phoenix

Like a lot of people, I detect for gold because I want to find gold, not because I want to make heaps of money out of it. If I was doing this for a living I would have starved to death years ago. A mate of mine yesterday found this 1½ kilo rock with a 5000 and brought it around to my place to have it SG`d. It SG`s at 11.1 grams gold and I`ve never seen a piece anything like this so when my mate said he was going to smash it up to recover the gold I offered him spot price for it. This is the first piece of gold I have ever bought, I thought it looked too good to smash up. It looks better in real life than it does in the picture. And I scored major points when I gave it to my lovely lady as a birthday present. She loves this kind of stuff. Dave upload my photos

A few years ago I got a 63 grammer with fringe area detection. I`ve never thought of it as fringe area detection, I`ve always thought of it as the coils throw out heaps of energy sideways. There was nothing particularly clever about me finding this piece, I definitely heard it way before the coil went over it. cheers Dave

hey Mitchel. No probs mate. What I wrote was not any way directed at anything you wrote. It was just my own rambling observations of this update so far. As time goes on I`m sure I will learn more. cheers Dave

Terrific report Mitchel. Thanks very much. I normally run difficult and I sometimes change over to Normal until I can`t bare the noise anymore, and Locate Patch definately quietens the detector down in Normal and you are right, you don`t get anywhere near as many hotrocks, but in these early days I think Normal/Locate Patch is losing sensitivity to Difficult/High Yield. I still don`t quite understand what this Locate patch setting is meant to do. I got out into the great unknown yesterday with the 19" coil and I didn`t get any gold, but i got more birdshot with High Yield/Difficult than I got with High Yield/ Normal/Locate Patch. If I am understanding this Semi Tracking setting, I think it`s terrific. Once you tune out the ferrite ring it stays tuned out. But it may be possible I`m missing the point of Semi-Auto as well. I don`t understand why Minelab says it`s for expert users. To me it seems everybody should be using it. Dave

Hey Aussie. Mate I`ve no clue where in Australia you are, but you say you are new to detecting, I would suggest that you start with small steps to find out if you even want to do this pastime, Some people think it would be fun to go out and find gold, but after doing it for 3 hours for no gold they want to smash their detector around a tree. I have witnessed this, people giving up detecting after the first day. (I generally last about 6 hours before I want to smash my detector against a tree). Here in Victoria very rare are the days that I don`t find gold if I use the SDC2300. Along the way with the 2300, you will find a hell of a lot of birdshot, but damn the detector is good at finding gold, and if there is a 22 bullet size piece at a reasonable depth the 2300 will get it. From there you can work out if you even want to do this, and from there you can decide if you want a 5000 or a 7000, or infact if you even want to do this at all. My opinion is, you are starting out, get a 2300. IF you are in a gold area as you say, most days you will get gold. Dave

A very nice piece Norm I`m hoping it`s the upgrade. The field tester in Maryborough Victoria says he can now run High Yield/Normal, and that combo has always been a bit of a stretch for me around Maryborough. I am very much looking forward to getting out there and trying the upgrade. cheers Dave

Unbelievable find. Well done mate.

Way to go Minelab Thanks very much for continuing to work on and improve the GPZ 7000. It` raining here today so no detecting, but mine is set up and ready to go. Dave

wow Steve what a fantastic find Well done mate

Steve I took that photo with the camera you gave me and that undetectable speci of mine, I got it about 10ks up river from Sofala about 30yrs ago

I`ve only been to Bendigo about 3 or 4 times, but the first time I went there I just pulled up at a spot at random and got a bit of gold about 3 min after I turned my 3000 on

No Mitchel, it wasn`t a sun baker, it was about 8 " down and the signal came through as big as a bucket. Mate never got any gold at Bathurst but years ago I got a couple of pieces at Sofala and Ophir and I got about a dozen pieces at Native Dog Creek and I`m told if you are prepared to put the time in at Hill End there is still nice gold there. These four spots are all within about 50-60ks of Bathurst. cheers Dave

A couple of days ago went to a new area, no diggings around, and no finesse to my detecting, I`m not working low and slow trying to hear faint changes in the threshold, I`m hooking in and covering as much ground as I can. Two days ago I hit a point oner that I thought for sure was a birdshot and yesterday I got this one. So for about nine hours detecting I got 2, the gold is hardly leaping out of the ground all over the place, but it`s a big area and I`m still young (i wish). 2.69 grams. Dave

I was out detecting today and thought of something I would like to see in a 7000 software update. In "ground type" instead of having Normal, Dificult and Severe, have it like the volume control, constantly variable. Severe 50, Difficult 25, Normal 1. I was detecting in ground today that the 7000 appeared flat or listless in Difficult but every time I switched to Normal it was just way too noisy. I think this would have been good ground to set the detector at say 12 ground type. Dave

Amazing results for your better half. Well done

Well done Steve on some nice gold. I`ve been waiting to see how you did with the 19" and I was very interested in the settings you use. I`m still having no success what so ever with the 19 and no way will I be able to run your insanely hot settings but I`m going to have to ramp it up a bit. cheers Dave

How cool is that seeing a rattlesnake. I don`t suppose I`ll ever see one, I`m on the wrong continent. I`ve seen a few brown snakes though. I hope you wear snake guards. I bought a pair of made in USA guards and I wear them every time I detect. I don`t know about the rattlesnake but I`ve been told the secret to a brown snake bite is, have a beer as quick as you can. Your still gunna die but it`s the last beer you`ll ever have. Only 2 weeks ago a mate of mine took this photo of a sunbaker on the side of the road. And nice gold mate. cheers Dave https://ibb.co/fWQvyF

Very nice gold there mate. Well done cheers Dave

Mate bad luck with the postage snafu, but on another note the coil may be repairable, I mean for your use, not to sell. I have repaired a few cracks and other damage to coils with 2 part Aralidite and some of the repairs lasted for years and I did major damage to my 8" Commander and that repair is still going strong. Dave

Good detecting on the 1.2 grain nugget Fred. Terrific find of the meteorite

very nice gold there Lucky

I feel your pain Fred. At a spot not far from where I live I have dug three deep signals in hard ground that I was totally convinced were actual targets and I dig out that last scoop of dirt and the signal is gone completely

I think Kelly Bundy would make a good engineer, or may be a professor. This is out of one of the episodes "I'll set you up with this scientist I know at the university. All you do, pretend you're a professor. Okay, but, I mean, I think I'd make a more convincing Ginger or Mary Ann don't you think? You must be the new professor. You must be Gilligan. Hi. Kelly Bundy at your service. So Bud tells me you're in aerospace. Yeah, well it's not rocket science, but what is? Right. So what are you working on now? Well, I just received a grant from the Crayola company to invent a new colour. Bleen. Bleen? Is that a mixture of blue and green? No, of blood and spleen. You know, it's for the kids who wanna draw accidents. Yeah. Really? You would think that Crayola would have enough colours already. Well, not anymore. See, they had to get rid of black and white you know, to be politically correct. They were gonna mix the two together and call it blite but the guy who invented grey back in '74 threatened to sue, so All right. So, what's your field? - Alchogorentology. - Oh, right. What's alchorathincology? It's a study of that age- old question: How much booze can a rat drink before he explodes?" http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=married-with-children&episode=s10e05

Great finds there mate Forgive my ignorance but are they iron meteorites and you detected them, or are they stony meteorites and you just spot them on the ground? either way, great finds. Dave

I realize these are nowhere near as impressive of some of the great finds that are shown here, but I got these three in a 4½ detect today with the 7000 ◕‿◕. Dave