Rick K - First Member

Once it appears - then there is the problem where to try it out - Puerto Rico looks good to me.... Vamos a la Playa

One happy result of the seemingly endless process of getting the mechanical package, production process and certifications done in El Paso is that Alexandre has been constantly pushing the boundaries of what the AQ is capable of. In the MANY months of slow progress towards full production, he has made multiple improvements in circuitry etc., resulting in a series of progressively improved boards, culminating in the released for production version. Here is part of an email I got from him late last year as a result of asking him to comment on statements on another forum that there was no way a PI could operate at 7microsec. delay in salt water.... “I have reduced noise by 90% with a new electronic system (he is referring to the issued for production version) and I have reduced variations due to seawater conductivity. A variation in conductivity due to salt at 15µs of pulse delay on a FOSTER (the TDI is of course is an Eric Foster design) is equivalent to a variation at 8 µs on the IMPULSE AQ in terms of stability and salt conductivity compensation.” Other results I am aware of as a result of this continuous evolution of the design are - reduced depth penalty for using higher levels of iron ID, expanded range of low conductor acceptance to include higher carat gold acceptance when using iron ID and a completely new mode of operation for Volcanic Sand and other extreme conditions which would totally shut down a VLF and many PI’s

I have no solid information, but Alexandre is no fool and EU laws are very favorable to the rights of inventors to a fair share of their inventions profits.

FTP is closely held - they need to please no one except customers and Tom Walsh the CEO and his partners if he has any. Still, there is no doubt that they need to “up their game”. Alexandre Tartar is designing highly marketable new development detector systems WAY faster than FTP can figure out the mechanical design, do the sourcing of bits, set up and qualify the production system and figure out how to sell the darned things.

Hey, I don’t know details, but I found a photo of Carl Moreland and Tim Mallory plus Mike Scott working with Navy Seals to work out the product launch program.

Rich, if you mean mine, it went back. They had to change some stuff to get CE certification and they didn’t want any non-conforming units “in the wild”.

It will soon be 3 years since I first learned of the FTP acquisition of the Manta project and hiring Alexandre Tartar and his team. Since then, I have posted everything I have learned of the project outside of details which I cannot share. Currently, I can truthfully say that I know no more than any of you about a likely product release date. I am confident that it will be released, but at this point I am not even asking for any updated information. It will happen when it happens and we will know more when FTP marketing tells us about it. Meanwhile, we wait.

“Trash” - with a VLF you can pretty reliably ID ferrous trash, but everything above that pretty much needs to be dug. PI’s up to now don’t offer a reliable way to ID ferrous targets. The Impulse offers a totally new approach to doing that, but only usage in the field by experienced detectorists will tell how useful it will be and what settings and modes are most effective for that. The Impulse AQ is not a diving detector. True diving detectors need waterproof ratings well above the current crop of beach machines with the exception of the Excalibur and CZ-21.

Just in case LE.JAG’s “Franglais” wasn’t crystal clear, when he wrote... ”for once, FTP is not really at issueit is (it was) a part under contract” He is referring to a purchased-in component of the mechanical package (not the electronics) which failed to meet expectations. This is separate from the certification issue.

Just a note, but the AQ has no “holes” because of the way the two-channel sampling of signal is arranged. I would explain exactly how this is done, but.... A. I don’t understand it well enough and B. If I did explain it, I have some concern that some guys from Juarez would be hunting me pretty quick. There is some loss of sensitivity when the multitone and mute modes are used and the iron ID is turned up - vs. the all metal mode. This has been described as perhaps 10%, but I believe that this has been reduced prior to final production hardware.

I’m pretty sure they hit just about anywhere. Finding them with a detector is about the only way to do it in most places, but there are some places where finding them by eye is easier. Anyplace where the present surface is free of dark colored rock, plant growth and other things which camouflage meteorites is good, especially if the surface is “deflationary” that is, not covered by later deposits from stream flow or other accretion of new material. Good prospects are deserts with light colored surfaces and dry lakes. The serious scientists are making a lot of finds in Antarctica - so I guess that’s good also.

The only point was to test the EMI performance under the transmission lines. I did find a couple of bottle caps and a penny, but that wasn’t relevant. Reminded me of the old days in Saudi Arabia - I do miss the vast emptiness of the empty quarter - the Rub al Khali.

Some PI’s do better in EMI than others. Here’s a Fisher AQ prototype near Yuma AZ in October 2018 - no EMI issues

No one knows when the AQ will be released. Whatever Fisher’s plans actually are, they have not disclosed and information about the ongoing certification testing means that even Fisher Marketing may not be able to give a firm date. I am personally satisfied that the AQ will outperform the TDIBH for most wet salt beach applications, but it will certainly cost significantly more. Patience is often rewarded. When the AQ reaches market, and if it indeed outperforms the TDIBH, there may be an opportunity to pick up an nice used TDIBH at a bargain and you can then choose based on how much $ vs. how much performance for YOUR own uses.

Alexandre has posted photos of his own extensive test beds including with the ability to flood with seawater. Lots of videos are coming.

RM - River hunting call nuggets with a Detector Dash I call that a niche within the niche. I’m not sure what wireless headphones bring to the party but of course a waterproof Detector would be valuable

No problem Steve. Your inquiry and comments were totally legit and caused me to think clearly back on how I ended up where I am with this. I re-read my post and wish I had let a bit less annoyance creep in - thanks for the prod. After going on three years as gadfly and cheerleader, I am about to launch a new effort as a dealer - likely restricted to the Impulse line as it develops. My objective in the whole AQ thing at this point is to build my competence and knowledge of the device so that I can leverage my understanding of these things as well as my ability to “reach back” to FTP - all in order to make folks interested in choosing me as their dealer when they decide to buy one

I think the pack is 2500mAh and I didn’t fully discharge it ever and so I don’t know the full charge time since I only topped it up. The charger is an off the shelf niMh battery charger so one with dual outputs would seem to be doable. Or just get two.

Tim requested that I return the detector on 9 Jan. I did so the next day. In our conversation on the 9th, he mentioned the certification issues and gave me no great amount of detail. Even if he had, I doubt I would be allowed to publicly post it. Tom Walsh owns FTP, not me. I never made any pretense of considering myself qualified by either my inland location or my relatively limited beach hunting experience. I leave expert testing to those more favorably qualified and located. Should Tim have sold the machine to someone else - guess you have to ask him. My intention with having the AQ was to enable me to totally familiarize me with its operating characteristics, including the action of the various controls and their interaction with each other. This would be building on the few days I had in 2018 and May 2019 with prototypes. I believe that I achieved some useful progress with this as detailed in my lengthy post on this forum about the controls and their function and effects. One of the reasons this was important to me is that I have been invited to review and comment on the user documentation which under development. Also during this period I have spent approximately 3 hours on Skype video calls with Alexandre Tartar durning which he went into great depth on various aspects of the AQ’s key characteristics involving sampling of target and ground signals and how the channels are used to provide information to the user - especially the function of the pulse delay and rejection controls and how they modify the timings. Much of this information is proprietary and I am bound by NDA regarding it. Sorry to disappoint everyone, but it’s been a tough end to 2019 and start to 2020. Long simmering gastric problem put me in the hospital for 3 days this last week - I got out on Tuesday. Long recovery from urinary tract surgery in mid November climaxed yesterday with another long night in the emergency room and one of those fun catheters to walk around with till I can get to my urologist - hopefully tomorrow unless he has MLK day off. Meanwhile, here are some pictures Alexandre asked me to take since even he does not have a production unit in hand. You may uses them for this forum in any way you like with attribution.

You are probably wondering why I haven’t been sharing experiences of using the AQ here in Gold Canyon. Good question. After New Years, it became clear that some relatively minor modifications to the production configuration of the AQ were going to be made in order for it to meet all the certification tests required to meet the requirements of each of the required agencies. In conversation with Tim Mallory, I agreed that the best course of action was for my AQ to be retuned to El Paso and returned to me when it was identical to the final production configuration. Add to that, the fact that I spent last weekend and a good part of this week in a local hospital enjoying “bowel rest” after an intestinal blockage, and I have been pretty “non-productive” - lol - (that was the problem, anyway!!!). Everything is fine now with me but my AQ is still with the crew in El Paso. Meanwhile, the days are sunny, but the evenings are chilly - I’m enjoying Long walks in the sunny mornings and relaxing evenings watching the fire warm the living room, burning the dead palo verde, mesquite and Ironwood that I gather in the desert. Most of it was cut years ago by the power company when they removed trees from under their transmission lines.

Nice try JEKO - but no cigar for you. The patent is for using half sine current to produce the bipolar response. There are lots of ways to generate a bipolar signal - Minelab’s mine detectors and probably others do it already without infringing the Whites patent.

I will bet a sizable Mexican dinner at La Casita in Globe Arizona that “VE” has nothing to worry about on the possibility of a bi-polar AQ version shortly after AQ going on sale. Fisher is the Tortoise in the fable of the Hare and the Tortoise vs. Alexandre who is the Hare (and a speedy bunny he is indeed!) If you wait for the BP version, I hope your beaches aren’t visited by too many AQ owners! Lol

Subject of course, to correction by Alexandre, The short answer is no, the AQ is not bi-polar. Alexandre has developed bi-polar platforms, but not at this time for the AQ.

Well, since I wrote those words about a year and a half ago, I guess I get an opinion on what I meant. I meant simply salt water - sand wet with it, wading in it and coil submerged to some reasonable depth. I stated that the ability to find small gold would surpass any existing detector in said salt water - due to it having the capability to operate at shorter pulse delay settings in this environment. Since I wrote that - based on what I have read, I have used AQ prototypes breafly in salt water - including with the coil submerged in running salt water. I found no need to adjust the pulse delay from the setting I was using - 8 microseconds of I recall rightly. Also however, I have tested the AQ against tiny gold targets such as small posts and earring backs. I found it to be less sensitive to these than something like a Minelab SDC which is targeted at tiny low conductors like gold nuggets. In discussing this with Alexandre and in subsequent posts he has made, he made it clear that a degree of insensitivity to tiny low conductor trash like foil bits and tiny melted AL fragments from beach bonfires. This of course means that hunting for tiny 10k crucifixes is pretty well out. It is well documented that as the quantity of salt a detector sees increases, the ability to operate at very short pulse delays is lost. Diving PI detectors have quite long minimum pulse delays I believe. When Alexandre was questioned why no pulse delay longer than 12 microseconds was available, he answered, as best I recall, that within its submergence limits, the design of the circuitry and coil made that unnecessary. The proof of the pudding is in the eating thereof. You stated that “So it now appears that “in the water” this detector will provide little additional benefit against existing products.” Time will tell if you are right.

I agree Steve ...... theres no free lunch in the salt water. Testing will determine..... what small gold might be lost on that end in the water. However..... for the most part the machine we now use ARENT getting that small gold either.