Deft Tones

I wanted to hit the tot lot surround and shelter areas, then perhaps the parking area, but too many cars also. These kinds of places are best hunted in inclement weather. If it's cold and wet I'll have it all to myself. Hope we get rain soon.

I came up with this crazy idea to attempt finding gold in a public park chosen by another detectorist, MontAmmie, and do it within 24 hours total hunting time.

MontAmmie chose a park called Northcreek Park in an affluent section of Ankeny, IA. I've done no research on the park yet, but I know it's relatively new. I'm familiar with the area, so I dressed to fit in so as to draw the least attention...dark blue polo style collared shirt, nice graphite grey pants, new running shoes, sunglasses...not my normal detecting attire at all. Seeing the housing all around the park and all the windows, I know I'm probably going to be under somebody's eye at all times and so I need to act accordingly, like it's my neighborhood park.

Today I had a bit of time to scout the park but the timing was totally awkward. I arrived at 2:30, was swinging and walking by 2:35. Immediately I was on the radar of two younger mothers at the tot-lot. I wasn't sure if they were on the phone with the police but it felt strange when they kept starring and making calls. I expect to meet Ankeny's finest before this experiment is done. The really awkward part came when school let out at 3pm, or just before. Elementary students and more than a few parents were, by the dozens, filtering through in waves. Had quite a few odd looks and very few smiles with no wave-backs. This ought to be interesting as we go forward.

The soil conditions today were extremely dry and hard. This is high, well draining land and we're still struggling at the tail end of a drought. Screwdriver only because of drought conditions and curious eyeballs.

I wanted to take pictures, but that too seemed awkward. I'll pass while kids are around.

So I avoided the tot-lot and shelter area by a wide margin, crossing a playing field to the rear and hunting mostly at the soccer field. I recovered 5 targets total in 45 minutes. Foil, foil drink seal, a zipper, two canslaw pieces. There was very little surface trash but I went out of my way to pick it up and making it obvious while knowing that people are watching. (I picked up more trash items than I recovered today) Perhaps that'll help keep the non-emergency calls to zero. I did some probing of targets below 2-3" with the screwdriver and without attempting recovery. Large hunk of metal and canslaw.

Seems the whole area has been heavily graded. There are few shallow signals and greater quantities of deep signals. Scattered iron bits in places and vast areas with no signals whatsoever. I had a 10 minute stretch where I couldn't hear anything but ground noise. This is like farm field hunting, because that's likely all it was before being developed. The most common signals were in iron to foil range. I heard a few coins down there while near the soccer field, but too deep and dry for my small screwdriver. The areas by the bathrooms and trash cans were also remarkably clean with very few signals around them. Totally different from my normal park hunts.

I stepped back into the parking lot at 3:15 concluding todays scout.

Today I used the Deus to move fast and feel out the place. Next time I'll bring the 15x12 sef coil mounted on the V3i to move fast and clean up the top 4-5 inches. This combo is ideal for large portions of this park, perhaps all of it. I'll do a little research on the land's history before then too.

MontAmmie thought there might be sledding hills making for a good lost jewelry location, and the sledding hills can be good areas, but the reality here is less than idelal in that the largest sledding hills at this location are about a 15 foot drop over 40 feet. Those are on the East/NE border of the park.

There may not be any gold here at all, and my expectations are low, but I'll keep trying because it's early in the challenge and I still need to hunt at a more low-key time.

I'll get some images up after the next visit.

I have the 15x12 sef coil. I bought it to use as a bigfoot coil when jewelry hunting sports fields. Very sensitive deep coil that separates very well in the trash, imo. I'll run it RX 2 TX 92 and have done well with earrings at surprising depths for the size coil. Used it at Daytona beach with no issues...worked really good actually. More coverage and more depth - faster!

I've never had mine read a bottlecap as a penny from what I recall, but being a DD type coil, it does like them, and sounds off good on some brands... Corona, Bud Light, Mike's to name a few. Not hard on the V3i to determine what's up with those - if I take more time analyzing them. I don't have any experience with a DFX and how it handles the bottlecaps. But give me a concentric and I'll wade right among them with very little problem except masking.

That coil gets heavy fast without a sling, which I do use for that coil. You may want to plan for that expense with the purchase of a large coil.

If I were to guess, the size you are looking at and the 8x6 are the most popular sizes they sell for Whites machines.

Marketing hyperbole.

Maximum depth! ...for Garrett machines perhaps.

Most powerful all-round metal detector ever made!....by Nokta!

Best relic machine ever! That's one opinion.

But claiming new technology... that's not hyperbole, although turning all single freq vlf obsolete probably will be.

Ankeny and Altoona are mostly middle class to upper middle class and yes, there are more high-end upper-class homes in Ankeny primarily because of the lake nearby. By my level of comfort and standards, there isn't a rough neighborhood anywhere in those cities. I selected those cities pretty much on population size as they are about the same size, or were in the recent past. They do have RV parks nearby both cities. Ankeny draws the lake crowd, Altoona draws the amusement/waterpark and casino crowds. They're 15 minutes apart, too. I've only hunted Heritage park in Ankeny for about two hours.

Northcreek Park it is. That's an interesting choice. Not my first choice, but I like that a school is nearby, even if it is elementary. I've never been there to that park, and I'll wager that not many have detected there at all. Was all farmland until the mid-late 80's if memory serves. (I have worked building many of the homes in the area back in the 90's.) I'd be surprised if that park was more than 25-30 years old.  Should be ultra-low trash in ground though.

I may be able to do my initial scout of the park this week. This will be fun. Obviously with park hours I can't do 24hrs straight through even if I wanted to, so I'll chronograph the time and track over several detecting sessions. I'll start a new thread after getting in an initial hunt. Can't wait to give it a go.

Thanks for playing! 

I'm hoping it's true - the new technology about to land part.

Tough question!

Short answer: not too many.

I'll briefly explain.

When I started looking for gold jewelry in my second detecting year, that's when I set my mind determined to find one item made from gold, it took maybe three months tops. The first find was the most difficult because I didn't have any real gold jewelry to test and I was without a reference point other than the scale on the bottom of the V3i box...and I didn't really know what kind of signal I was looking for. I began to notch (zero-tone on the V3i) all the common repeating trash and focused on the gaps between them. If, on the conductivity scale, gold fell into the square tab and ringpull range I'd never hear them. I was searching the conductivity scale between them and avoiding those areas because I didn't want to find ALL the gold, just my first gold....anything gold. It didn't take all that long and mostly was canslaw digging.

The real challenge was that it took 5 years to find a gold ring that would VDI and spectragraph just like a ring-pull!

I'm not sure when I'll be able to start or complete the challenge at this time, but if you want to choose a park for me to try this personal challenge at I'm game. I'll select a city near my own that I've never been hunting at. (I suppose several years back I did spend 45 minutes hunting one park in Ankeny while my wife was in appointments.)

Let's do either Ankeny, IA, or Altoona, IA. Should have a good selection of parks to choose from within these two surrounding communities. Both were small communities that experienced very rapid growth over the past 25 years. Pick a park greater than 5 acres (most of them are around here). 

15 hours ago, MontAmmie said:

I'm about done with the beaches, on to the parks!

Good luck!

Ya know, I question the conventional wisdom that one must hunt water or sand to find the most gold jewelry. Yes, they are commonly lost at those places, and concentrated (if you find a virgin area) but most people spend 99% of thier lives on dry land away from the beach. Whatever quantity of gold is lost and concentrated at the beach must pale in comparison to what is lost and semi-concentrated to scattered on dry turf.

Then there is competition from past and present. Beaches seem to be the place for low hanging fruit and easy harvest, but those locations are mostly about recent drops anymore. Who can get the coil over it first, or punches deepest gets the gold!

At parks, in my area at least, these shallow rings might have seen a hundred coils over them before me. They were found in high probability locations, right where they ought to be, but they were never dug.

Energy spent may be a factor for some, but consider the energy spent walking miles of beach, swinging and only occassionally digging  due to distance between signals. On turf one can hunker down in a 100' area and easily pop shallow targets left and right, expending more energy digging and less energy walking and swinging. My beach experience was more walking and less digging  while my park experience is the opposite. Maybe it's just me, but I'm not out swinging for a walk, I'm out swinging for gold to dig so I prefer to spend time digging in signal dense high probability sub-locations when I'm after it. Just like a beach, gold can be anywhere at a park but it tends to be in somewhat predictable zones where it's expected to be...only very few people seem to try. In my area that's just fine to me.

Which gives me a basic idea for a personal challenge and experiment. 24 hour gold challenge! - semi-random selection of a park by someone else with a 24 hour time limit to find gold there.

One would really have to be selective in many areas of detecting to pull it off more than a few times.

.....just ramblin' on over coffee... 

I wonder if these come with the new D2 coil like Steve got or are they as pictured old stock?

Wish I could have got a deal like this when I bought mine. When I got mine I decided to pass on the wireless headphones and invest that money in coils instead. I'd do it again too.

Discontinued like 7 years ago, I think.

I don't care to purchase used electronics, generally, so I never thought I'd own a legendary discontinued unit.

Then I found a new unit on Ebay and pounced... with my fingers crossed. I wasn't even looking for a Sovereign, was looking at Tesoros...lol. It was listed in an odd catagory but was actually a suggestion I saw from Ebay. Just luck, really, but I paid the full original retail price to have it because I was like, "Sovereign GT new in box? Pshhht....buy it NOW"!  A too good to be true impulse buy, more or less.

I suffered buyers remorse until I hunted with it a few days. It is the only machine I baby in use. I'm happy with mine.

Yes, you can definately hear the difference in bottle caps... kind of a drawn out boing sound - "booooiing".

Great information in the audio. It has tones that are alive with timbre.

I bought mine new about 10 months ago based upon the reputation for a dedicated salt unit when we're on vacations. Like you I didn't require waterproof as a feature, but it can easily be made weatherproof. I've found it to be an excellent all around unit for relics in farmsteads, coins and jewelry in parks, as well as salt beaches. 

It's rare to dig any iron with the Sov in discrimination mode as its iron discrimination is first class, so steel crown caps are easily identified after digging a few. Most aluminum has an unusual yet different timbre to the tone as well. My first park with it I found a gold ring after digging something like 20 back to back ring pulls and deciding to stop digging those tones, but the next tone was the same pitch without the same timbre, it sounded cleaner, somehow better, and I was shocked to hit a gold band. I still have the ring and the last dug ring pull for study. They VDI (on my other units) and make very similar tones but I swear I hear a difference , YMMV. You can see that difference analyzing sound via laptop.

It is an impressive unit. I can see why guys won't part with them. I won't. 

Deus performance in the wet sand at Daytona beach, FL, was poor for me. 

I compared the V3i, Sovereign GT, and Deus there earlier this year, and in the dry sand it did reasonably well but still got smoked by the two multi-frequency machines. In the end I found the Sov king of depth and stability anywhere at the surf/shoreline but chose the V3i in the wet to dry sand only because I have a 15x12 SEF coil providing better coverage than the stock 10" Tornado on the Minelab.

If I were to chose only one of these for the beach, Sovereign GT, hands down.

Well the "reactions" are different...threw me for a loop at first.

And glad I missed the baby llama drama. 

Looks like there are still adults that have forgotten about the basics even my 6yr old has no problem remembering -  the first lesson, courtesy. 

Nice ring! Congratulations.

Perhaps the requirement should be that a new user must create two thread topics in other forums before access to the classifieds is granted....to get to know them better and prevent an easy spam. Makes it a bit more difficult and public when they can't get away with two posts that consist of, "Nice find!", "Good hunt!", etc.

I am ok with whatever. It's not a problem until it is.

My wife is a teacher also - elementary. My father-in-law retired from teaching/wrestling coach/dean of students as well - middle school. I've always appreciated and respected teachers. 

I just can't do it as well as I would like. I become critical and impatient too quickly. It's not so easy as it would seem if one's temperment is not suited for it. Adults are hard enough but kids.... um, forget about it. I wouldn't last a week.

Major respect!

LOL! Perhaps that's why nobody posts about it...they use the eyeballs! 

I appreciate your wealth of knowledge and breadth of experience. You explain things like a good teacher and that itself is something I can't do but deeply respect.

Steve, have you played with the prospecting scan mode on the V3i?

If so, what did you conclude it's best used for? (I know, prospecting, duh! ) Simply tracking changes in the ground seeking high concentrations of minerals, black sand or something else?

There is almost no information out there about its uses in the field by real prospectors and I'd be interested in learning more about how they use it, if at all.

Quote

 V3i added a "Lock Offset" which is basically a manual ground balance control. The difference is it gets the base setting via the ground grab, and then just adjusts up or down from there.

That's how I understood it too. You have a great way of explaining things, Steve. Outstanding!

One more question please, so where does a GB2 get it's ground balance base setting from? A preset?

I realize we're splitting hairs for an average detectorist, but the V3i has a reputation of being difficult to ground balance, and as you said, performance is hinged on a good ground balance, so it's something I regularly do and keep on top of by habit. I thought I taught myself wrong for a bit, so I'm willing to be corrected. Thank you. 

Thank you both. I understand now seeing the image on the GB2.

I understood that locking a track or ground grabbing (what I thought to be a manual ground balance) takes a "photograph" or snapshot of the area directly under the coil, and I understand the tracking on is more like a motion picture, a series of continuious snapshots.

So, as Steve also mentioned, the offset settings on the V3i, is that offset the equal to or similar to the GB2's ground reject knob?

I do keep mine on the live control toolbar and it's pretty easy to change on the fly.

Thanks again, gentlemen.

Quote

The V3i actually has no true Manual ground balance mode. The best you can do is track and lock, as on the MXT.

Huh? I'm confused.

I set mine to lock, pull the trigger and hold while pumping the coil until balanced before releasing the trigger. It remains locked at that GB point. Is that not a manual GB?

Pretty sure there are 3 ways to GB on the V3i. Auto track, auto track to lock, and what I do and thought was manual.

I've no experience with HF machines but from what I've read about them when researching a unit something didn't seem right with his coil. 

I very much look forward to your review!