1515Art

ok, my garmin 650 is way overpriced I think, it can be challenging for me to use sometimes when I have to re-configure things like the coordinates format to match the particular map or source I'm using, there are a lot of data types supported, but the menus are intuitive after you use it a little. other than that , I use it all the time... when I'm driving or walking anywhere that I've never been before I'm confident i won't get lost. it gets satellite connection really fast, very dependable, it works everywhere even inside my home, I can track movement within my home. I can leave trails wherever I go and save them, I keep the trails and can return to many different places later. unless I clear it I'm getting a pretty good road map of the trails at rye patch. I can zoom in very close and easily see where my path was walking or driving. the maps are expensive but give good terrain detail and show some mining information also you can overlay high res images again with the correct base map. way points are easy to set and I can include additional information and names if I want, the waypoint button is on the home screen so its easy to access. the camera will take geo tagged pictures, I've taken a few pictures, but not used them. I did take a geo tag photo of a meteorite find and may use that one. other than that I don't know much about the camera. One of the reasons i chose this model was the screen size, for me anything smaller is difficult to see and hard for me to tell where i am on the map or where the map is in relation to everything else. this garmin is just big enough for me to use comfortably, anything smaller in screen size would be less useful. I have not used any geo hunt features or some of the other stuff, but the things you don't use are easy to ignore.

I have a garmin 650t, it is preloaded with maps, however to make it useable after I brought it home I found out that in order for it to properly plot my route, I needed to spend an additional $100 on top of the $600 the unit cost for an additional map that supported that feature.

I was swinging the GPZ today at rye patch and hit a nice signal under a dead brush stump and while clearing the hole found this stuck to the magnet on my pick, meteorite I think?

Chris, thank you for the inspiration, pretty gold.

hey Rick, thanks for the words of encouragement, Ive been studying the advice on this thread and am getting ready for another stab at it. I even printed it all out and put it in my prospecting binder, so I don't forget none of it. Every time I reread something and then get out in the field and experience something new (every time) I feel a tiny bit less lost, but the best part is no matter what its always a great adventure out there and I just remind myself this is about the journey and at this point in my life thats worth more than gold. clark

Thanks Ken, next on my list.

Yes, hope no one was injured and that not too much property was lost, on the up side i guess water runoff like that could expose fresh ground and move things around a bit out there.

California gold, thank you for the great info something i will use. for now I have been prospecting on club claims "Comstock Gold Prospectors" This last claim I went down into is in a very good area off forrest hill near the location of the old town of deadwood. I also had a gold pan with me and did one small test sample that had a few specks in it and I know from club reports that there is gold on the claim. now the location of nuggets or if they exist on the claim at this point I am guessing yes based on the history of the area, but I don't know the spot enough to tell if or where any deposits could have originated. it was supposed to be one of the best areas in the old days and I don't think they had any hydraulic activity. tailing piles cover the hillside near the claim and the soil is a deep rich red. I don't think there are any mining claims on top of the mountain all of that is active timber harvest, however I am guessing the top of the mountain would not be the best place to look anyway.

ya, my biggest problem is I have a lot to learn, I just bought a couple of books on the subject to help me out. one is by Jim Straight, its called "Advanced prospecting & Detecting for Hardrock Gold" and the other is by Peter Heydelaar called "Successful Nugget Hunting," both really good books. Jim Straight's book is really in depth and i have to keep referring to the glossary and a dictionary while Im reading it. Still for my thick skull I need to go out and do it to make any sense of it. Out in the field feels so different, it all sounds pretty clear while I'm reading about it and then when putting boots to the ground everything looks different and the landmarks I want to find begin to blur with the landscape. this is what they call GREEN, I'm very green, but want to focus my education in the most productive way knowing there are no shortcuts. again I'm really appreciating the time taken to answer my newbie questions, its a great help. The lessons from Rudy out in the field were a huge help for me in knowing what I was doing wrong and what to focus on out there in the desert, now this is beginning to put some of the river issues into perspective and how to focus my energy in ways better suited to the equipment. Thank you

wow nice job again, you and that Fores are a great team.

Thanks Steve, heading up on Monday and I will see how it goes.

Ahhh, the gold goggles... now I understand. No, really a little higher up seems like a better idea although thats been pretty tough to get to where I've been so far. everything is very vertical and the brush, trees and poison oak is heavy. I think I need to explore other areas for property more suited to detecting. I just didn't want to write off these spots without knowing what Im doing wrong and miss good ground out of ignorance.

Fishing weights, bullets, shells, nails ( we've talked a lot about nails, love nails) and there is a ton of old mining equipment and cables down there, vehicle frames and odd metal junk also some big fresh cat paw prints right down by the water where somebody got a cool refreshing drink.

and a view from the top, it is about 3 miles down to the river and the claim from this point, perhaps I should be looking here?

Pic down by the river.

I read a lot about how challenging nugget hunting was before buying the ZED and everything I read was true. I love the challenge and the hunt, I'm finding adventures and getting outdoors for lots of exercise, loving every minute. I have so much to learn and am very thankful for the honest advice by everyone here. Hunting the desert is fairly straight foreword, but the conditions Im finding around the Rivers on the areas Ive been to so far are telling me I have no idea about what Im doing. for example, the american river area is wonderful, but in most every area around the claim i hit targets every 3 inches or so. Some areas I can find a little more clean ground, but it is almost impossible to even ground balance without several target hits every sweep of the coil. pinpointing is impossible with a 14 inch coil in these conditions and most of the ground is vertical and getting a target out of the hole only sends it over several other targets. I was down to listening only for faint targets and then searching the soil scoop by scoop for any targets I might be lucky enough to find. In several areas I am also getting a target response on solid basaltic bed rock, Im guessing this is only hot rock. Im suppose I need to be raking and clearing a small area at a time and trying to work through any trash layers if thats possible? My tendency is to want to cover a lot of ground like when Im in the desert, but that approach won't work down by the river, so I have to guess a more careful and systematic approach is necessary working only a small area?

Fred, great post, thank you. that looks like one fantastic adventure. And one smart looking guy having a little nip after a long day, I'm jealous... what fun!

Hi Steve, I was up there also. I spent tuesday hiking about 3 miles down a very steep 4WD trail into the american river. It was warm and very humid and by the time I got to the bottom my clothes were soaking wet and that was taking it as easy as possible and only carrying my Zed a pick and a small backpack. The climb back out took almost three hours and I was exhausted. I then headed directly out to lovelock and saw some lightning along the way in the Nevada desert, but only a few drops of rain. tuesday night and the next morning it came down pretty hard, so instead of heading out to rye patch and some other areas I just turned around and drove back to Downieville. Im going to drive back up next monday hoping I can find some decent ground, or try JP's advice on salt tuning. Sure strange weather, Oh well... just part of the fun I guess, If you always new what was coming life would be pretty dull. You just have to keep going... thanks for your update on the conditions, what do you think I might see next week when I go out there? Ive never been there during or after a rain.

JP, thank you very much. really helpful. I was in Lovelock NV today, but skipped going out to rye patch because it rained pretty hard all night long and was still sprinkling this morning. I'm going to try again next week and if I hit any of the hee haa s it will be nice to have a way to deal with it, guess this could also be the answer on a salt water beach as well.

as I read about his experience with target pinpointing and recovery of his target, I don't find that I'm having the same degree of difficulty. it is unfortunate his experience is so unsatisfying Im just thankful those problems seem to be related to some specific conditions in which the detector is operating as I am not experiencing the same level of frustration with mine.

Speaking of noisy northern Nevada ground... anyone been out there in the last day or two?

Nice shooting lucky

Yep, Paul, I think you got it... for the life of me I can't see the USA map as a good example, maybe Mexico. But the croc, that is what he should be selling it as, a good ol Australian salt water croc... he would get $2500. per oz for his nugget.

Fred, you are so right. the nugget would have to be something very special... like one of Steve's great finds before it would have any personal meaning. I did buy a 9 gram spongy test nugget from a gold dealer at around spot and it has no special feeling for me, I like the little 1/2 gram i found while blowing two tires much better. not that it makes any difference, my art studio is in Santa Clara, the antique store was in Los Gatos, I live just a little way up the hill in the next town over. It is one of the better shops (antiques) I've seen in years with a lot of very nice stuff, but I like the junk shops too. Clark

The sun ray I think had just come out with a version of the probes for whites at the beginning of this year and at that time they only supported the DFX, mxt, V3i type platform or those Whites units that shared a coil and the V3i is one of the models that has some issue in certain applications because of the coil configuration. Im not sure anything in the 50 kHz is supported yet by sunray?