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Posts posted by Lunk
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11 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:
Glad you noticed I was referring to you, Lunk. I could have just said it directly, but there can be disadvantages to doing that. As always your perspective is valued here, so I am (and many others are) pleased you chimed in.
I certainly appreciate your discretion, GB_A, thank you.
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On 8/14/2021 at 2:39 PM, GB_Amateur said:There are people here better qualified to answer than I, including at least one of the top experts at detecting for gold in the USA who spends half his year doing so, and investing way more than 4 hours per day. Why not full time? You can guess the answer. And note I said "one of the top..." meaning he's spent years improving his skills to get to where he is today.
Thanks for the intro, GB_A. I'm a little late to this thread, so all I can do is add my voice to the already resounding chorus of “NO!”
I found out long ago that detecting for gold is feast or famine...not a consistent income...which makes it incompatible with consistently recurring bills. So, as has already been noted, if you live in a tent or vehicle in the goldfields, are alone and without any bills to pay, and are a very proficient and experienced detector prospector, then you could eke out a living, but not consistently. I've done it, but it is only temporary; sooner or later the gold simply runs out. Add to that the fact that having to find gold to make a living really takes the fun out of detecting and turns it into just another job, and you can see why it's better to do it as a hobby for the sheer enjoyment of detecting gold nuggets.
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Great feel-good post, Gerry! Congratulations to all three on some nice nuggets found. And so very thoughtful of you to think up those fictitious names to keep things on the down-low. 😀
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WTG Peg & Chet!
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Awesome haul, Steve, and with two awesome detectors!
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Spot on, Phrunt.
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Sad to see this, Phrunt. FT could have developed a modern tech Gold Bug 3 to compete with the current lineup of 21st century VLF nugget detectors, but instead they merely replaced the two toggle switches with push-pad buttons and an LCD that tells you what modes you have selected. Not only that, but the GB pot is quite a reach for one's thumb on the left side of the control panel compared to its former position in the middle where your thumb naturally rests when operating the machine. Also, the threshold level pot was originally on the rear of the control box for a reason: so it couldn’t be inadvertently bumped out of position like it easily can now on the front side. IMO, it's a downgrade, not an upgrade.
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4 minutes ago, mn90403 said:
I'm just totally perplexed by this 3 meter depth 2D detector. Can it really work? Why would they advertise it with Nokta and Minelab?
It's elementary, my dear Mitchel: any detector will signal on a car body at a distance of 3 meters, and advertising their detector alongside well-known, proven brands gives it the appearance of being legit. But don’t take my word for it...just buy one; you shouldn’t have any problem reselling it with the help of this kind of advertisement.🙄🤣
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Nice skunk-kicking shoes, Mitchel...WTG!
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4 hours ago, Gerry in Idaho said:
Lunk - Heck I really never even seen how you set his detector up but I did notice that last one was about 10-12" deep. Glad you were there to keep him grounded after the gold...he was pretty Texas stoked.
Just ran it in Normal with threshold on and Sensitivity at manual 7, bumping it to 10 on iffy targets...easy as!
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Awesome post, Gerry. Warrior Wade was certainly an inspiration to the entire class, and it was very gratifying to see him dig his first gold; too cool!
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Good job, Lucky; way to persevere and beat the heat...and the 🦨!
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15 minutes ago, Gold Catcher said:
Re EMI, did you try to run with threshold off? It's not ideal but it could help.
Yes, and while it does help one's sanity, the EMI still breaks through sporadically.
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3 hours ago, BF44 said:
I caN'T MAKE UP MY MIND WHICH ONE TO BUY THE gpx 6000 OR THE gpz 7000. Leaning towards the GPX because its lighter and I'm loaded with extra covid pounds. grrrr....
To those of you that own a GPZ as well do you miss no gps capability or visual readout of signal strength with the GPX?
There are infinitely better GPS apps for smart phones than the onboard GPS of the 7000, so no, won't miss it at all. As for visual readout of signal strength? The GPZ 7000 doesn't have that. Just get a GPX 6000; you won’t regret it. Besides, you can't miss a machine you’ve never swung, right?😀
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Day 3...
The final day of the holiday extended weekend; back to work tomorrow.😞 on the bright side, it's only a 4-day work week.😀
So I did leave the phone turned off and in the truck this time, but I put the 11” mono coil back on; that means no pictures of the digs today, just the final weigh-in. I decided to run in Auto+ sensitivity all day, and got used to doing occasional noise cancels, but there were a few times that the threshold just wouldn’t settle down enough for my liking, even when reducing the sensitivity to 7. In these instances, I would perform the reset procedure to reboot the machine to the factory presets. The audio was amazingly stable after each reset, even after changing the Sensitivity back to Auto+, and would last a few minutes before the EMI returned. This area is prone to bad EMI; it's random and intermittent, and I couldn’t manually tune it out with the GPZ 7000 either - just had to wait until it abated, then hunt until it returned, then wait, etc. The EMI issue was almost negligible when running the GPX 6000 at Rye Patch, so I know it's not the machine. Nevertheless, I was able to snag seven more bits of gold, including a 0.4 of a gram piece at 4 or 5 inches - the largest of the day - and the smallest of the day, a wee 0.05 of a gram. Also dug several trash targets.
So in all for for the weekend, 16 pieces of gold in an area gridded several times with several machines, to me is more than just finding missed targets; the GPX 6000 has some serious magic going on under the hood. Oh, another cool thing I noticed is that, of the few hot rocks in the area, the 6k quickly tracks them out.🙂- 20
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7 hours ago, Jonathan Porter said:
Lunk where do you keep your mobile phone while detecting?
Nice gold BTW 😊
Good point, JP...I usually keep the phone turned off and in the truck, but since I was taking pictures to post on the forum this time, it was shut off and in my back pocket so as to get some distance from the coil. I'll have to swing the DD again and leave the phone in the truck to see if it makes a difference.
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Day two:
The goldfields greeted me in the morning with sunny blue skies and a nice cool breeze. I was trying out the DD coil this time to see if it would mitigate the EMI issues I was having with the mono coil. Upon power-up, the GPX 6000 defaulted to the EMI Cancel mode, and I set the Sensitivity to Auto+. The threshold was very unstable, no better than when running the mono coil; I backed the sensitivity down to manual 7, but, although better, the threshold was still erratic. Performing a couple of noise cancels didn't seem to help much, either. Then it finally occurred to me to do a reset to the factory preset, and sure enough, the machine settled right down. Whew, thought there was a real problem there for a few.😅 The threshold still wasn’t ultra-smooth, as it is on a GPX-5000 with the Coil switch set to Cancel, but I guess like JP said, it's the price we have to pay for the incredible sensitivity of the GPX 6000.
Swinging towards where I had left off the day before, I encountered a few trash targets, including a 22 casing buried at nearly a foot deep; the initial target response was very clean and quite obvious. Continuing along, I got another deep sounding target, and after digging down around 6 inches, the signal was out of the hole. Pinpointing with the left edge of the coil is required when using the DD coil in EMI Cancel mode, since the coil becomes a pseudo monoloop, where the left side of the coil is now operating as an 8” x 14” elliptical mono, and there is no sensitivity at all on the right side of the coil. A quick sift of the material with the scoop brought a sweet little 0.65 gram gold nugget to light!
After digging a few more trash targets, I finally arrived at the spot where I had left off the day before, and almost immediately, a sweet mellow target response from my Avantree Torus wireless speaker had me once again blasting into a bedrock crevice. The target was around 4 or 5 inches deep: a quarter-gram nugget.
Just a few feet away, another signal in a bedrock crevice, this time a thin, 0.15 of a gram piece at about the same depth.
Not bad for a few hours on an old patch with new technology; covered gas for the trip and then some. Stay tuned for day 3...
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8 hours ago, mn90403 said:
Well done my teacher!
I'm sure it is too hot to be looking for new patches. You have to get the nuggets where you got them before.
Definitely too hot for cruising, but I always test new machines on an old patch to evaluate any performance gains.
59 minutes ago, oneguy said:Nice hunt.... Had a chuckle over you saying "But how did the Gold Monster miss these? Must not have got that little 5-inch Monster coil directly over them". I keep re-hunting areas with the Monster I "think" gotta be done, hit it sooo many times...no more nuggs, etc. Then I step back and see the whole area and try an visualize painting that whole area with a 3" brush (working center of the 5" coil) and realize the reality of how long it would take to "paint" that whole area with a 3" brush....lol
True that, Oneguy!
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Day one...
I headed to the hills this morning to beat the heat and log a few hours behind the control pod of Minelabs' latest offering, the exciting new GPX 6000. Hiking up and down the hills with this featherweight P.I. nugget detector is pure bliss after lugging the GPZ 7000 around for the past 6 years...has it been so long?! Armed with the 11-inch GPX mono coil, I targeted an old nugget patch that I had carefully gridded many times in the past with several detectors, including the GPX-5000, Gold Monster and GPZ 7000. With nearby power lines, operating at a Manual Sensitivity of 10 or Auto+ proved a bit too chattery and required excessive Noise Cancel delays that became rather irksome after awhile. Backing the Sensitivity to 7 smoothed things out considerably without any noticeable loss of performance, and if I got an iffy target response, a quick jump to 10 would provide a definitive yes or no.
After digging a few trash targets, the first “nugget” that the GPX 6000 hit was a 0.04 of a gram surface screamer, and the next couple of nuggets were small and shallow; nothing surprising. But how did the Gold Monster miss these? Must not have got that little 5-inch Monster coil directly over them.🤔 It was the next 3 targets that really blew my mind, however...
By late afternoon, the temps were soaring into the mid-90's, and despite a nice breeze, it was becoming a tad uncomfortable, and I was thinking about calling it a day. That was when the GPX 6000 sounded off with a sweet, mellow and deep sounding target response. A few scrapes with the pick exposed the underlying bedrock, and somewhere - in a crevice, no doubt - a golden treasure awaited to be uncovered...or so I hoped...could just as easily be a bit of square nail, a bullet or boot tack.😒 Blasting a few inches into the bedrock with the pick got the target out - a nice little golden picker in the scoop. 🙂
After backfilling the dig hole, just one swing of the detector revealed another soft, mellow hit a mere foot away. Same scenario: a small golden goody a few inches deep in a bedrock crevice.
Then, about another 4 feet away, a faint response. Quickly jacking the Sensitivity from 7 to 10 brightened the signal a bit, so I began digging about 6 inches through a layer of gravels before hitting bedrock and a rather thick tree root. A little more pick work and pinpointing with the edge of the coil located the target in a crevice right next to the root. This one was deep; nearing the 12-inch mark, the target was finally out, and it was screaming off of the coil edge! A quick sift with the scoop uncovered a hefty 1.34 gram nugget. How the GPZ 7000 missed this beauty, I'll never know...it's a head scratcher.😅
Time to call it quits for the day on that high note, for sure! I'll be at it again tomorrow, this time with the GPX 14 DD coil in EMI Cancel Mode; should be able to run flat out in Auto+ Sensitivity with the threshold as smooth as glass.
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WTG on your Nox nuggets, AG. Thanks for braving the heat to learn from us the knowledge it takes to be a successful gold nugget detectorist. Best of luck on your future adventures.
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12 hours ago, sevastras said:
I was at the training and have to say that it was pretty impressive. I only got to swing one for about 20 minutes or so and only found a piece of bird shot but the ease of use, weight and what I saw from the performance has definitely got me thinking about one. I ended up with 5 pieces with my 800 @Gerry in Idaho @Lunk thanks again for the great weekend.
It was a good time training with you, Sevastras; it’s always a pleasure to see gold being found during the class. I could tell you fell in love with the GPX 6000...it’s nearly impossible not too after swinging one.😍 Just think: all you need to do with your Nox is find just 3.3 ounces of gold, or a nice key date coin, or a diamond ring, and you’ll have that dream machine in no time! Best of luck...🍀
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14 hours ago, cobill said:
Hey Lunk,
WTG breaking in that shiny, new GPX 6000 with fast gold! Must have gotten those trainees blood flowing. What are the gloves you are wearing...something for carpal tunnel syndrome?
Bill
Thanks Bill. So the gloves are are just Walmart cheapies to keep blisters and scorpion stings at bay. 🙂
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Gpx-6000 1st Trip To The Gold Fields (part 1 Of 2 - Long Read)
in Detector Prospector Forum
Posted
Poor Brian, he may have to legally change his name to “Brian” now...🤣