Rick K - First Member

The “peaking” CJC is talking about is very real. It is a result of the amazingly responsive AQ’s signal processing. It is this feature which give it highly informative audio signals to the user. The problem is that these are “pure” signals, unprocessed by any software. The processing and interpretation is left entirely to the the brain of the user!!

I have no information on specific details but have been informed that First Texas is open and busy processing orders.

The folks who did the software for the V3i left Whites quite a while ago.

Note: I am posting this because of its impact on Fisher production - not my political views or those of anyone else Order issued today by the County Judge in El Paso. Likely to affect AQ deliveries. Public safety takes priority. NOW THEREFORE, TO REDUCE THE SPREAD OF COVID-19 THROUGHOUT EL PASO COUNTY AND TO REDUCE THE INFECTION RATE OF THE PEOPLE CONSIDERED AT RISK THAT WILL REQUIRE HOSPITILIZATION AND TO LIMIT DEATH FROM COMPLICATIONS OF COVID-19, I, COUNTY JUDGE FOR EL PASO COUNTY, TEXAS PURSUANT TO THE AUTHORITY VESTED BY TEXAS GOVERNMENT CODE CHAPTER 418, HEREBY FIND AND ORDER: SECTION 1. SHELTER-AT-HOME All individuals currently living within El Paso County, Texas ARE ORDERED TO SHELTER AT HOME IN THEIR RESIDENCE. For the purposes of this Order, residences include hotels, motels, shared rentals, and similar facilities. To the extent individuals are using shared or outdoor spaces, they must at all times as reasonably as possible maintain Physical Distancing of at least six feet from any other person when they are outside their residence. It is HIGHLY ENCOURAGED and RECOMMENDED that all commercial businesses operating with El Paso County, except essential covered businesses cease all activities at facilities that may not be provided by curbside, drive-though, or take-out services. Individuals that choose to leave their homes for essential services SHALL limit their visit to one member of the household, unless serving as a caregiver.

Old Norwegian expression...”Sooner or later even a blind cat stumbles across a dead rat”. Not criticizing the poster of the video, but the capabilities of the AQ extend so far beyond stumbling across a great big hunk of gold in easy conditions. The AQ is no blind cat - what we are hunting are way less obvious than dead rats!!! Again, no criticism of the poster. He is a serious and experienced operator and will now doubt learn over time what the AQ is really capable of.

Gary - looks like a lot of us have patience and sympathy for your initial progress. Keep on and if you are not a happy - give me “first refusal” on the resale - I hav nearly 50 folks waiting. Good luck and keep working on it.

Thanks for your frank and thoughtful report. A nice blend of expectations vs. experience. Actually getting this kind of data was the assignment Fisher gave me - a sort of “Public Beta” - with the difference that you have to buy your “ticket”. I’m pretty sure that on this forum anyway, the fact that this thing was designed narrowly to find gold jewelry at the beach was clearly explained. If your beaches hold no gold, then a VLF IB machine is the tool you need for coin recovery and whatever else you might come across. For example. my own air tests showed better depth on a man’s gold wedding band than a silver dollar. Hopefully you will find a use for it that fits your circumstances or “jobs to be done” - If not, I expect that there are lots of folks who would be happy to purchase it for what you paid (or if they are in a hurry) a bit more.

Yes, Joe has the only one “in the wild”. It may or may not be identical to the production version, but I suspect it’s buoyancy will be the same. P.S. Thanks for the well wishes. It was a minor but uncomfortable procedure and as of today - I am pretty much back to normal.

Well, here I sit - recovering from some minor surgery - the sitting part made more difficult - no more details available.... Today I had Fisher ship the 25th AQ LTD. If I had any idea why it is so infernally slow of them to ship the darned things, I probably couldn’t share the details....but the fact that they give me no useful information about such things means that I am spared the decision on what to disclose. Mostly folks who have them are learning what they are good for and the consensus is - I think - that like any other detector - they are not good for EVERYTHING. Happily, the consensus also seems to be that they are amazing for a range of interesting and useful things. You can all read about all this elsewhere here. For me, I am patiently tending my “waiting list” now about 45 or so. Whether FTP will eventually furnish enough machines to clear the list is not known to me, but I am optimistic. I am surprised, pleased and grateful that the majority of folks on my list are unbelievably patient and polite - You all have my thanks. I am VERY happy that I didn’t go in for “pre orders” “pre payments” of “deposits”. Had I done som my life would be a bookkeeping hell (thank you Steve for good advice!). When the LTD is done and the “Unlimited” is available, I expect and hope to be one of the dealers for this. In fact, I pretty much feel like I am “all in” for the whole Impulse line. The Gold is busily in work. Prototypes will be fielded for test and when the time is right it will be “inshallah” introduced. I have bought a new SDC2300 and a nice used Gold Bug 2 to play with in getting ready for the Gold. In the meantime - I bought myself another AQ LTD and am demanding (for that that is worth) to be early on line for an 8” coil to play with the AQ inland - running its paces against the “trial ponies” - all to educate me for the Gold. Meanwhile, I sit here in Gold Canyon - seeing no-one. I have a couple of “strikes against me” and I am a bit of a “health pessimist” and so the slightest hint of the plague would be extremely unwelcome. I look forward to next year when we hopefully do more and be more engaged.

Really faint targets just give a sort of repeatable “pause”, “drop out”, or “breath” in the threshold.

Maybe the AQ should be known as “My Uncle Harold” - half seriously - (cross threading here - my story about my uncle in the cold winter of ‘43 in the North Atlantic - with only his ears between his ship and those who would destroy it). Primitive sonar in the early 1940’s was used by its most able operators to defeat a threat. OK, enough of the WWII drama - but seriously - a tool has capabilities and an adept user will exploit those to return amazing results. Having said that - no tool is perfect - guaranteeing amazing returns to the least trained or adept operator. That’s life.

The iron ID in multitone and mute mode is highly dependent on settings of ATS and degree of discrimination selected. It struggles with rusty bottle caps and rusty Bobby pins. With the increadibly reactive audio, linear iron - like nails etc. are even readily ID’d even in all metal. Of course that long nail with it’s double response might just be a gold chain! With a VLF discriminator, the same nail would ID as iron - but might be masking a gold ring! That situation would not happen with the AQ - you would hear both of the targets. No perfect detector exists

Exactly described the key principle of the “jobs to be done” theory. Define the task, with full consideration of the desired outcomes, the limiting factors such as (in this case) bottom conditions, probable ratio of desirable to undesirable targets - then choose the correct tool for each phase of the “job to be done”. Even Homo Erectus had figured out how to hit a rock just right with another rock to produce the edge or point needed to kill or skin the prey!

I’ll give you this Reg - you are persistent. Several folks have explained how the SDC met their needs well - did the “job to be done”. Your criticism seems to be mostly based on MInelab’s failure to design exactly the machine you want for the job you have “to be done”. That leads me to wonder what job you think everybody should be doing so that the detector (which apparently doesn’t exist) would meet the multitude of needs that gold seekers - most of them far away from your own Australia - would be met PERFECTLY by a detector which Minelab is not making. I have been often “taken to the woodshed” publicly and privately by our host - Steve about my long standing dislike for MInelab’s marketing - guess what - I just shelled out hard cash for an SDC. Why, because it fits a “job to be done” that I have. For those who may be interested, here’s an introduction to “Jobs to be Done” theory. https://www.christenseninstitute.org/key-concepts/jobs-to-be-done/

Russ is not in Marketing per se, he is responsible for Social Media - an area they badly need him for and where he will do them a lot of good. Russ works remotely, he is not in El Paso and may not have been there yet - since he came back to FTP FTP has notoriously poor internal communications A number of the details he related about the AQ are unlikely to be correct. Here is my view based on what I have heard along the way. I am not infallible on this. Hardwired coil. No. Various size coils - yes Wireless headphones - unlikely 14” coil extremely unlikely Gulf salinity issues fixed with some kind of modification - no - it was fixed by more carefully securing the coil cable to the shaft. 100% discrimination between iron and gold - NO 20’ depth for diving - maybe Price >$2k - almost certainly 8 - 10 hours on a battery - likely Replaceable Lion batts - yes Date - if you want to lose money, bet on any detector being available on a pre-announced date!!

Fisher is not likely to make any comment. Since I am the only dealer I can at least say how many units have shipped. 24 units have been shipped. No week so far has exceeded 4 units and several weeks had none. I keep waiting for a steady flow, but so far that hasn’t happened.

Ethics. That which guides some folks - even in the absence of legal sanctions.

We don’t know when the final version will go on sale, but it will cost significantly more than the AQ Limited. The price on the Ltd. was likely “break even” or close to it in order to induce early buyers to participate in the sort of “pre-launch”. It is unique as far as I know in detectorland to do this kind of “public beta” like move.

Badger, The detector he is using is an Impulse AQ - that is - it is a unit built in El Paso with the standard configuration of the Impulse AQ. The separation of the control unit from the handle is something LE JAG or Alexandre did in France after it arrived there.

The AQ is not designed to be used with the control pod removed from the handle. LE JAG has apparently “modded” his so that they can be separated. I know nothing about what is involved in doing that, but it would likely end your warranty - of course that’s not a problem for LE JAG.

The Manta Project was started by Alexandre and his associates more than 6 years ago. The prototypes were called Manta and later Aqua Manta and were all hand-built by Alexandre. The Fisher Impulse AQ is built by Fisher at their factory in El Paso. Badger, when you commented earlier that all the targets appeared to be surface targets, I had to wonder how closely you watched the video. What I am talking about is something you can observe if you watch closely when the handle or the face of the control pod come into the shot.

I’m a little surprised that no one has commented on what is “unusual” in this video. He has an AQ Limited - but it isn’t in a “standard” configuration - probably because LE JAG is used to remote control boxes from many years of working with Manta prototypes.

That comes later.... Meanwhile the SDC is a very capable machine and a worthy comparison to the Gold - when it appears.

Mystery solved. The customer in question asked for 2 coil covers as part of his order. Since they had a couple of prototype covers available - they were shipped. Production coil covers are not yet available. My apologies for not clearing this up sooner!!