jasong

Nice work! It's crazy how similar some Western AZ gold can look no matter how far up or down the state you go. Not all, but a some of it. GB, Havasu, and Yuma area all seem to produce pieces that might bear similar character.

I just got a geology book called Ancient Landscapes of Western North America: a Geologic History with Paleogeographic Maps and it's pretty awesome if anyone else is looking for a good visual/map overview of how plate tectonics and the different mountain ranges have changed over the hundreds of millions of years. I have to force myself to put it down and go get some work done, but posting here for those who are interested in such things that might help locate old channels outside the published areas in California and into the unknown in other states where no such literature exists and the search must be on our own laurels. While the river courses it shows are almost certainly guesses or just for show, the mountain locations themselves are somewhat accurate since these and the various basins have left record as the various geologic formations we can see today. And it's easy to see which directions rivers might have flowed at various periods of time since the mountain and even sea locations have changed so much. Geomorphology is important when tracking down undiscovered placer deposits, and this is the best book I've ever seen to get an idea of what the landscape looked like so long ago when these paleorivers were actually running and depositing gold.

I ran into various old relics of the course this Stan Grist was selling when I was searching for another detectorist who seems to be lost to history and I never located named Chet Long (not the Chet that posts here, I asked ). I seem to remember seeing Grist ads in magazines or maybe online when I first started detecting for gold too. Sure wish some of these guys would have shared more knowledge on the forums.

Are there any such labs that cater to smaller companies and prospectors? The bigger labs all seem swamped, I can barely get them to respond to small fry like me. I'd like to get results in 2-3 weeks if possible, but still be affordable. Need both fire assay and ICP-AES or similar spectrometry for other elements. Not XRF.

I'm interested in hearing them.

That's a pretty good writeup with some nice diagrams. Usually people only talk about paleo placers in reference to California. One of my personal major pushes in the placer gold realm today is to locate these old channels in other states where they've been overlooked or ignored/unrecognized. I've found them in every state I prospect in. It's not just limited to gold though, I've found placer jade in Wyoming by concentrating on looking for older gravels from long extinct rivers. Sometimes the gravels themselves are mostly eroded away and difficult to locate, but there are still residual deposits of garnets or other heavies. In Colorado I found a bunch of heavy zircon sand which I used to trace an old channel. A pan can show the presence of minerals which could have only gotten to where they are at by stream transport at one time. In the case of the zircons, I was able to trace the formation which they originated from and thus was also able to find more parts of the long extinct and mostly invisible channel many thousands of feet elevation above and many miles distant. Things like this can be employed absent large visible paleo gravel deposits.

Yeah I should probably preface my advice with the statement that I do not prospect in California and know nothing about the local government systems there since that state sounds like it can often be another country in some ways. So many people there and so much private land that it's just easier for me to avoid and stay in my loner bubble. Most everything I do is in AZ, NV, CO, WY. And I'm looking more into ID, SD, and MT lately since they are much closer to me and my ability to travel is reduced from what it once was. And since all my old friends basically live in Oregon I'm looking at stuff there too lately. I was surprised that even Esmeralda county - population like maybe 900 and without a single incorporated town - even had online document access (though admittedly that one lacks some features). Some states seem to do things well, others not caught up to the modern era yet.

(Not Clay, but...) Considering a huge amount of location certificates which I pull lack even basic information to properly map them - like a tie point, or bearing/range from tie to a corner - and also because there are really no standard forms to use to program automated data recovery from, there is really no good way to automate the mapping of all the older claims unfortunately. Even doing it by hand is impossible for a lot of claims. You'd be surprised how many "claims" people pay money to file yet put apparantly zero thought into putting even the most basic minimum amount of location information onto them. That's why I thought it was good to see the online claim filing system on the MLRS. But we'll see how that goes, I hope now it doesn't start a deluge of paper staking.

Here is my process, maybe this will help clear up confusion about what to look for at the recorder, or how to do it. Most of this can be done online, and is quick and easy. Most recorders have online databases back to the 1990's or so. The BLM database is more or less correct for older claims for which they have done the data entry on and you know down to the 1/4 section what is claimed (more on that in a moment), so what I do at the recorder website is find out if any newer claims have been filed which the BLM database does not yet have record of as my first step. Search the recorder database by T/R/S, and then order results by date. Now just look for any claims filed at the county which are newer than the newest claims the BLM has record of. Download the location certificates, map them in Google Earth, import the KMZ into your phone or GPS, and now you know exactly where they are at on the ground and what to avoid. If there are no older claims within any 1/4 section you will be prospecting, then there is no need to pull location certificates for those older claims since you can just avoid that whole 1/4 section, and you already know where the newer claims are at so you can avoid them. Good to go now, go detecting! IF however there are older claims the BLM is listing in a 1/4 section you are interested in prospecting then you now to map those older claims (or at least determine where they are at). You need to pull those location certificates at the recorder. If they are newer than the 1990's then you can do it from home on the recorder website at most counties, just like with the newer claims. If the older claims are older than the 1990's or so, then this is the point you will likely need to visit the recorder's office in person and search either or both of the books or microfiche. In almost every county, this almost always boils down to first locating the index book. Some indexes are sorted by geographic area (T/R/S), some are sorted by name, some are sorted by claim names, some are sorted by document type. Most are also sorted by date. Locate you items of interest in the index, and then pull them up in whatever book the index lists. Take your stack of location certificates and map them out however you prefer.

And the BLM does have Google Earth overlays both for the PLSS and land ownership. USGS has a mines overlay too, which is what Minecache and other websites take and repackage and sell.

With the amount of new people here the last few years it bears repeating on a fairly regular basis that the county recorder is the only place to properly determine what location paperwork has been filed if time is of any concern at all. All of these 3rd party websites like Minecache or yes even Mylandmatters (though they are far and away the best 3rd party site with the most knowledgeable people) are not substitutes for doing any kind of claim research, though many newer people tend to think it's suffices, that is not the case. Why? Multitude reasons. 3rd party sites are at best using the LR2000 (now MLRS) database dumps to update their own databases. This means that they might be up to 2 weeks behind the BLM themselves since it's a bi-weekly database dump. Assuming they update their own databses the day the dump occurs, which probably isn't the case so they might be even further behind. I get the "bi-weekly" database dump from the BLM myself, and I can promise it's often less bi-weekly and sometimes more "whenever we get around to it". I've seen it take 1+ months. The BLM themselves are delayed many months both in processing paperwork as well as data entry. Even in states in which historically they were fairly caught up, they are now behind 3+ months. I know because I file claims often and some of mine which I filed over 3 months ago are only now showing as "filed", which means they won't show up in BLM databases OR 3rd party databases unless you search by serial #, which only I have at the moment so they will not show up in database or mapping searching by my name, geographic location, claim name, or anything else. They do show up at the county recorder though In addition to the BLM delay, a claimaint is not required to file with the BLM for 90 days after location. A period of time I and many others very commonly use since being in the field means no mailboxes to get the county recorded original back quickly, nor access to post offices to send mail to the BLM once that document arrives. 3rd party sites do not give you any actual location information beyond the 1/4 section. That is insufficient to determine what land is actually claimed. So, right now, in states commonly prospected on this forum, I can absolutely guarantee that there are claims ~6 months old at this point (and maybe older) which have yet to even show up in MLRS, let alone any of the 3rd party websites. The 90 day period along with the BLM's internal delays in even processing paperwork received means that location certificates at the BLM may not show up for well over 3 months after staking/filing, so it's not good enough to only research at the BLM either. The county recorder is the only place to go for up to date mining claim status. Any serious prospector going beyond club claims has to familiarize themselves with recorder research. If not, stick to club claims because this is a huge part of prospecting, in addition to understanding the laws. The only exception is when researching federal/BLM specific documents which may or may not be required to file at the recorder, or curable items such as NOIH's, and these the BLM may be the only or at least the first agency to have copies.

Pinpointing isn't really an extra step for most targets for me. As part of the detecting/target analysis process, I am already sweeping across every target a few times and then I nose the coil into it when I'm checking for repeatability.By the time I know if it's a diggable target, I already have an idea where the target is at in the ground. Dig 8-10" out to see if the target moves, then stick the edge of the coil in the hole. It's more of a "feel", based on correlating the hot spots of the coil to the signal intensity as I determine if it's diggable or not. No 90 degree walking or specific pinpointing required. You just need to be familiar with what part of the coil is the hottest and subconsciously you will know where the target is based on signal strength as you move your coil in 2D to check for target repeatability. I use a bigger 17" coil pretty often, and I can't recall ever missing a target with it. The only time I do a real, seperate pinpointing process is when it's a shallow target I can get with the coil edge from the onset so I know where to bootscrape.

Are RV's not very popular in Australia? I notice a lot of the postings I see are truck mounted mobile setups. Here almost everyone uses an RV and then does day excursions via truck or side by side. Then a tent for multi-day excursions away from base camp but I don't really see many except the younger guys doing that here. I lived in an RV in the field full time for over 5 years, so they are quite comfortable to work out of and live in. I'm curious why Australia seems to have a different approach, is it lack of dirt roads to get an RV close enough to areas of interest?

I remember that conference call Steve posted a link to a week or two ago mentioned that $13 million in product had already been shipped directly to the African markets and was "not being warehoused due to demand" (or something to that effect, paraphrasing there) . It wasn't explicit that it was all 6000's, but I have a hard time imagining what else is being shipping right now, in that quantity, to that geographic location. There was no mention of shipping anything to the USA.

Minelab's web security completely blocks me from accessing their page a lot of times, like right now. Then other times it lets me in. I don't get it. It's the only site on planet Earth that does that to me. Am I the only one or does it do this to other people too?

Only question I have left is are we going to have to just talk about the weather once the 6000 makes settings discussions redundant?

Agree there completely. I believe the most important task to unleash the full horsepower of the GPZ is to make sure the machine itself is hearing the maximum possible number of target signals first. This is the basis of my entire detecting philosophy with the GPZ, and it sounds similar to your ideas as well. Get the information into the machine, as much target info as possible, then work the operator-side audio controls out as required. If the machine itself is missing a good number of target signals from the very start due to running too low gain, then no amount of adjusting audio will ever recover or hear them. This may vary if forced to run in Difficult, but I can't comment there, I can comment based on my experience though, though this isn't written to GoldHound since he already knows and prospects full time, as much as is it just putting this out in general. Most important is run in Normal any time possible. Next run in as high of sensitivity as possible. Control the mess with threshold and smoothing as needed. Detailing #3 - I'll adjust Threshold down first. Then if I need Low Smoothing, I'll turn it on and bump Threshold back up to where I started to compensate. If not stable still, then I'll start bumping Threshold down 2 points at a time until I get something stable. If all that fails, then I'll finally lower Sensitivity by 2 points, and start the process again with normal threshold and no smoothing. Very rarely, almost never, have I ever had to drop below 16 Sensitivity. I am guessing in general the difference between you and I is I will run a much lower threshold, as my THold max is usually 20, my max is lower than most people's minimum. Probably a lot more EMI around me since I'm much closer to cities though. AFreakOfNature - it's not really possible to avoid discussing timings and smoothing while discussing Sensitivity and Threshold. They are all interrelated and used to compensate for each other. When the Ferrari goes in a tailspin in a tight curve, you don't slow down but you compensate by turning away from the curve (I might have that backwards, I'm not a racer haha) and also by accelerating, and that's how you keep driving fast but maintain control. The machine is all interconnected just like the GPZ controls are when running at peak performance. Now I know many will disagree. But my feeling is that Volume and Volume Limit are not really fundamental in getting the detector to work at peak performance since they have less to do with what the detector hears and everything to do with what the operator hears. It's like how dirty your Ferrari windshield is, it only affects your driving it, but not so much the performance of the car. when the windshield is clean enough to drive, then good to go and not much to talk about. They are user-side settings. So, how a person sets them largely varies by the person's preferences (or hearing damage) themselves. Whereas the way timings, sensitivity are set depend largely on the environment and the gold and that applies equally to us all while detecting the same places, so more specific statements can be made than with relative settings like Volume. Thold and Smoothing are user side audio settings that border on machine side settings too in so much as you can use them to try to stay in Normal and higher Sensitivities and so all 4 of these settings are closely related and must be discussed together for any completeness. Thold and Smoothing (worked together with Sensitivity) are the "turning and accelerating into the curve" to maintain top speed settings without losing control. Timing and Sensitivity are the engine and accelerator pedal.

Also, I will add that when you look at what the 6000 is doing, near as I can tell anyways, it's emulating this sort of setting philosophy. Which is what almost all serious, successful detectorists I've ever met do automatically on their own. First - find the best timing. Second, find the highest stable sensitivity for the ground, EMI, and timing. Third, adjust (or potentially eliminate in the case of the 6000) the threshold. You are the "computer" adjusting these settings as needed with the GPZ though. Adjust as needed through the day as your environment changes. The user can adjust audio as they see fit, but that makes little difference as to what the detector itself hears. The most important thing is to adjust the detector such that it hears the maximum number of target signals while still being stable (emphasis on the stable part). Audio adjustment comes after that to process the cacophony into something easier for the human brain to process, which varies greatly from 1 detectorist to the next. Edit: I am writing this all with the caveat that 95% of my detecting is in Normal. JP has posted many times that Difficult is inherently high gain built into the timing. So results may be different there. So, Australian or other very hot ground users this may not apply to, I am not sure since I don't have enough field experience in Difficult to say one way or another.

Sensitivity seems to be the thing that you and other new people I see posting in other threads not entirely undertstanding, but I think I can help you there. Sensitivity is the amount of gain the RX circuitry applies to the signals which the RX coil lobes detect from the ground. These are not audio signals, these are electromagnetic signals. Sensitivity is controlled by an EM frequency amplifier while audio is controlled by an audio frequency amplifier. Two completely seperate things. Think of a radio and an antenna, and a speaker, very similar thing happening. An FM radio has both an FM frequency amplifier and an audio (volume) amplifier. Does turning up your volume do anything at all to a weak FM radio signal? No, because the audio amplifier is not amplifying the actual radio signal, it only amplifies the demodulated audio signal. So increasing the volume without increasing the FM amplifier gain will only amplify static noise (EMI) and not the radio station you are trying to hear (the nugget). To pick up more distant or weak radio signals (nuggets) you either need a better antenna (different coil) or a stronger radio frequency amplifier (more gain/sensitivity). Sensitivity (aka Gain) determines how sensitive your machine is to weak signals. All the audio (volume) amplification in the world won't make a signal appear which the RX circuitry is not strong enough to amplify. More Sensitivity however will allow the detector (and thus the audio circuitry, and eventually your ear) to hear signals which it cannot hear at all at lower Sensitivities. But! RX gain/sensitivity also amplifies any signal the coil is picking up, including EMI. Which is why people like myself use the audio controls to adjust for and control the amount of noise you hear. I always, always, always run as much Sensitivity as possible for the conditions, then use the audio controls to compensate for noise. When you read the manual, this is exactly why those controls exist, and how the GPZ appears to be designed to be used. And this is why I have said since 2015 that it's better to run in as high of Sensitivity as you can, and then to tamp it all down and control the mess with the audio controls. Even in high EMI environments like we have often in the USA. Because running low gains means you are eliminating a ton of signals that will never be heard at all by the detector, and thus will never be heard by you no matter how much you fiddle with the volume controls. The speed and method you swing a coil can often be used to differentiate target signals from EMI too. The biggest mistake I see new detectorists make is running low gains then thinking they are compensating by boosting volume controls up and then thinking they are gaining something more by boosting audio even further with an audio booster. All the volume boosting in the world will not amplify a signal that isn't in the detector to begin with because you are running Sensitivity/Gain too low. That said, my experience (and I recently met another very experienced individual who independently has the same experience) is that past a certain level of Sensitivity, you will tend to boost more EMI than target response. In my experience, this level is at 18 Sensitivity. Going to 19 and 20 seems to exponentially increase the EMI while only linearly increasing target response. That's why in noisier parts of the US I find 18 Sensitivity to be the sweet spot, and you will see since 2015 this is what I've posted here. I can run 20 gain with some benefit in quieter parts of the country. Normal loves high sensitivities. When the ground thaws, do your own testing on test nuggets rather than taking my word for it. The difference between 18 Sensitivity and 10 Sensitivity is huge when it comes to a nugget you can just barely hear at 10 or just beyond 10's detection range, it will be a sweet target at 18 often. There is no ground, and no part of the USA which I have found any place necessary to run below 12 gain where you can't get better performance by instead running higher Sensitivity (wet salt ground being the only single exception I've encountered, but this varies) and using audio to process the RX boosted signal isntead. RX Sensitivity is the first thing you want to maximize because if it's too low then your detector will simply miss entirely a lot of deeper nuggets.

I'm fairly impressed overall with the mapping interface, it just needs improvement. It's running much smoother now than it was when they first started talking about it. It's quicker than Geocommunicator was. It's also a standard GIS server frontend so it seems like they can easily improve, change, and add features, whereas Geocommunicator was pretty rigid. If they solve the two issues I mentioned, then the mapping interface will be worth using. Right now I just skip it and use the MLRS database instead. I used to have some people's emails in the BLM who worked on such things but it's been so long that I doubt they are there anymore, otherwise I'd give them a bit of improvement advice. Also, I don't know if anyone noticed, but you can now file a claim instantly and entirely online. Subject to a human approval process later, but it still goes through right when you file it online near as I can tell. That's a huge improvement in my book though I haven't gone through the whole process yet.

It's pretty basic, mostly enable or disable whatever layers or imagery you want, zoom to an area of interest, click on the information icon, and then click on the map and it will pull up a case window showing all the closed and open claims plus other info. There is also an LR2000 type database search page (it's hard to find) which searches the MLRS database. You can enable or disable different layers such as active, closed mining claims, PLSS, SMA, etc. The problem is that even when you disable a layer, it still brings up every single layer in the Case window so you have to scroll through endless junk to find the claim of interest. Also, once you get to a claim of interest, you can't click on it and get more data such as filings, names, etc. You still have to search the MLRS database by hand to get the full report, which makes it no better than LR2000 if that's the case. They need to look at Land Matters and design the interface similarly such that you can click on a claim and pull the report that you would otherwise have to access through the MLRS or LR2000 database, otherwise it's just a toy IMO.

Bury test nuggets and test the settings out to see what works best at edge of detection as well as normal depths. Then see exactly how deep you can hit each size nugget and how the settings change the target response. Now you know on your own exactly what settings to run in the ground/area you specifically work and you also have a feel for how deep you are detecting rather than guessing. Next look at the ground you are detecting and ask yourself if that ground matches the capabilities of your machine which you just observed. That's what determines if you have the right tool for the job. You make that determination, not a forum member. Understand your environment, understand the gold, and understand your machine you have. Personally. Then you can determine if you need to change something. I can't tell you how many GPZ owners I've run into in GB who are running in Difficult and low gains because they read someone say it on a forum in some other part of the country or world, and will not be convinced to sway from that advice. That's $8000 right into the garbage can IMO. The key is understanding your machine and your environment first, then figuring out what you need to do better, then upgrading if you really need it. I would never spend many $thousands on a detector without already knowing I can find many oz'es of gold though myself. That's the first step in my book. If you are only finding 1 or 2 nuggets with an SDC, then more expensive detector is not going to create more nuggets for you if they aren't there to begin with.

What I wish they made were canned pastas that weren't the Chef Boyardee crap that just tastes like sugar to me. Aha! That got me wondering why can't I just "can" my own home cooked food in vacuum sealer bags? Which made me slap my forehead and realize of course it's possible, that's exactly what MRE's are. So, why not look into making your own better tasting (and cheaper) MRE's with a vacuum sealer machine which are fairly inexpensive, instead of tin cans? Just reheat on a little camp stove to be safe. For 3-5 days, seems like it'd work for stuff like spaghetti with sauce that is already acidic (natural preservative), etc. Or maybe add some citric acids to stuff experiment to see if that helps preserve. If I was doing a bunch of pack hiking where I had to carry everything on my back this is what I would look into. And pickling for veggies (drain the juices and vacuum pack them too). Luckily I can get most places with an ATV so I can pack heavier. But I am still going to look into doing this for remote bush food since a vacuum sealer machine is only $40 and I could make that up quick by saving money cooking my own food.

Also, after thinking a few minutes on the logic of it, I'm prone to believe the X Coils pinout because the 2 TX wires are not shielded. If they were RX wires, they would both have heavy shielding since any tiny amount of noise on them will mask signals plus affect how much RX gain you can effectively use. Plus, the GPZ 2 wires are heavy gauge wire, which you'd need for TX but not RX since there is almost no current going on the RX side of things. It seems counterintuitive given the DOD design, but I really think the GPZ has 2 TX wires, not 2 RX wires. I'm unsure how they control which lobe is active. (or I probably misunderstand how the DOD works and maybe both are active?) So, I think the red wire in the 6000 is also an RX. And the 3 black wires are something else, including at least one TX. One wire has a red band around it. I'd say that one wire might be a lobe control or something but why run it through a choke? All 5 of those wires going through the choke are like to be either shielding, TX, or RX, unless they have something weird going on like a wire carrying a constant reference voltage to some part of the coil for engineering reasons beyond my understanding. Edit: one last logical progression thought - a constant voltage to some part of a coil (through an additional mystery wire) could I guess in theory be closely monitored to determine how saturable (hot) ground is affecting the inductance of the coil independently of the RX signal. Get a little parallel processing going on there since the FPGA can handle all that and more (basically, creating a magnetometer of sorts in the coil). But I'm way off in left field designing my own detector in my head here now, trying to guess what an extra wire might be.

Not according to the X Coil pinout for the patch lead. It says 2 TX in 2 different diagrams. Do they have it wrong twice? I'd post it here but I'm uncertain if those were private or allowed to be shared.