Rick K - First Member

Here’s a story I’m keen to tell - I put it here. Because I couldn’t figure out anywhere else to put it ...my bad... Ok, this whole fireplace thing has apparently become a thing on our neighborhood FB page. I put this there as my last word a bit ago, but why should the rest of you lot escape the last words I have on the subject of use of the fireplace in my home...? It was a long time ago. In the winter (camping season in Arabia) there was usually a strong inversion overnight. The cooler ground would cool the low air and the warm upper air would form a blanket over all. Every scent trapped near the ground. At daybreak one Friday morning a couple of dozen years ago, about 70 miles from the nearest paved road, we awoke in our campsite to the intense smell of new baked bread. We were miles from the nearest settlement. I climbed a nearby hill and looked “up breeze” (just a breath - there was no wind) and a good ways off there was a tiny village. We broke camp after breakfast and drove about 8 miles to the village where we found the source. Friday morning - the Muslim sabbath - and a bakery had fired up their bread ovens before dawn. That scent of new-baked bread had made its way 8 miles or so to us - on the softest breath of the downwind drift of air. I am very sensitive to smoke and smell emissions. I hope to avoid annoying or inconveniencing any my neighbors with the careful and lawful enjoyment of one of the important features of the house we paid good money for. Just a desert campfire - captured and tamed in our living room - bliss.

I have no information on FTP plans for release.

The dead desert wood that I collect is what I call “caveman” wood. I can break it up over the sharp upturned edge of a large stone in my back yard.

Having fun with this machine. I have never had one of these and I am amazed at how good it is from a performance point of view and how terrible it is ergonomically. So far I have Read about a hundred old posts on these things covering about anything worth knowing about them sourced new nicads to use with the original onboard charger found (but not received yet) an adapter to use coils for modern Teknetics “Frat Boys” coils with it - in my case an Ultimate 13 and a Tek 11” DD Got a lovely modern chest harness for camera bags which fits it great Have a call in to Keith Wills about new battery clips and hopefully an adaptor to use my ancient early whites Bigfoot coil with it watched the magic of that huge analog meter decipher odd targets with a twitch there - a hesitation there and those lovely tones mixed in. Silver coins clearly separated from their clad successors. clearly $25 well spent. I had planned to use it on our upcoming club hunt, but (glad I checked) this thing HATES other detectors and goes absolutely nuts when they’re around.

Tim and Mike were terminated several months ago as part of a reorganization of the Marketing function at First Texas. It wasn’t part of any larger reduction in force and as far as I know - no other department was affected. I do not know what sort of Marketing arrangements will result.

There is a well documented mod to use 2 ea 9v on the “6 x AA” side and one 9v plus 2 AA’s on the “8 x AA” side. Lithium’s might also be a good move, but I am not qualified to deal with that - but come to think of it, I know who is....and he is on this forum (although elsewhere).

The GB pot is a bit wonky so I may have to do something about that. Sven sent me info on all the mods, so - we’ll see. I need to get it in the field first and see how it does. Ans yes, I assume the pic Sven sent me was a self-port rate.

The most common is Palo Verde. The hottest is Mesquite. My personal favorite is Desert Ironwood. Way too tough to be any fun cutting, but it lasts nearly forever after it dies and the desert is full of dead ironwood trees from decades or longer ago. The really aged ones are slowly termite ridden and gathered can be broken over a sharp edge of a desert stone. Caveman wood. Lights like cardboard and burns quick and hot. Never a spark and no smoke if you manage it. Or course you need wheelbarrow loads of it a day because it’s all eaten up by the termites, but lord - what a beautiful and easy to manage fire.

Enjoying a fire in our fireplace. Thanks to the sun. The dead desert wood we burn is lovely fuel - sparkless, smokeless - if you know how to tend it - and to us - free, as long as I am willing to gather it from the surrounding desert (especially under power lines, where the utilities cut down all the trees which might grow tall enough to touch the lines). As I sit here on Boxing Day evening, enjoying the glow, I am thinking of what is really happening. The sun burns about 5 million tons of hydrogen fuel per second...that makes our planet alive. That is what produced the desert wood I gather and burn. Without that - nothing. The return of the sun - steadily rising in the sky after the Winter Solstice is an event so vital that it is no wonder that almost every human society throughout history has celebrated it with joy and feasting.

This is a prime example of why GOOD forums continue to exist.... Help wanted...help freely given.... No BS, nothing except the shared interest and joy in the shared endeavor ... How does this continue to happen? Housekeeping. Somebody is keeping a tidy house. No rubbish is allowed to accumulate and fester. Thank you Steve H.

A local Craigslist ad had this for $100. I contacted the seller and after some conversation he indicated that in fact he had no idea if it worked or not - it was him moms - had been sitting for decades. He lived 50 miles from me and I an wary of driving much in this pandemic. I asked about the batteries and he looked - they were a mess he said. He said that he would probably trash it and I asked if he had any reason to drive my direction anytime soon. We agreed on a spot halfway and I offered $25 “sight unseen”. The original recargable nicads were in there - a mess. The battery clips (a known issue with this machine) had a bit of surface corrosion which I filed away and some solder repairs which looked solid enough. 14 AA alkalines later and it works a bit squirrelly, but seems to be fine. Air tests at 9” or a bit on a quarter on the ground in discrim and 12” in AM. The tone ID works fine and the meter seems to under-read a bit but is consistent. These things weigh a ton and this one is an original factory hip mount - a strange shelf-like bracket to hang the thing lying flat on your belt. Sven sent me some files on it and among them was a nifty chest mount which will hook to the D rings at each corner of the Tek - I found it on Amazon and ordered one. I had a Compass X-100 once upon a time and this reminds me of it. Powerful but weird - the tones are great however - no digital processing - the meter gives interesting little twitches on marginal discrim signals. Should be fun and good exercise.

Sorry. They are open, but Felix is on vacation. If you want an RMA to return it let me know and I will get someone to send you on. I am raising the whole issue directly with Tom Walsh - the boss. This needs attention.

The number of failures in the field have been a disappointment. My theory (I have no inside info on how Fisher accounts for it) is that almost everything about this design is totally new to Fisher. That includes the components and the production process. They don’t have the long “learning curve” which they have with their other products behind them to find all the critical points in the device. Having trotted out my theory, I can add a fact that I know. They are treating every failure as an “escape” in their Quality System. Quality Management is well aware of each of the failures and they are being tracked and worked through the system to identify causes, effects and remedies.

In the summer of 1968, I was on summer break - the fall would be my last semester before graduation from University and I was all set up to go into USAF Officer training school in February after I had my degree and turned 21 - and then on to Pilot Training - all that happened, but this is not about that. My mother’s family were French Canadian, emigrated to New England in the early years of the 1900’s - my grandfather - not yet a US citizen - was drafted and served in the US Army in France in WWI. But this is not about that. That summer, to make some money to afford to get married in the fall, I went to Rhode Island and lived with my godparents in Pawtucket. I got a job at Englehardt Industries in South Attleboro MA at a plant making the three layer metal rolls which went to the mint in Denver to be turned into Kennedy Half Dollars. There were several of us “College Boys” working there that summer. One of them was a Chemistry Major who worked in the lab. All incoming silver (from the US Repository at West Point) had to be assayed at the plant to ensure that the “mix” would be right for the silver content. One day at lunch break, my pal told me that there were problems with the last shipment of silver bars we had received - some stray element which was holding up approval for usage. We talked more and I recalled that shipment. The stuff came in in ingots - strapped one layer deep on wooden pallets in a trailer. They had us “kids” help with the unloading (we were cheap labor) and I recalled looking at these bars - they were a bit different. The bars always had mint marks on each bar. Usually just US Silver Repository West Point. These were different, Swastika marks - Rostchilds bank London, Rostchilds Bank Paris and the usual US. I though not much about it. The next day my pal from the lab told me what the stray element from the lab analysis turned out to be....mercury. The only likely source being amalgam for dental fillings. I will leave it to you to draw the same conclusion that I did. Precious metals are more enduring than us morals. Sometimes we possess them for a time - then we pass - as it were - through the “furnace” of time - and they endure. In this case - sadly - the furnace was all too literally a furnace.

The “Frozen Choisen” - I had a friend who limped because of the toes he lost.

https://phoenix.craigslist.org/wvl/for/d/glendale-minelab-gpx-4000-gold-metal/7230946968.html

Blush! But seriously. I wondered in the very beginning when Tom Walsh wrote his “Disclosure” how this would actually go down. I have attached a copy here. I made all the buyers on my list review and agree before I put them on the list. It has worked out pretty well. I am frustrated at the slow pace of production, but I believe (without any “inside dope”) that it is just “an abundance of caution” on the part of Fisher. Early on - and still now and then - the whole thing was criticized as some sort of a “Pay to play” Beta Test program - nobody had ever heard of such a thing. Well, it wasn’t really that at all, but it came pretty close. When folks see the MSRP of the final mass sales version, I think that they will understand that the buyers of the Limited got a good deal. The factory support has been pretty much excellent in spite of El Paso having a TERRIBLE time with COVID19. Some lapses in communication have been about the only issue and that is mainly because we are having to “make it up as we go along”. If you want to “skip to the bottom line”, here is the summary from the Disclosure. ”The Impulse®-AQ Limited is truly limited; Fisher will manufacture a limited quantity production run only. Fisher Research Labs makes full disclosure that it continues with product and technology development and will make improvements in design and performance after the introduction of this limited production run. The -AQ Limited will not be upgradeable to future releases of Impulse technology although its searchcoil may be compatible with future designs. We offer the Impulse®-AQ Limited to a select group of enthusiasts due to our limited production capacity. If you find the product features and limitations above unacceptable, we urge you to wait to purchase this technology at much higher prices in the months, years and decades to come during which time Fisher Research Labs will continue to release the industry’s highest performance and most innovative metal detection products and technologies.” Impulse AQ Limited Buyer Disclosure -- 03June2020.pdf

Yes, 2"+ - they are available. I can order them.TUBE-AQ-EXT Lower Tube Assby, ExtendedMSRP $79.00

They have begun making the lower shaft longer based on customer feedback.

I believe that their plan for the Final AQ version release is April ‘21. My own opinion on whether that date will hold is not relevant.

As many of you have no doubt heard, the COVID19 situation in El Paso is pretty serious. I posted a while ago information I got from them that they were busy working and shipping product (not so many AQ’s - but). Well, I just had a chance to talk to my main contact in Sales Management at FTP and I think it is useful to share the general message I got. She explained to me that the (new) facility at FTP has advanced air circulation and filtration systems - that all personnel have been provided with highly effective face masks and that workstations and all other aspects of the internal organization of where people work and how they interact with each other have been carefully arranged to absolutely minimize the chance of infection. Her general comment was - the time we spend at work is the safest part of our days. Tom (the President) is deeply involved in making this a safe workplace and has spared no expense in doing so.

I have no information which would rule out a gold pinpointer from FTP. How’s that for noncommittal?

I said a MODERN PI pinpointer. PI’s can be built to have extremely short minimum pulse delays and be incredibly sensitive to tiny objects. I believe that most industrial metal detectors used to find - for example - broken off needle points in clothing are PI’s

TVR. First Texas has read this thread - I know, because I sent it to them with Carolina’s specific complaint quoted. It has been seen by the CEO - Tom Walsh and referred to his Quality boss.

The presence of extreme mineralization in lots of gold bearing ground makes VLF pinpointer vulnerable - I suspect that a modern PI pinpointer would be very useful.