Skookum

I was just looking back at this thread trying to understand which were the 5. Did anyone find a 5th patent? I wonder, what is considered a key product? It seems a key product might be considered more than a coil. Of course, I don't really know.

Do we know what the 5 key products for the year were for sure now?

Here are some recent finds using the the Minelab GPX 6000 with the 11” monoloop coil and the Gold Monster 1000 to finish the job. What was impressive to me was how small and rough/reefy/prickly/spongy were the pieces. The location was on an extensively worked, old club claim likely pounded by every previous detector. I collected very little trash. In a half day of work, there were only two pieces of bird shot, 3 pieces of rusted iron flake, 3 bits of aluminum, and many small hot rocks found. The small hot rocks were picked up when trying to localize the targets with the Gold Monster. Only a couple larger hot rocks were heard by the GPX. This would have been different if there were much ironstone. So far, it has seemed to me that the new GPX really prefers the signal from rounded gold. Nevertheless, it was able to sniff out these very rough pieces even at sub-grain weights. They were mostly only ghost-like deviations in the threshold betwixt the warbles. (You know the kind of change that is so subtle that only your subconscious brain picks up on, but then when you focus with your conscious brain you’re not really sure, so you decide to dig anyway.) I was pushing both the machine and my attention pretty hard. This is the same area I’ve previously mentioned that causes a lot it EMI for the 6000 due to heavy overhead air traffic. The settings were Auto 2, either Normal or Difficult ground, and with the threshold on. The two largest pieces are just over 2 grains each. The rest were less than a grain each. Impressive machine.

This!

Found a nice couple of bits under about 8-9 inches of damp sand and dirt in normal auto 2 with the 11 inch coil making an obvious mellow “yes” tone. Twenty grains and 11 grains.

I’ve always just done once. But, Geof has me hypothesizing maybe multiple wraps work better for eventual clean removal. How many times do you other guys wrap?

Well, to any others reading here, fiberglass tape goes on very nicely, but is a horrible mess to remove after the tape begins to break down. The adhesive is extremely gummy and doesn’t dissolve easily with citrus oil based adhesive removers. Be advised to not go there. For those of you using electrical tape, how often do you change it out? I’ve been wondering if more frequent changing may keep it easier to remove.

Yep.

Sent a PM to Steve about it yesterday, but understand he is rightfully away having a fun time and will pop up when it’s a convenient.

Don't anyone get me wrong. I'm really enjoying the machine. I see it as sharing ideas with a community of excited users. I continue to pause for less than a minute when planes fly overhead. So far, I'm fine with doing that. Also, this weekend, I did notice what JP previously mentioned. Keeping the coil flat seems to be an important factor. Detecting some benches at 45 degrees caused the EMI to kick up until the 11" coil was leveled, again.

I suppose you're absolutely right. I'm thinking of an all purpose seal. I have never tackled trying to seal the Equinox coils, even though they bother me the most with how hard the covers are to remove and all. I've heard of the silicone treatment, but the idea of having it look unprofessional and leave residual bothers my peculiar side.

Great ideas here. Open to other options, as well. I hadn't considered electrical tape because of how gummy it is, but maybe it will work better. The idea of removing the adhesive with greater ease is very appealing.

I don’t recall the exact equations from the college physics days, but I’d bet interference is governed by an inverse squared law regarding distance. Perhaps altitudes used nearer to metro areas are in a whole different league than cruising altitudes with regard to EMI. But, I respectfully defer to any physicists or engineers.

After collecting some small nuggets with the 11 inch coil, today, we ran some of the targets under the 14 inch coil. They sounded nicely on 1-2 grains as long as they were within an inch or so of the coil.

Mine still protests with every airliner overhead, but it’s usually only about a minute of waiting or so, which isn’t intolerable. On a related note regarding EMI, we experimented with two 6000s, today. The 11 inch coils managed alright as long as they were kept 20-30 feet apart. We did not run that experiment with the 14 inch coils. Later on, we did put on the 14 inch just to listen the threshold and test the sensitivity to some of the smallest nuggets. Even in Auto 1 Difficult EMI Cancel mode there was some mild interference chirping along with the other machine off. Unfortunately, I didn’t remember to flip the headphones back on. With hindsight, I’m suspecting the speaker was the cause. Always curious to hear anyone else’s results as they come in.

Has anyone had any experience with the DD, yet?

I believe I've answered my own question above. The SDC 2300 precursor, the F3 Compact, was released in 2011. The SDC 2300 was released in 2014. I've been thinking about the tech listed in these specifications. The marketing says the MF5 combines the advantages of both PI and CW. However, with 4 frequencies between 5kHz and 75kHz, doesn't that just sound like continuous wave multifrequency scanning after the manner of the Equinox? The SDC 2300 was 3kHz PI MPF.

Had a second session, but using headphones, today. There is still a little chatter in Auto 2 Difficult, but much less than with the speaker and totally doable.

So, are all of you without EMI issues running with lower gains? Is anyone running Auto+ Normal? I can see that it may require lower sensitivity at times and places. With the similar design nod to the Gold Monster, I was anticipating that auto settings might work somewhat similarly. The Monster is pretty awesome at picking the right gain in either Auto 1 or 2. I do think it would be nice to have the speaker not interfere. I hope the decision was made because there was really no other viable solution and not simply because the designers were only using headphones. 😅 All that said, it’s fun to be testing it out. There are many more hours to put in before making any personal decisions.

What kind of tape do you prefer for sealing your cover to your coil? I know there are cloth tapes that can be bought from detector dealers. But, has anyone found good solutions that are easy and quick to buy at local stores? I've tried high-temp duct tape, but the adhesive is rather hard to remove. I'm currently using fiberglass tape, which seems pretty decent, but has yet to run it's full course. I would think electrical tape may be to gummy. What have you used and liked, or not?

Got out yesterday morning. I had a similar experience. Sometimes the noise cancelling would tune out a plane, but other times, no. There was a plane every 5-10 minutes and sometimes several at a time. At one point there were 3 overhead, I just had to stop and stand there in frustrated submission until it the sky cleared. Another thing I found was that the GM1k and the GPX6k were pretty good at noise canceling each other. However, there was one “channel” on the GPX that the GM couldn’t handle even with multiple reboots. The solution was to repeat a noise cancel on the GPX with the GM nearby. The 3 larger finds here were all very iffy signals in Normal Auto 2 with the 11” coil. I probably wouldn’t have bothered with digging them if I wasn’t using the GM to double check and see what the GPX was saying through the chatter. The largest piece was 1.6 grains of spongy gold under 5-7 inches of dirt. The rest were sub-grain. The smallest 3 were only found by bulldozing with the GM 5” in Manual 10. The weight of the 11” coil and point of balance was very nice.

Sounds like a good test for reporting on! I know Nugget Shooter has been cruising around with a band of 6ks on his YouTube channel. I don’t recall any comments from him about it. Interesting idea for an experiment.

Awesome finds. So you ended up getting one! I was wondering if you might. Mine is sitting here burning a hole in it’s box. It’s driving me nuts. BTW, I think I found your nickel about a month ago, too. 😂. We should team up and cover some ground.

I noticed it was you, too! Nice job!

Just got an email from a local dealer that 5 will be in stock this week…