jasong

Oh ok, I thought you were running in Normal. Yeah, probably half or more of my 1/4 oz+ nuggets reverse in Difficult too. I can't even force one to reverse in Normal though. So when I read reports about other people with different machines saying most theirs reverse in Normal, something is odd and worth investigating further IMO. I'm assuming we all have equally functioning machines so the difference is either in the nugget, the ground, or the machine algorithms iteself. And I can eliminate the ground in experiments easily enough by keeping it constant and testing different nuggets in the exact same spot with the same settings.

The MSHA teacher told me this too. The regulations do not make a distinction between single miners and companies so he said it was not in the regulations itself per say, just that they do not make a distinction thus all regulations apply to both parties equally. The bulletin board and office thing is in the regulations, I have it highlighted since he told me to be aware of it so I already have the source. So, this is a good one, thanks. Any others?

Then we have another Aussie nugget going reverse and another US nugget going high-low... Just an odd pattern. I'm still curious if anyone in the US has a 1/4 oz + nugget that went reverse the whole dig in Normal? I agree with what you guys are saying regarding PI ground balance, I'm not so quick to apply SD/GP/GPX ground balancing characteristics to the GPZ myself though. Unless someone has some info about the GPZ that I haven't read yet? What I do know is that the GPZ uses an entirely new coil to accommodate it's different ground balancing algorithm - the DOD. It also looks at an additional ground component which the GPX did not. We also have the ferrite and the spaghetti dance. So the GB procedure is also different too, not just the balancing algorithm. Anyways, just to be clear here, I did not suggest to use tones to discriminate - so there is a kind of tangent discussion occuring simultaneously to my original subject. I suggested there is an odd pattern with the tones, which may potentially indicate, among other things, that the GPZ may have some discrim ability that we could possibly see in a future update. I'm not suggesting to anyone to go out and discrim iron with it right now or to do so with their old GPX's. My main intention is to investigate the tone pattern peculiarity. I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding and people are telling me there is no such peculiarity, or if the topic of the thread has changed and people were not replying to me but talking about something different to each other and I was interpreting their responses to be directed at me?

Right, that's why I prefaced it with the request for no rants or opinion and was clear on requiring substantiation. I've found people are generally most civil here from the other forums I've seen so that's why I posted it here.

I guess I'm missing something, it sounds to me like Lunk is saying exactly what I have been saying, and that is that he found another large nugget that went high-low in Normal. We've already established they tend to reverse in Difficult. The oddity is that everyone the US seems to be getting normal signals on everything above 1/4 oz or so, yet all the Aussies in this thread are reporting the opposite. Maybe it means nothing, true. But I've just gone back and retested all 13 of the nuggets I've found this trip over 1/4 oz and every one of them goes high-low, even if I balance the detector to a big chunk of magnetite or to sand, I can't force them to reverse. 7 to 39 grams, 13 nuggets. Bit more than a statistical oddity. Anyways, who knows. I found it interesting and worth paying attention to myself. What I do know is that the GPZ definitely is sensitive to different geometries and physical distributions of gold just from the types of nuggets it screams on and the GPX is silent on alone. *Also, the warbly response occurs regardless of ground balance too so the tones must be in at least some way related to the actual target itself.

Please, no rants, opinion, or anything off the topic. Mining only. Claims should be substantiated and supported with valid sources and evidence. Anecdotal evidence is not useful here. Please be able to cite which particular law or regulation an abuse or overstep is occuring upon. I'm especially interested if such a regulation is in violation of the General Mining Act of 1872. Federal only (BLM, EPA, DEQ, USFS, etc), unless it's a state issue where they are clearly violating federal law. I've read about people's complaints online for years. So let's imagine that over the next few days we have someone's ear who is in a position and has the power to really change things for a moment and is interested in truly representing the people. What would the mining community take that opportunity to say to them?

Is there a manufacturer that sells the post-handle version of something like a Deus shaft that collapses down that far and would accept a GPX with a bit of work? Loving the idea of the packability with that mod but I guess I'm just more used to post configuration.

Nice job man. But Jedi, are you ready for the final difficulty level and pull one out of those tailings with a Radio Shack detector??

Was there a reason Minelab switched from S shafts to straight shafts with post handles? Ergonomics or just to add the green GB button? I've never used an S shaft with a heavy detector before like the SD's, just lighter VLF's, so just curious. Does having the coil weight above your hand make a difference with a big coil?

Interesting. I'd have to see it work in real conditions though. How much 200 mesh gold am I really missing and is it even worth it to spend the extra time to catch it verus running more gravel? That's a huge dredge for a 6", it'd have to be worth it economically move that thing around unless you had a nice slow river you could just drive right up to.

Do they have aftermarket mono coils for it? Seems like it came with a fairly large DD, though I've never used one. Or would at least a smaller DD if they sell such a thing might help a bit?

Some electronic devices could be damaged by a magnet even if they don't have magnetic storage media if you wave or move the magnet around. The faster it moves the higher the chance of damage. As soon as you start moving a magnet then it's flux cuts different objects at a non-static rate. If that object happens to be a choke in the power circuit, or an inductor in the filtering circuit as is common with detectors, then you can induce voltage spikes. Semiconductors can be very sensitive to voltage spikes, especially microcontrollers, just a few volts too high can toast inputs, so newer detectors may be particularly susceptible. If the magnet is strong enough, like the rare earth ones we put on our picks, then they'll be able to induce a not insignificant amount of current over just single wires or even PCB traces just like they do through inductors because a single straight wire is in fact an inductor too. Actually, I wonder how the new machines deal with the possibility of waving a pick magnet over the coil. Anyways, it's probably not likely to happen, but moving powerful magnets around close to the control box in a rapid fashion could induce voltages high enough to toast semiconductors. Detectors have very poor shielding (well except the metal cased ones), if I put my cell phone up to the GPZ body it goes crazy (can also "hear" the gpz on a hand radio close enough to the case). So, a moving magnet will definitely induce a voltage in coils or wires inside it.

I read about this a few years ago, interesting stuff. Article is not exactly accurate to say supernovas aren't enough to produce gold though, gold and other elements past iron are being synthesized in them as well almost certainly. Wether our gold came from supernovas or neutron star collisions or some combo, both are remarkable and just mind blowing to consider! An interesting side note regarding heavy element nucleosythnesis is that we have observed it occuring on Earth. Actually we were responsible for it! Thermonuclear (fusion or h-bombs) weapons synthesize small amounts of heavier elements on detonation which we can observe. Similar to the process inside a supernova except much (much much much) smaller scale. I think they create some of these fancy new elements at the end of the periodic table in particle accelerators too.

I don't know if the update had anything to do with it, but I just recently got finished doing a solid day of tests comparing the GPZ to the GPX on an array of different nugget sizes and geometries and contrasting it with the GPZ performance when I first bought the machine in March when I did a similar array of tests. The GPZ is running way (way, way) quieter these days. I filmed my tests the first week I had my GPZ and it was so chattery I thought it was defective and my GPX was just purring along. Now, my GPZ runs substantially more stable both regarding EMI and ground noise than even my trusty old GPX. It's weird how subtle changes over time go unnoticed, but referring back to my original video there is no doubt the machine is running far more stable than it did at first and I don't know if it has to do with the update or just the computer adjusting to the use and different conditions over time or what.

It's kinda like Sensitive Smooth, a setting I will only use as a last resort and only if I already know there is gold there. I've tested it on a lot of dug and undug nuggets and it loses sensitivity on all sizes of gold, not just small stuff. Like Lunk, I find General/Difficult works for the worst stuff in AZ (I use low or even high smoothing when the ground itself gets bad enough too), just gotta power through the noise and get the Shoe Goo out for the rock kicking.

Not sure what the upload limits are, but you could throw your vid into Windows Live Movie Maker and render it down to a compressed format and reduce the resolution. 1 gig can turn into 50-75mb or so if the proper compression is installed. Or set the recording options to something much lower in your phone/camera, they are probably defaulting to 1080p which is way higher than what is needed for internet vids. 720p is probably even still overkill for just showing a detector. Hosting vids locally could take a ton of bandwidth if they aren't compressed and you end up with a lot of external traffic from links.

Ugh, gnarly. That stuff is the single reason I don't detect the Sierras. Is there some way a guy can determine if he's immune to it short of finding some and touching it? I'm not sure where I could even find it.

Just a heads up, you can stake claims, prospect, and mine in WSA's. Just can't do it if it gets redesignated as an actual Wilderness unless you are grandfathered in. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but when I checked into a while back that was the case, haven't heard of any new laws that would change it.

You mean low-high right? Otherwise you are confirming my alloy/purity thoughts above since you are in lower avg purity gold (similar to my own) and Gold Hound is in higher avg purity. Yeah, better to call it a reverse signal. Any GPZ owners out there also jewelers? And interesting test would be to test increasingly larger 24k rings until the signal reverses, then test an identical sized 10k or 14k ring and see if the signal goes back to high-low. If so, it has to be due to the silver/copper in the ring, and presumably the same would apply to nuggets. If not, then the signal reversal must be due to geometry (porosity, crystal faces, overall shape, etc) and does not have anything to do with alloys. Assuming of course the ring shape itself doesn't produce a reverse signal to begin with, it might be warbly. Maybe a gold bar shape is better.

Some of the gold I was finding in NNV was running down into the 70%'s, AZ gold is 85%-92% generally (though some locations higher). Lower purity gold has a higher percentage of higher conductivity metals like silver and copper. I wonder if its possible that the purity of the nugget itself can determine if a nugget goes low-high or high-low, all other things (geometry, weight, etc) being equal? Again it makes me wonder about potential discrim capabilities in the future. It's just strange to read that you guys in Australia are getting basically every target over 1/4oz going low-high when I still haven't found one. There is some reason there... Well lets be fair here, these things, if true, are not in the manual. I'm going to put the GPZ on the o-scope when I get out of the field later on (unless someone buys it from me - potential buyers please check the classifieds) and see exactly whats going through the coil. The patent uses "timings" and even shows an example timing in a chart, and ZVT operates in the time domain so that means we are listening for a "pulse echo" as with a PI and not looking at how a frequency shifts or otherwise alters as with a VLF. So I have to buck the trend here, even though all the pros say its more VLF like, I feel its more PI like personally, both in the field and in theory on paper. Definitely has some characteristics of both either way.

Oh yeah, I'm sure ML is 10 steps ahead of anything I could ever guess at. It's just I can't resist poking a black box with a stick and seeing what happens. In the name of science (and finding more gold)! I just have a feeling there is some discrim capabilities we'll see sometime in the future with ZVT tech. There are some spots here in the US that could really benefit from it. Good luck with the varnish. Freakin bubbles drive me crazy. Saw a video on using a blowtorch on epoxy or cast resin to get rid of them, wonder if it'd work on varnish, or if I'd just torch my house down.

Thanks Norvic, didn't know that about the 2100, I didn't start detecting for gold (seriously) until the 4500 came out. Serial number 00000007, how's that for a lucky machine? My view is that everything is causal (not to be confused with casual, as in Kenny G and blue jeans) in this universe including the products we produce, so I try to pay attention to any little patterns or oddities and figure out why they do what they do, occasionally certain behaviours may potentially reveal something interesting or useful, who knows...

I'll 3rd the complex warbly sounds too, almost every faintish deep sounding one has been a 1/2+ ozer for me or a large smooshed out weird shape nugget. I can't even fathom digging up big pieces like those over here Gold Hound, nice stuff. Jay, were you running General/Normal in your latest video? No question about your targets in that and the G vs HY vid going low-high, that's exactly what I wanted to see on video, thanks. I've dug probably 15-20 nuggets with the GPZ above about 1/4 oz now, and I still haven't got one that goes low-high so I was really starting to think it didn't happen but that clearly is not the case. I wonder why they aren't flipping over for me? I'd think maybe ground related but it looks like yours went low-high from beginning to end when the nugget wasn't even covered with soil. Any idea what the purity of your gold runs? How often are they going low-high for you after about 1/4 ounce and higher?

Norvic, you are getting low-highs on nearly all large solids? Like what sort of weight range? What gold and ground modes are you running?

Swifty, that sounds about in line with what I described above with the shallow or squirrly wirey/thin flaky shaped nuggets that flip tones. Also some flip just by getting close enough to the coil. I'm curious if anything else causes the low-high other than those though (or iron). Like large stuff, deep stuff...? *I should also add I have seen a wider variety of nuggets go low-high in Difficult but I'm more curious about Normal.