Lunk

Once upon a time while detecting in Arizona, a target that I thought was just another one of the many magnetite "ironstone" hot rocks littering the area jumped onto the super-magnet on my pick. But as I plucked it off of the magnet and prepared to fling it into the nearest bush, I noticed that it was unusually heavy for it's size; rubbing the dirt off of the nickel-sized stone revealed a band of gold running through it.

Back home now for the summer in northern Idaho, I got out to swing the mighty Zed for a couple hours at an old spot where the skunk now dominates when searching with a vlf or pi machine. I got the first signal within the first minute after powering on, and after six inches of digging the target was out of the hole and in my scoop - a small golden "watermelon seed" nugget. At that point I knew it was going to be another productive outing with the Zed. Most of the gold unearthed was small and thin - more like flakes than nuggets - too deep for the vlf's and invisible to the pi's. It's going to be a great summer thanks to ZVT!

Strick and Lisa, I'm glad you found some nice nuggets; you definitely earned them while braving the elements!

Awesome!

Nice!

Thanks Steve, it was great to finally meet you too. And thanks for stopping by and saying a few words to the students; they really appreciated it. And a big shout-out to Chris Ralph for making an appearance as well!

Great dig Rob!

Welcome aboard the Zed train Scott, you will have many golden adventures with it!

WTG Art! Reminds me of my first foray into the Nevada outback...plenty of trips to see "Two Pound" Dick Bailey at the Burns Brothers tire repair shop...oh the memories!

Nice space rocks guys!

Another 26 grams of the good stuff added to the poke by the mighty Zed. The smallest bit pictured weighs in at a mere six tenths of a grain. The deepest was a 4 grammer (lower right of dime) at a measured 16 inches.

WTG!

Nice!

Any time, Lucky. Glad you were able meet your goal. It was great hunting with you; I thoroughly enjoyed your humorous wit and tenacity...Zedding til dusk!

Thanks guys! Spencer, I'm actually at 30%; at this rate it will pay for itself by mid-July.

That's the same combo that I use; the X-Terra 705 is excellent for zeroing in on gold nuggets in heavy trash environments like mine tailings, besides being a fantastic coin and relic hunter. Watch an example of its versatility here: https://youtu.be/pm5IgBS0GS8

The weather in northern Nevada has been perfect and the Zed has been popping nuggets every day on the old patches. The highlight of the past few days was a solid quarter-ouncer at a foot deep in a spot I thoroughly gridded in the past with the GPX 5000; the signal was strong and clear from the start. Pictured is 18 grams of golden goodies and a 3 grammer found at a measured 12 inches...enjoy. Gold Mode: High Yield Ground Type: Normal Sensitivity: 8-10

Check out Goldbay: http://www.goldbay.com/paydirt/

Nice haul Jason! Sorry to hear about your back, hope you get back on the gold fields soon. A very reputable gold buyer, Dave Varabioff at Goldbay pays top dollar for chevron and crystalline nuggets...tell him Lunk sent you! http://www.goldbay.com/

WTG - nice nuggets!

Nice nuggets Russ, WTG!

I took my WM-12 out of its clip harness and affixed it to the cross-piece of the pro-swing harness; that way the speaker is pointed directly at my face and is centered so the sound hits both ears equally. And the industrial strengh velcro used prevents it from accidentally coming off.

No worries: "The GPZ remembers its GB position when you go from one gold mode to another, however from a fresh power on state you need to perform the GB procedure as described in the White Paper to be sure the GB is accurate, this procedure is recommended for every Gold mode you intend to use in that session." JP So just perform the initial GB procedure in each Gold Mode and Ground Type at power on and you're good to go for the rest of the session. A little time consuming, but it saves time and trouble by not having to re-ground balance every time you change modes.

Good post Jason. I've been experimenting along the same lines, and that's one of the things I like about the many timing options on the GPX series; by switching between certain timings it is possible to differentiate real metal targets from hot rocks and ground noises. The several Gold Mode and Ground Type combinations of the Zed can potentially be used to do the same thing. I tried every possible combination on a solid 28 gram nugget and all but one gave a low/high respoonse...the Severe Ground Type gave a high/low response. Since Severe should eliminate most if not all ground noise, when getting a strong low/high in Normal or Difficult Ground Type modes and then switching to Severe still gives a strong low/high or a high low, better get digging!

I totally agree with JP on his Audio Smoothing tip, and I've been experimenting lately on additional ways of avoiding the necessity of switching from Normal to Difficult Ground Type; when in Normal and the ground becomes too noisy for High Yield Gold Mode even at low sensitivity, changing to General often solves the problem and the sensitivity can be increased a couple points to compensate for the slight loss in sensitivity to small gold. If the ground is still too bad, switching the Gold Mode yet again to Extra Deep and increasing the sensitivity appears to still have a noticeable amount of performance over the Difficult Ground Type, and has been able to eliminate extremely variable ground noise.