jasong

Sent an email off to Nokta 2 days ago haven't gotten a response (probably due to the weekend and different time zones), don't think I can call their number in Turkey with my phone though so not sure how else to get a hold of them. I don't have my manual with me and I'm hoping I can figure out some way to get the machine working again since I need to use it right now.

I was detecting for a few minutes, it was working ok, then I noticed that all the settings had reset to stock, I tried upping the sensitivity with no luck and realized that no settings were able to be changed. So I turned the machine off and back on and now it's just stuck on the "system information" screen with the operating and gui versions, serial #, etc and the VDI screen in the handle stopped working at the same time.

*Also I had been hiking around maybe 2 miles in the rain with the machine on my shoulder, not sure if that is what did it. I figured since the coil was waterproof and all the external stuff has sealed rubber boots it'd be ok in the rain though. Did I screw up there?

I'm hoping there is just some way to reset the machine and get it back working again quickly...? I removed the batteries a few times, once I left them out for 10 mins, turned it off and on quite a few times and was trying to press buttons in any sort of combo that might do a firmware reset (if such a thing is even possible) with no luck.

Anyone else had this problem and fixed it?

I'm just guessing, but I think this is also at least in part a move to combat rampant counterfeiting which has destroyed Codan's profits, and I think Minelab should have decreased its prices years ago on that front.

I can't imagine it costs significantly more for a Chinese company to counterfeit a 4500 or 5000 than it does to counterfeit something else in the $1000-2000 range, especially since at this point the 4500/5000 are legacy technology, at least they would be in any industry except metal detecting. So if the cost of manufacturing is roughly the same but the final retail sale price is two or three times higher its pretty obvious which machine counterfeiters will choose to produce. I've never understood why the business department at Minelab doesn't appear to understand this and keeps pricing their products so high.

On that subject, still not sure what they were thinking in the 7000 business department, even though I am an owner I still think they were waaaay off base with their pricing there. I can't help but feel there is going to be some kind of price decrease there too eventually because as much as I hear sales are gangbuster I sure am not seeing a profusion of them in the field like I did when the 5000 or 4500 was released. There may have been an initial rush of buyers but by this time next year I'm wondering what the sales rates will look like on the Z. The used market there is already not exactly brisk right now, there has been one in the classifieds for some time and it's almost brand new.

What a stunning piece Relichunter, great find!

Love the 4500 too and still find a lot of use for it even though I also own a 7000. 

I can't seem to get one either. The dealer I bought my machine from said he was mailing them out 5 weeks ago, didn't get one so I contacted Minelab and they said they don't have any to send out. Not even sure if I need this thing, but Minelab seems to think I do so not sure why some people aren't getting one.

I'm pretty sure that is a "fake" nugget created by partially melting fines together then removing heat before it buttons up. See it often in the bottom of my crucible when I smelt my own fines to sell to the refiner.

People use HF to dissolve quartz, Whink contains a very dilute mixture of it.

I don't see anything wrong personally with soaking nuggets in something like CLR or hydrochloric to clean them up, they aren't coins. In my experience they are worth less dirty as far as selling them goes because who wants to pay for junk weight, but I suppose there are collectors out there who want them caliche and all.

6 continents left, race ya to the finish! 

Awesome man, nice work!

Right, I didn't mean to imply one should ignore historical research and only concentrate on new tech, historic research is always the first and maybe most important step. Gather every single bit of information from old maps to old miners diaries in the local museum, digest it all.

Research 102 I guess you could call it is how I view GIS systems. There are some things you can't see on even the best old maps that become quite plain doing aerial reconnaissance.

For instance, one of the secrets to my success in Arizona came when I realized I could often determine different ages of gravels within an epoch on the ground and then correlate those observations to aerial photos. In the Mojave desert I can almost instantly pick out the specific ages within the Quaternary gravels that will or will not produce nuggety size gold. Even the best geologic maps might only differentiate between Holocene and Pleistocene, but on the 1 meter/pixel aerials it is often possible to see much more accurate divisions between ages in the epoch. Each field generally has a different associate age which produces nuggety gold and after making enough finds on the ground to correlate the gold to the gravel time period I can eliminate a lot of wasted time wandering around gravels that really have a very slim chance of containing the gold I am after.

Later I realized that with the 1 meter/pixel new imagery I could also with a high level accuracy determine average quartz content of different gravelsand areas which I hadn't been able to crack before and that lead to another string of new patches that I found almost exclusively from my laptop in my trailer and only verified in the field. Using the same methodology by correlating known finds to specific gravel deposits by composition instead of age this time. This sort of thing is rarely to never mapped or documented extensively enough to be useful, these observations need to be made by the person.

It still requires correlating finds on the ground to digital observations though. Which is why I say those who had the advantage of detecting during the time that those leads were much more common have a leg up on those coming in after them as those leads become fewer and fewer and thus the correlations increasingly more difficult to make.

Man, how did I do it before the advent of GPS/cell phones and google earth  

 

Ill take the 7 and historical data over an ace and google any day!

I know its tongue in cheek, but in fairness - the days before GIS/cellphones were also times when a guy could still have a 5-10 ounce day in a lot of famous goldfields located literally right next to the highway or interstate.

The game is different today, especially for those of us who joined late and are going at it alone. GIS/GPS is a tool that levels the playing field substantially. As more and more leads are found and removed, the need for subsequent generations of new detectorists to use every research tool available to them becomes greater and greater.

That distro map is a bit innacurate, it has an area the size of France (all of North Dakota, eastern Montana, eastern Wyoming, and the Canadian plains) that has close to zero gold - well unless you count black gold.

Another thing over here is that a lot of those places have little to no detectable size gold, but abundant amounts of micro gold or gold that is primarily locked up in sulfides, tellurides, or just a byproduct of open pit copper mining. Especially out where I live and grew up. Much of Colorado, most of Utah, some of Nevada, etc. It's why even though that map is extensive, you predominately see people posting from 3 main areas - Motherlode country, Arizona, and Nevada. Certainly other states have detectable gold though, to varying degrees. Another thing to consider is that over here a lot of the gold bearing area is covered in snow for 4-7 months out of the year.

I would say the large majority of people in the US prospect mainly club claims or the well known goldfields, but there are those of us who do the same as you too. I generally spend 70% of my time exploring completely new areas, and 30% of my time hitting old patches or popular goldfields. I do go weeks without a single find occasionally but I try to keep a handful of patches in my backpocket that I can go and snag at least 1 or 2 out of every day on the way home to keep the spirits up. Like you, most places I detect have little to no ferrous or otherwise trash targets. I spent the last 6 years living out of an RV (caravan?) and trying to do this for a living full time, though in that time I only met a very small handful of people who were spending a lot of time exploring brand new areas, but maybe there are a lot of people doing it and I haven't met them. I have never succeeded in doing more than breaking even, but any success I've ever had has been almost exclusively owed to GPS+GIS software and I firmly believe that in this day and age anyone who is a serious prospector and doesn't use that technology is doing themselves a disservice, I can't even stress that enough. I would do better with Google Earth, my phone, and an Ace250 than I would with none of those and a GPZ 7000.

Anyways, even if the area of our goldfields is larger, I very strongly suspect there is just more gold available to detect in Australia though. I see guys posting from OZ with 5-10 ounces for a 2 week trip. Over here if you don't have private land, a 30 year old primo claim, or a dozer here, those kinds of trips are extreeeeeeeemly rare over here, those days ended in the early 90's.

Oh also was gonna say you are right about the population. We have very large population bases located pretty close to most of the really rich goldfields. A lot of this part of the country was opened up and settled by those pursuing gold back in the 1800's and well, I guess everyone just stayed.  California alone is like 38 million and AUS is like 25 mil people or thereabouts?

I wish I could go to Oz and detect someday! This is from Gold Basin, Arizona. It's only 18 grams but that's lunker territory to me. I thought it was a dead ringer for Australia until I put it next to the map and realized my geography might be somewhat dubious. 

I sold this one, I think it ultimately went into a paydirt bag as a prize nugget it would be kinda funny if someone got it in their bag and recognizes it, I'm the papa haha. Found this with the 4500, I was going through a dead wash experimenting with an idea I had about using the audio processing to emulate a compressor/limiter, idea being ignore the big signals and expand the range between the small ones and the noise floor, it made this nugget visible at least. I was going to make a vid on this technique this spring but I didn't get around to it.

Am I just seeing patterns in the clouds here? Dunno, too much time on my hands away from the goldfields. 

Add this as a new networked link in Google Earth to display land ownership if anyone is looking for a free land ownership layer on their phones or computer: http://www.geocommunicator.gov/ARCGIS/REST/services/SurfaceManagementAgency/MapServer/export?

Not sure how to attach a non-image file here so you'll have to do it manually. Keep in mind that since its a networked link it will only work online though. Edit: ok I guess the forum is autoformatting that link instead of displaying the entire text, so you'll have to right click and then copy link and paste.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, I have hundreds of various layers I've found, and you can too. Just google for WMS and REST links, most government agencies from the USGS to NOAA have them and they can be crazy useful.

For security, I think the best approach would probably be to keep the GPS data encrypted on the machine but then allow exports through common file formats. It would require a password or similar to access the GPS when you boot the machine up or attempt to export.

That would prevent any information from being accessed if the machine was stolen, also prevent people from seeing your data if you sell or lend the machine and forget to wipe it first. It would also enable you to store all your data without worry and not just a very small slice of it which is kind of useless.

Of course then there might be complaints about the extra step of needing to enter a password, but this scheme is quite common for work and industry computers with sensitive data, and the GPZ is after all a work tool to many of us, and certainly being marketed/priced that way by Minelab. Even with my cell phone a random person can't just open it and start using it so I think it'd be a reasonable approach.

I still prefer the GPX over the GPZ for general prospecting/exploration, all the coils make them ultra versatile and they are so light and forgiving comparatively that you can cover a ton of ground quickly.

Nice hunting by your bud, 3500 in the hands of a good operator is still a great machine.

How do you deal with the crippled storage capacity of the GPZ GPS? 100 waypoints/findpoints seems kinda useless to me, I've found a couple patches that had over 100 nuggets from each patch and that exceeds the capacity of the machine.

Just for reference, I have almost 7500 waypoints and over 1500 tracks on my phone right now. I always have them on no matter where I go, sometimes I'll visit 5 or 6 different areas in a day and they need to be there. Transferring them off means they aren't on my machine, so its not much use in the field to me.

Or am I not understanding how it works? I tried it for a few days and gave up on it.

One thing the GPZ has taught me is a bit about why those 1 nugget patches exist. This is just my experience in the ground I work and might not apply other places dunno.

But I've found a few hard rock pockets now with the Z and when I dug them out they were all pretty similar. One or two larger chunky pieces of gold/quartz, then a lot of little Gold Bug size blebs, then some finer disseminated stuff as a halo towards the edges.

So maybe in pocket gold country these 1-2 nugget patches are common just because the pockets are small? There is probably a lot of Gold Bug fodder down deeper if a guy dozed off the dirt in layers below the pocket, but it seems like only a few macro sized ones came out of the pockets I found and those are probably what we are hitting on these micro patches?

This post verbatim is posted across about a zillion other forums, sometimes multiple places in the same forums.

How far offroad do you guys go in the more remote areas? Is it feasible to get a camper in far enough that you can use it as a basecamp and radiate outwards 50 or so miles for 1-3 day prospecting excursions and make bi-weekly trips to town for water/food/gas? I'm assuming no cell/data service in those areas but do you have satellite internet that works out there?

Over here I never have to travel offroad more than 5 or so miles because we have such an extensive network of old 2-tracks (not sure if that's what you call them). Once you get into the bush do these dissapear completely or do you guys have them too?

I've dreamed of doing a long prospecting trip into the bush over there for years, just curious how its done. The above described is more or less what I do here, live out of my camper full time and get it as close to the areas I hunt as possible. Was wondering how it'd need to change going over there.

Man I know that feeling sitting next to the hole with a tear in the eye after so much work and finally snagging a big one. Congrats on a nice piece and there will be more to come!

Is it too rough to tow a camper trailer back to most the places you hunt, or nearby? I don't have a good idea of what the terrain is like over there I guess.

Has anyone heard anything about the Gold Racer release or if its gone to field testing stage yet? Any new updates like operating frequency? So close to pulling the trigger on an F19 but I keep hoping to see a review on this machine first.

The thing is, I put exponentially more wear and tear on my gold machines than I ever did on any of my coin/relic machines and the environments are generally different too - for every blade of grass a CTX sees the GPZ will see a jagged rock. So I'm not sure how far we could extend CTX field testing to a nugget machine except in very causal use cases.

But Minelab is pricing and pushing the machine to serious/full time users so IMO they'd do well to listen to every bit of criticism on this issue.

*To remain constructive, this is what I think should have been done: Carbon fiber any place it didn't interfere with the detector, an OEM cover provided, rubberized coating at any contact/stress point, and Gorilla Glass on the screen. Really nothing you wouldn't expect of a $500-600 phone or tablet built for rugged outdoor use.

Thanks x2 for the info Tortuga, broke mine as well and thought it'd be crazy expensive to buy a replacement so never looked, $10 is reasonable.

I don't get paid to dig a nail. I do get paid to dig a nugget though.

It's almost always more fruitful for me to pare down the targets I dig, cherry pick and area and keep it in my back pocket, and move on to the next spot. I'm always prospecting and exploring, but when the patches peter out and the new prospects dry up temporarily its easy to go back to those areas I left targets and at least pull out a nugget or two so the day isn't a total waste.

Of course there are exceptions to this. Small patches, pushes, etc. There are places you always want to dig them all but not for general prospecting and exploration, which is probably 75% or more of the time spent, patch cleaning is maybe 25% or even less depending on the area.

I realize most people on the forums are just doing it have some fun and recreation. But even a lot of recreational guys would agree that a discriminating PI would be one of the holy grails of detecting, and that isn't so we can keep digging every target. Even recreationally there are reasons not to dig them all.

I think the best advice I could give someone starting out is to dig them all. It's the only way to learn your machine inside and out. But at some point I think it really pays off to listen to your machine and become in tune with it so you can figure out eventually what not to dig.

Which is also why I think its a good subject to discuss. There do appear to be character quirks in the GPZ that may or may not be used to our advantage.