I still managed to extract another 66 grams using the 4500 so still happy. Some of the gold hasn't been cleaned and some contain quart/ironstone but all up over 100gms from one little area. I also spent one day at Waanyarra but only managed one 0.44gm piece. On the way to Waanyarra i hit a kangaroo at 100km (60 miles an hour ) on the Calder Freeway. Only saw it at the last moment because it was still dark. Couldn't swerve as my 4wd would probably roll over. Damaged the bullbar a bit. R.I.P kangaroo.

21 hours ago, Jin said:

I wondered if this was the new coil for the sdc being tested, but it sounds more like a gpx is being used.

 

2

Not owning a Sdc im not familiar with its sound so might be completely way off. Viewing this video on a big high-resolution monitor using windows magnifier you can make out that the letters on the coil and colours are similar to the standard minilab coils (red/black/white). Stoppsy who made this video knows Rowan from Nugget Finder coils and often has pre-release coils he tries out. Looking at the bits of the coil you can see... it doesn't look like a Nugget Finder coil. I just thought that the coil used might have been for the Sdc.  

I wondered if this was the new coil for the sdc being tested, but it sounds more like a gpx is being used.

jrbeatty, thank you for reposting all those great photos and the stories behind them. Much appreciated. 

Been planning on a few days detecting this week. Worked my but off doing extra work in my business and at home so I didn't feel guilty heading off for a few days. Checked the weather and it looks like the area im going to is going to have up to 20mm of rain. It's a  6-hour return trip so a little annoying if I don't get a reasonable amount of time detecting in. Anyway, it's 2 weeks since my last swing and im keen to get back and see if the area has any more surprises waiting, so I'm going anyway.

Not too bothered by wet ground but i hope there's no bad EMI which makes running the 18" a pain. I'll take a few plastic bags to cover the control box and keep detecting if it's only light rain. Worse case scenario I don't get a lot of detecting in but I can always walk for miles and look for spots which look good for detecting and put them into the GPS for next time. 

8 hours ago, PhaseTech said:

Good stuff mate! Big coil = big gold, simple formula. Good to hear those Gogs are working for you. 

You using an older or re-issue 4500? 

Hi Nenad, Its the re-issue 4500. I only recently started using the bigger coil after finding a few 0.50 gram bits with it. It gave me the confidence to know that the bigger coils are quite capable of finding the smaller stuff as well as going deep on bigger bits. I also cover a lot more ground in a day using the larger coil. 

This week I got a chance to get over to the goldfields for two days. It's a fair drive so I'm not able to get out as often as others so my experience is limited. Most of what I've learned has come from books, videos, forums, and Facebook. I was lucky last month to stumble upon some ground that had been worked over by someone else but not thoroughly. Out of that patch, i found another 2 ounces. Using what I learned from finding that patch I went looking for more in a different area. On Monday and Tuesday, i found another 40 grams of gold in 4 different locations. It's a shame I can only go prospecting once a month but at least now I know how to narrow my search area right down to make the time im prospecting count. Most of this was found using the 18" Coiltek Elite on a 4500. I do use a b&z booster with Gog headphones which I think picks up those faint targets better. I'm also thinking the reason I did ok is the ground is very cold and damp so maybe the signal strength is better than during the middle of summer. The biggest bit of gold weighed 16 grams and was dug at 350mm or around 14 inches. I was lucky to hear that one as I was walking pretty quickly swinging the coil. 

A video I made that might help someone who uses a Google Earth and wants to transfer that data onto a GPS. I use this all the time to quickly drive/walk into areas that I've researched online. My other video that I did shows you how I overlay old maps onto Google Earth. Hope it helps at least someone.

That map you're talking about is a beauty as it shows a lot of the nuggets, their size and position found. I just use windows 10 snipping tool to grab a part of the map, save it as a jpg file and overlay it directly onto Google Earth. Then I mark the areas im interested in and download those marked spots onto my GPS.  I never overlay a complete map as the fine details are lost when zooming in. Even though that is an old map and many of the roads aren't there the main ones are and it's fairly easy to line up on Google Earth. I did a video on this whole procedure recently if anyone is interested. It is about 25 min long and shows step by step how I go about overlaying maps.

16 hours ago, Jonathan Porter said:

Wrote a reply and supplied a link to the blog I have up on Treasure Talk. Had two people out with the Monster yesterday for training, broke my record and pinged a piece of gold in 10 seconds. One buyer will be selling, he's just not a VLF fan and has no intention of trying to learn even though I told him all this prior to making the purchase (he came into the game on PI's, so has no real concept of hot rocks and ground noise. Hes not angry at me or bagging Minelab, he's just decided VLF'ing is NOT for him), the other guy is having a blast and enjoying his experience.

For people reading this thread who have never used a VLF before especially in Australia, they take effort and patience, that's the nature of VLF's even in quiet ground.......BUT they can be a lot of fun so long as your realistic. If your not prepared to put some effort in I suggest you opt for an SDC instead.

I would love it if Minelab made an SDC with MPF in a Monster housing!!! Imagine that? 

JP

At the Australian Airshow this year Codan had a stand, the Managing Director of Minelab said they were looking into fitting the sdc guts into the Monster box. Doesn't mean it will happen though but it would be great if it did. 

Great tips everyone. Thanks also to geof_junk for those links.  

I'm one of those people that have a compass in the backpack and don't know how to use it. Going to make an effort to learn after reading this thread.

I carry a GPS with spare batteries (charged) as well as a PLB, light, whistle, compass, lighter and snake bite kit in my backback. Once I got lost and it was only about 300m from the car. I'd walked up a hill to take a look only to lose my bearings on the way back down. The bush was pretty thick and everything started to look the same.

After back tracking a couple of times I knew I was lost, and sunset wasn't far off so I started to panic. I then noticed that I had the GPS in my hand, after marking the spot at the car for a look on google earth when I got home. I'd actually never used the GPS to find my way back as it was only new. Fortunately, I worked it out and within 3 or 4 minutes found the car.

I was waiting for either a new sdc or 7000 to come out before buying, but it seems what we have already won't be updated (other than the software update) for at least two years. Might be a new coin and relic machine on the way (from Minelab) has anyone heard anything about that?

Remember seeing this a while back, Guy has modded his GPX to have a screen that displays the visual target response.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Go_kb9nwz0

Not sure if its just me but the sound that detector makes is annoying. Didn't seem to be any difference in the audio levels when he picked up the target before digging, to when he was directly swinging over the gold. Usually you get a faint target response and as you dig deeper the response gets louder until it blanks out when directly over the target. I'm in no way an expert (only been detecting a year and a bit) but that's what I noticed when watching the video.