jasong

Thanks everyone, prospectors and dealers alike. I got everything taken care of, if anyone hears anything at all, just let me or the sheriff know and that's the biggest help anyone could give. Any bit of information or eyewitness report helps. Regarding how to secure a Conex the best way, unfortunately just a $100 angle grinder can defeat basically any locks on the planet so I'm not sure there really is a good way to secure a Conex if a thief really wants in. Even if there was, they can just cut right through the walls fairly quickly. I guess the only solution is a solid 2ft thick concrete bunker buried in the ground, with a 2ft thick steel blast door.

Yes and no, the biggest items aren't covered. RV (and contents), ATV. Haven't found out if the Conex is covered or not. I did recover the RV, but it's a total loss, not usable anymore. They dragged it 1/4 mile with no wheels until it buried itself, then broke in and vandalized and took everything. Including a bag of dirty clothes and half a bottle of laundry detergent, so who knows, maybe I'll get something back better than it was. 🙂 Big thanks to the GSSN guys who helped me dig the RV out and get some wheels back on so I could get it out of the road. Lent me some lugnuts off their own trailers too since mine were stolen. Those guys were top notch gentlemen. My homeowners insurance thankfully says they will cover some tools and prospecting equipment. I tried to get them to cover the RV contents, but no luck. They took virtually everything but left a ton of my expensive geology textbooks so, that was a good surprise. They ripped my 1990's defunct tape deck out of the wall, but left my easily removable $300 cell reapeater. Geniuses! Thankfully the thieves left my backhoe alone. They hid my key (I found it) and clearly they were intending to take it later, presumably angling to find a buyer who would keep quiet because that would be an easily trackable item around here if they tried to sell it on the open market. I also know the lady who runs the only heavy equipment store. My stuff is a loss but I don't even care at this point, my focus is entirely on catching these people now. I know where they live now, and I proved it to one of them today. In doing so, I also became pretty certain these people are the same ones involved in the ongoing rash of thefts out here the last decade or so.

Thanks Rob, if you could cross post this to your forum that would be great. I missed yours and others posts here at first as I was running around like a headless chicken packing stuff up to do the 12 hr drive down. I appreciate it, I'm on my phone and it doesnt have my login and password saved for your forum like my computer does, so I cant get in right now, if you could copy and paste I would appreciate it! There is definitely too much prowpecting stuff to sell in NW Arizona without suspicion, so if they try to get rid of it it very well may filter down to Phoenix area. Especially if someone is selling prospecting gear with a bunch of tools and off grid equipment, they took a homestead worth of stuff as I was building a base down there to live half the year.

Thanks everyone, and thanks for letting this get some visibility. The sheriff went out there, and after speaking with him and learning some things he found, I have good reason to believe it's someone local, as in within a few miles or so. Also good reason to believe now that they were either prospectors or associated with prospectors. I think there were 2 or more people involved. This narrows it down considerably, plus since most people leave for the hot months there aren't a lot of people there to begin with so that cuts it down to an easily investigatable handful of people. As in, like maybe 10 people. The sheriff has some ideas, and I happen to be a pretty good detective sort myself too, not to mention I talk to a lot of people since I wander around so much exploring, and drug addicts tend to blab eventually, especially when reward money is involved. I'm going to find out who did it. If the thieves are reading this (and I'm pretty sure someone has told you about this post by now), you can gamble on your buddies staying quiet, or we can work something out to get my stuff returned in the next 2 days. Otherwise, it's prison and damages, which are already at $15k to my RV and Conex. Might also ask yourself who along the road in has a camera pointed at the road because you stole from them too. Hmm. 3 truckloads of stolen gear is pretty hard to hide.

Yep, and this area is notorious for meth heads too unfortunately. They go scrapping for old junk everywhere, including people's "not junk" behind gates. I also have people saying they track me down from videos I made, so it could be that too. I had a guy seemingly get angry at me for not taking him to one of my patches, so he said he flew a drone around until he figured out where I was at and left it at that "I know where you are". Usually get a few of them with every video, 50 requests to take people out to private patches, then 1 or 2 that really take it personal when I won't and get angry. Suppose it's possible one got angry enough to go burglarize me. Most likely is local tweakers though, they just did it to a guy a few miles away this winter too, sheriff says they get burglaries out there from tweakers year round.

Sorry for the off topic post, I just wanted to get this out there quickly and please delete if this shouldn't be here. I had a ton of stuff stolen in Arizona, not sure what exactly yet as I have to drive down now to find out. They abandoned my RV on the road since I sabotaged the wheels to prevent theft (after they dragged it 1000ft ruining my axles and drums), but took everything inside, and took a 40ft Conex worth of tools and gold prospecting equipment. So much stuff I'm not even sure what all was in it until I can do a full inventory. So, if anyone sees someone in NW Arizona trying to offload a bunch of drywashers, crusher stuff, cleanup stuff, sluices, especially if they seem like tweakers, please let me know. Also, a Yamaha Grizzly ATV, green, 400cc. Tons of tools, most the battery powered stuff was Makita. Had a Troy Bilt gold vac, a smaller keene drywasher (is it the 141?), a bigger Keene drywasher (black), a puffer Keene drywasher. I'm forgetting a ton of stuff but, you get the idea, if some tweaker is going around trying to sell gold prospecting stuff for cheap to people, get a name if you can. Mohave county Sheriff is out there now, if anyone has heard anything at all, please let the sheriff know. Had all my detectors with me in Wyoming so none of them were stolen. If anyone hears anything, anyone mentioning anything about who did this, please let me or the sheriff know. The gates and the chain were cut, plus cut through 4 large boron carbide shackles. they had tools and it was planned. It wasn't in a place that someone randomly would have found, I suspect they are local and/or prospectors at this time. It sounds like some of my con buckets were stolen, which would look like dirt bucket to someone who didn't know it might be valuable so if they weren't prospectors, they must be familiar with it to take buckets of dirt. It may have happened a few weeks ago, I just now got someone track me down from some papers they found in my abandoned trailer and let me know about it sitting there in the middle of the road. It's been 110 or hotter out there so there weren't many prospectors around but one said he thought he saw my trailer moved at least a few weeks ago. If anyone has info leading to an arrest with at least some of my items found so I know it was them, I will give you $1000 cash. We can work it out anonymously if preferred. Thanks

Yes, so will your Equinox and GB2. In the place I went, I'd use the EQ800 personally for the VDI capability, but that's just me. My buddy does great with the GB2. Be careful though, some of these places aren't really the types you can just wander around and detect randomly. There is a reason a lot of people don't post to forums about it and keep it secretive. I had to do a ton of research just to find a few stray polygons of land, and I'm not talking about the kind of basic research most do to go out prospecting in NV or AZ. Some don't bother with that, and that's gonna get them shut down eventually IMO. These spots are too small to handle much attention and there is a lot of money and power around some of them who would prefer you not be there. The sheriff will ticket you for parking while poor at one spot if he sees your truck on the side of the road.

Looks familiar! It is tough hunting, I dislocated my shoulder and tore my rotator cuff falling down what looked like a hydraulic cut there on my first day and had to leave. All I ever found were square nails with my 4500, I was digging them out of solid shale down 8 to 12 inches deep, no idea how they got there but decided the 4500 was pointless there. Went back two years later with a Fors Core (no backup), and it quit 2 hours into detecting and had to cancel the trip. Ran into another guy detecting there who I saw off in the distance on a big tailing pile, and which turned out to be my buddy and we had a laugh since it's kinda secretive and we both ended up there, and basically on the same hill and same tailing pile on the same day via two completely different paths of discovery. I'm scared to go back with the GPZ and try again, haven't been back for like 4 years out of sheer superstition.

Might get in touch with me when you get down there. You helped me get started in jade prospecting a few years back when I was trying to learn what to look for by sending me a nice jade sample and that was a big help, I went from guessing to knowing exactly how to test and look for stuff with that sample. This summer the company I optioned my jade prospects to just exercised the option to buy me out, so that was all a success and I'm able to use that money to get back to the field full time prospecting again. I appreciate your help when I was starting out. Now, I have a new gold project in the vicinity of SNV, and another guy associated with the jade stuff might be out on that one too and might be someone to meet if you are still doing jade stuff in China. I'm unsure of what I can and cannot say at this point though due to non-disclosure clauses so I may not be able to take anyone out to the project until it's completed, but who knows, maybe there is a good connection to be made if so. Also, if you happen to be in Wyoming before then for travel or whatever, I can show you what will be one of the two first new commercial jade exploration projects in the lower 48 in probably 4 or 5 decades.

Only 7 antennas? I got you, Minelab, already obsoleted the competition for you. I put antennas on the antenna. Beat that, know it all scientists! Also massive increased sensitivity to diamonds and meatloaf sandwiches by invoking the imagery of a half donkey/half falcon drawing shooting a plasma beam from it's beak. And only I offer the official flag of Burkina Faso on my products. Finally, in a market first, after 17 years of painstaking research I've finally perfected flame imagery on the handle.

For mono vs mono in mild ground, the best scaling/comparison factor I've found is just by comparing total area of a coil. However, with higher degrees of ellipticity it may not scale as well, but every coil I've tested has more or less followed this rule of thumb. A 24x12 has an area of 226 square inches and a 14" round has an area of 154 square inches. So, IMO, the 24x12 will get more raw depth on stuff above ~1 gram or so generally, in mild ground. But with that much ellipticity, that may only hold true towards the center of the coil, I'm not sure since I've never tested one like that. The only place you'd see a 14" DD get more depth on larger stuff is in bad ground where you have dial down your settings to run the 24x12 mono. On a DD, your RX and TX lobes individually are the effective size of the coil, not the total coil size. Unless something has changed with newer DD designs, I haven't been following very closely. You just have to kinda try and see on your particular ground to know which solution is best if your ground is hot - either go with a DD or dial back your mono with Enhance or whatever you prefer.

I haven't tried to balance on the ML one yet, but I will when I get some free time again to get away from town. The fact that the aftermarket ferrite is conductive is the concerning part to me. Because if a person tries to balance it in manual they will be changing both X and G and leaving it set wrong. At least that's the way I understand it. That, and the X itself may be not matching the X in the ML ferrite either.

The Ace250 was the first real detector I bought and it's what really got me into detecting. I had a couple $5 garage sale 1970's machines before that and they were a bit frustrating to learn on and I didn't do much with them. But they got me into reading forums for a few years as a distraction from homework. In 2004, I believe it was the first year the Ace 250 came out, I finally decided to take the plunge and spend what seemed like a bankrupting amount to me at the time - $199. I literally spent months going back and forth on whether I should spend that much or not. I was paying my way through college as a dishwasher and doing lab TA'ing at the time. I bought it with the idea that I'd detect the campus grounds and pay the machine off quickly and have extra money to go to concerts and movies, one in a long line of get rich quick schemes I had at that age. What I didn't know was that the White's factory was literally right across I-5 (an interstate) from me and many times a week there were 2 guys (sometimes 3 or 4) associated with White's, sometimes testing machines, who would grid all the good spots regularly. So I'd try to wake up real early and haul ass through all the fields, detecting a million miles an hour, to try to beat them to it. That machine absolutely rocked for that purpose. It was so fast, easy and intuitive. And that fast technique kinda carried over to prospecting too in a way later on. I still got the 250, I take it out with me looking for old abandoned homesteads and ranches, it's beat to hell from bouncing around in the back of my truck and being abused for 15 years, and still runs great.

I was going to post this in one of the X Coil threads, but it might be of interest to everyone. I bought a replacement ferrite ring since I left my ML ferrite in Arizona. It's one of the Doc's ferrites with the white backside (off Ebay), I did not realize they were not ML ferrites when I bought it. The OEM Minelab ferrites have a black backside. It would not balance on the X Coils at all and actually sounded like a screaming target (I didn't try the Z14) so I reported that to the coil manufacturer. He responded that the white backed aftermarket rings are not the same as the ML rings. So, as I normally do, I checked for myself, bought an authentic ML ring, and he was right. They are the same size, but the Doc's ring is 10 grams heavier (something I noticed immediately but did not have a ML ring to compare to until recently). It is also more magnetic. The Doc's ring is also conductive whereas the ML ring is non-conductive - the Doc's ring was reading about 38 ohms from side to side whereas the ML ring read infinity. And after I sanded the backs to get a fresh surface to check resistances on I noticed the ML ring looks dull and black as a ferrite should, but the Doc's ring looks shiny and metallic, like iron. So, clearly there are differences between the two rings. Thought people might like to know even if you are just using the stock coil, as I'm not sure how this affects the ground balance, but someone could be running suboptimally using this ring.

One more update, after talking to the manufacturer it looks like all coils will now come with these plastic spikes/clamps on the cables.