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Gerry included, there have been several very helpful people here that I would have to thank for their help, the well-knowns like Gerry and Steve, Chris, Rob and Ron, and the other members whom I was able to meet up with and go detecting with. I was recently fortunate enough to meet up with one member here who brought me out to one of their detecting places and gave me some great tips and pointy fingers, and as a result, this is what I found with my 6000. A little .21g nugget, and my first. They’ll go unnamed, but they know I’m very appreciative to be able to go detecting with them. Thank you!

Good catch, I thought it looked fake, more like gold plated cat scat from a litter box. Or can it really form like that?

I know it’s not detectable, but it’s old and I found it. 518-million year old trilobite fossils. These are really old, especially for what was to become some desert mountains of today in California. All of Earth’s landscape looked much like Mars back then. There were no plants or animals of any kind on the land, save some algae crusts growing next to the ocean's edge and an occasional sea snail nibbling on it in the tidal zones. There were no vertebrate animals swimming in the oceans, in fact, the super continent Pangea had not formed for another 200 million years, and dinosaurs did not exist for another 290 million years after the death of this trilobite.

That’s pretty interesting how they are actually fractals in how they form, their shapes are very unique and it’s interesting how just a small inclusion of certain minerals in the mix affects the resulting shape of the nuggets. I searched a bit but was unable to find any specific XRF analysis of Rye Patch Chevron nuggets, has anyone come across this? I’m really interested in what the mineralogy aspects are of them. Also, do these occur anywhere else in the US?

Wow, simply beautiful. How do those form? Are they unique in their composition that causes crystallization, or is it a physical process that causes it?

@Nuggethunter70 Yeah, I posted a video on Phrunt’s original thread about this finally being mentioned by Minelab about the same issue. It would become unstable when it was running the speaker, but then would quiet down when using a Bluetooth speaker. It was fixed quickly be Minelab’s contractor and they also replaced my cracking coil. I am very happy with mine, getting tiny lead specks and it is sensitive to .08gm pieces of gold I stuck a couple inches in the ground (I was using a Goldhawk 5 x10)

Sub gram ditts going for $5 spot? It’ll be like… But Gerry on the other hand will be posting more like this…

Hey Mitchel, We probably better stop posting about it, I think we’re jinxing it. More clouds are coming through shortly after noon…

Mitchel, you are right. Looks like we get a sunny window between the rains on Sunday and Tuesday. That’ll be great! If anyone here wants a local weather forecast for the eclipse on Monday the 8th and want to save $18 for their premium membership, send me your location and I’ll send you a screenshot of your area for free. I subscribed to Windy.com and it provides a very good set of prediction models for up to 10 days ahead.

I can’t wait for this to hit the market, I wonder if Gerry will be training with them? I was also sad when news broke that Minelab decided to drop their advanced line of GPXRF detectors, so I’m really excited that Fisher is coming out with one! Finally a way to do lead discrimination, this thing is going to really take off!

The website windy.com is an excellent way to track Weather in locations, it uses the same models that storm trackers also use. It’s kind of expensive for the premium version but the free one will let you look ahead three days or so. There’s a cloud setting too in the menu, and unfortunately it’s not looking good for a lot of Texas on Monday. We’re still going but will probably bag it and do something different on our way out there if we see that it’s going to be cloudy. It’s a long way for us and will be an expensive drive just to watch clouds getting dark.

Hey Mitchel- we have a big pile of DG we got from our local California Home Depot that needs to be moved to our back yard. Bring a drywasher and you can keep all the gold you find in it if you dump the tailings out back! Actually, I was able to have my wife wait longer for me to do it because I told her about the gold in it and how I wanted it to dry out a bit- I told her about the Jeff Williams video a while back where he did the same thing.

Hmmm 🤔 looks very promising! Making it adjustable was an excellent upgrade to the hip stick, good job! Need any beta testers and reviewers? 😉

I was worried it would be like that harness with a battery counterweight in the photo of Jim Straight using a Bismark coil!

Dutch oven baked fresh blackberry cobbler with homemade vanilla ice cream on the Klamath River. Salmonberries you pick from the edges of the trail while hiking in the Olympics. Those were some of my favorites. But that was before detecting. Now that I mainly desert detect when I can go, the only berries I pick are the little round lead ones that I mostly keep finding. Don’t eat those!!

Miles? Sounds like you will need some help!😉

Mitchel, of all the courses you took before, if you could only do one due to limited time off each year, what would you recommend for the first one? Also, check your DMs! 😉

Should’ve, would’ve, could’ve patented your idea! Curious- have you delved into soil resistance mapping yet? It seems like a pretty cool technology as well.

Their system is scanning multiple frequencies, but not only that it’s also looking at patterns at each frequency, so I think it can identify individual types of vibrations by that and follow it as it traverses through the landscape. It’s using timing to determine how dense the material is that those pulses or vibrations are traveling through along the array. Anywhere the signal slows down would indicate a change in density of the ground at that point. They can determine depth by the distance between the sensors as well. I think it’s pretty cool technology, and the resulting maps are interesting. Of course it doesn’t replace groundwork, someone has to go out there and identify what the different density materials are and if they’re worth digging up.

Reese Townes published a great book as well: https://goldseekeradventures.com/

You’re about two hours from some really good gold areas in the El Paso mountains, look up PCSC, Taft and OC49ers, all three have good club claims in that area. Also get a small coil like the Coiltek 10x5 or the little Minelab 6” coil for your Equinox. Those will help you find some gold.

Hi Skate! I would take a class and also read a lot. Also join a local club then you can network with people and perhaps go out to detect and prospect with. Also you have been here longer than I - it’s a great place to meet local members who will help - I did just through meeting up with some who I either sold stuff to or bought something from. -Anthony

I’ve seen the more typical geosurveys used for mapping faults and exploration of oil and gas using thumper trucks or a dead weight along with a long string of geophones with them (vibration sensors strung along a long line across the ground to pick up the vibrations), but I was not aware of the more passive technique called Ambient Noise Temography (ANT) surveys. I just saw an ad here on DP about it from this company- it’s pretty interesting what they are doing and legit too- it’s not a gold spear or anything like that, but probably many times more expensive than those as well because it depends on you using several of these sensors. ANT surveys use a grid of sensors that measure ambient Earth motions like local disturbances form humans like trains and trucks, and ocean waves hitting the coast many miles away to measure and map underground geological features they say over 2km deep. It’s pretty cool technology that mining companies are using. For a deeper review of it (skip the 1st minute):

These are interesting, and wow- Nevada sure has been collecting a lot of fees! I prospect occasionally in an area I know there has been an ongoing valid placer and lode claim, but I notice that only the lode claim shows up and the fees paid total doesn’t appear to have any fees recorded with it. Also, the placer used to show up on the MLM maps before BLM’s error that occurred a while back, but not anymore. Could the BLM’s recording and dropped claims issue still be plaguing their system?

I got it! Me: create a gold collecting device named Dalas that I put together with a screwdriver and a drill that is green, has rotating blades, is round like a pizza, goes left and right and has a paddle. Bing Image creator AI: