mn90403

Simon, You have described your experiences well. It's as if you are a fortune teller. Now I have gone to the same general area but a different spot that still holds a lot of trash. My settings have been refined between the volume of the detector and the SP01 and it really makes a difference to my ears. I was out on an overnight trip. The first day I found one little nugget, the largest at .22g and then the next day I found 3 more for the total of around .7g. Some of these pieces were just as you described, small and deep with one getting near 5 inches. None of them were surface nuggets. I did go back to the previous location and it seems that even with the dumbed down settings I've gotten it all there. This new location is quite different even tho it is near. It has had much more digging activity and other trash has been added and it is still left. You had to 'pick and choose' what to dig. It's a club claim and we also didn't want to spend so much time on it that we took it all. My total hunting time for the two days was about 4-5 hours. Two other detectorists had lesser results than mine. What I was able to do was 'hear the gold!' I didn't dig everything after a time. There were some targets that had a 'sharpness' to them that didn't say 'dig me.' And I can clearly remember each of the 3 targets on the second day with their nice mellow sound. After a scrape with the pick or a boot scrape you knew it was the sound you were looking for. That didn't mean it was going to be a quick recovery. Once the dirt gets moving then it becomes difficult to focus, scoop and recover. I'm a bit of an impatient scooper. I've had to change my style so I don't scoop, wave and throw out the target and have to re-scoop. Anyway, that is my story now, but the bottom line is that there is more gold at this new place than the other places nearby. Thanks for the videos, tips and advice on this coil. I wouldn't have it without you. The .22g first day nugget. The .11g 1st nugget of second day that took me 15 minutes to scoop. I thought it was smaller but it had the nice mellow sound we all like. I was on my way to take a break and 'show off' my tiny nugget and I got this flat .18g. And finally getting near stopping time for the day before we were off to do other stuff I got this .16g that said 'dig me!' It was down a bit over 4 inches.

I'm just trying to generate some updated feedback. It would include field use by purchasers and point out the pluses and minuses I would hope.

Gerry, You ARE an EXPERT. Mitchel

My stainless scoop is the pull design and it has lasted for many years without bending or warping. It is a really good scoop for quick, surface patches. I went to Mike's business and watched him build some and I bought a short handled on for my wife. It is very stout also. Maybe even a little too heavy but it will last forever. As KOB said, the scoop market changed over the years. They got bigger and I bought a couple of big scoops from Europe. They are beasts and all SS. It will wear you out carrying them so they mostly sit at home but on deep days nothing will beat them. That brings it back to Mike making a scoop similar to the square basket, carbon handled scoops. I don't know if he makes those. I wish Merrill would have had Borderline make his scoops.

What is the latest? Which one does what better?

This is just my recent experience using AI. It is a bit of a rabbit hole but it keeps me from thinking that this AI is going to be an end all, be all. I was once a research manager for a M&A company. This was before the internet. We had CD's, data bases, books, libraries, etc. Someone had to determine the search terms, the semantics if you will of what to look for. It becomes quickly apparent that there are many ways to search and you get many results and some are better than others. So ... one of my few ChatGPT sessions so far not about detecting but about ... I asked ChatGPT a couple of nights ago for a ceviche recipe. I don't know how much different that is from asking Bing but it kept sending me to one recipe which was called Best Ceviche recipe. I didn't like that one and kept looking at others. So then you have to add more details ... shrimp, scallops, fish ... then you have to figure out if you want to use just lemon or lemons and lime ... you don't even get to the part about flavor preferences. What if the ChatGPT was a French Chef and not from Central America? Is that a form of bias? There are several detectorists and on YouTube who do comparisons of detectors. What will the AI say when you ask it what is the best detector for nuggets? Relics? What bias is going to be used to make the list of detectors listed? Will there be AI based SEO companies? (Search Engine Optimization) Now, if you are a fan and you want to bet on a game will your AI have a bias? Can AI ever understand being a fan? Clearly AI could not be right when it comes to betting. It will have limitations about anything that has to do with the future. Everyone will have their own user experience but is it right, wrong or the only answer? hardly

Well ... each country has its own laws and by way of the courts when a meteor hits the ground here and becomes a meteorite then it becomes a mineral according to BLM. If you find it on 'open' land then you can keep it but you would be taking the claim holder's minerals if the land was claimed. This is a cause of not exactly locating a meteorite and saying it came from a nearby location. Many fresh falls are very valuable until the quantity found reduces the price.

Thanks Jim. It does help but not fully explain what many of us experience. I prefer the big nugget too which is more and more rare but I'm just surprised what a scoop of dirt can do to a target's responses.

I think we get close enough with the target in the scoop. We keep waving it around and changing the orientation of the flake or wire. Let's say the target is even a .5g piece. I've noticed a full scoop is not as loud as a target only. Of course size matters! To me it still seems like the other material in the scoop keeps the electronic response muffled in a way. The material in the scoop 'insulates' the target in an electronic/physical way. But as Simon has said and we have all observed we can find little bits with our coils in the ground that are very small and deep with much more material than we put in the scoop. The target brightens up in the pile as we dig, and we definitely know when we get it out of the hole. Is this as simple as scrubbers win and find more gold because you get closer to the target? We do rake some of these areas and find that this will allow for more finds so maybe the closeness and orientation is a bigger part than I want to give it credit for, but I still believe there is a scientific explanation that someone like Chase or Steve could detail for us.

I'm thinking it has more to do with 'mass' in the scoop than closeness to the bottom. Once I get the target in my scoop, after pinpointing, the first scoop that has a tiny or small target definitely can be heard of you would keep scooping. How much is that volume, mass or weight in the scoop? It seems very little that would affect the signals of the coil but even when the target is at the bottom of the scoop the sound to me is still compromised. If you happen to halve the contents of the scoop and you have to target in your hand and nothing in the scoop, as I wave it over different parts of the coil I mostly hear nothing. When the target half of material is added back to the scoop you can hear a louder signal and this volume continues to increase until you only have the target. One exception to this observation seems to be pellets. Pellets are pretty loud with a lot of material in the scoop or very little. I'm open for suggestions and I see that Wes has sent something as I type this.

Last week I went on several quite long gold detecting trips. I went to Rye Patch for a couple of days, The Dale, an unnamed spot and Coolgardie/Barstow. The truth of the matter was that I spent more time driving and being shown areas for future detecting than I did swinging. There was no gold found. While driving I did have time to think. One of the things I was thinking about was getting small nuggets and small trash in the scoop. I was using the 15" CC but I've noticed the same thing no matter what coil I use but here is the question: Why does the small little 'target' brighten up as you get down to just it? When I start scooping and waving the scoop over the coil at first it might be muddled or very lightly heard. Scoops aren't that big but yet it seems that just that bit of dirt and rocks really affects the hearing of the target in the scoop. If you remove half of the dirt in the scoop and you wave it again then there is a very noticeable difference as long as the target is still in the scoop. If you half the scoop contents again then you get a similar effect. I get the idea that there is less interference with less content in the scoop. But ... it is really only a little bit of dirt, why should it mask the little nugget or trash so much? When you get down to the .1 g nugget or trash it is really screaming. Why doesn't it do that with a little bit of dirt in the scoop? I want someone who knows to be technical if possible. What happens to the send and receive 'waves' or pulses that make this happen with pulse and vlf detectors? It shouldn't be a matter of 'power' and it is not one of 'distance' and it shouldn't be one of 'air.' Now, put the nugget back in the ground (or don't put it in the scoop) and there is a lot more 'dirt' to degrade the signal. The ground, the salt, the hotrocks ... etc. If I was more technical I'd use more technical language to describe what I'm talking about but I'm not. I don't use a scoop for my beach targets. These are my observation about gold nugget areas. I'm hoping an understanding of this will improve my in ground detecting. I know that I can't find nuggets that have already been removed. haha

I wasn't expecting it at the depth and location I was at, so you never know really.

As a meteor enters and slows it breaks up before it goes dark and then you can no longer see it. It is still coming in at that point, it is just cooled to a point where some remaining pieces generate enough heat to glow. I was lucky enough to witness a satellite coming back to earth. It was in the middle of the night and I could see several individual pieces burning. I should have been close enough to hear it but for some reason the sound didn't reach me. There were heavy pieces way out in front and other pieces, including some that tumbled and twisted following. I've seen some YouTube videos of returning satellites and they looked very much like the one I saw which was an Iridium satellite. I looked it up later and knew the exact number. A couple of days later one piece was found on a farm in Northern California. There will be some pieces of that meteor found in Australia. Keep your eyes peeled on the news.

This is impressive! See a meteor turn into meteorites. Meteor lights up Queensland sky, reports of sightings from Mackay to Cairns - ABC News

I just came back from a short 2 day trip there and found the same thing ... as far as gold is concerned! The 6000s have got it all! I did see some antelope.

I took a quick, long trip to Rye Patch Sunday and came back Tuesday night. It was good to see the old place but I didn't get any gold. At the end of the day I was using the sun to shine a few crystals and they are a bit hard to find also. I wanted to see the snow covered eastern Sierras before the sun set so I left Rye Patch with some daylight. I was still looking for the shinny reflections. One caught my eye and I debated about stopping. I backed up a hundred feet or so and found the piece in the center of the picture reflecting the light. It looks like glass on the broken surface. Then I saw other pieces that had been broken by other tires and some not broken. They are opaque in natural form with their dull surface. If broken thin enough you can see through it and it gives a gray/blueish tint. It reminds me of Saffordites that I have found in Arizona. Those are smaller but also translucent and we collect those visually by looking for black holes in the desert floor. I guess it is obsidian. I don't think it is natural to the area where I found it and it was probably brought in with the rock to firm up the road bed and keep it from being too sandy. I can't really imagine this obsidian being used to make points and scrapers but I don't really know. It was the most interesting thing I found on my trip. Obsidian: Igneous Rock - Pictures, Uses, Properties (geology.com)

Not stuck ... enjoying the good life and gold.

Ok, I lived in the Venice, Florida area many years ago. On Sunday mornings I would go out with a scoop and look for shark's teeth. I found some nice ones with the scoop that they sold there. Some of those scoops are used here in California to get sand crabs for bait. You can also use a detector scoop for that as well. There are some people in Florida that have added a twist to the shark sand scoop. It would be ideal for an area that had lots of jewelry. You scoop and then flip it over and it spreads out on a mesh so you can see what you found.

If you are 'in the area' it sounds like a good research trip! Preserving history: Grass Valley Old West Show features 120 dealers specializing in Western Americana | Entertainment | theunion.com

Mike, They just wanted a ride! How's fishing? Mitchel

Yesterday I went for a nugget hunt and before I could get to my spot I saw this snake in the road. It wasn't moving in the early morning chill so I got closer to see if it had been hit by a car. No, it was just sunning itself but I didn't want to leave it there so I got a stick. It needed to be moved and I would pick it up if I had to. This is a harmless gopher snake I think. It had no rattles and is not poisonous from my experience. It moved on its own. I didn't know if it could make it up the side of the road but as you can see no problem! All that was left were the tracks.

Simon said 'Go Back' and I did for perhaps the last time in a long while to this spot. I cranked it up to 20 and tested it in various combinations of auto, semi-auto, manual, ground smoothing, hy, general, salt, etc. I used the ferrite ring and not also. The first place I went was back to where I found the largest nugget on my first trip. I worked my way slowly there without finding anything. Then I took a circle around the spot where I found the nugget and I got a nice mellow 'dig me' signal. I went back and got my phone to take pictures. This was the area. If you notice there is the fresh hole that I dug near the detector and just to the right of it less than 10 feet away was the hole I dug for the other nugget. My phone had lost power and I couldn't take a picture then. Here is a different angle with the previous hole at the bottom. Now I'm on the new hole. Notice how I bungee and support my 7000 from the handle with a hip stick. I do the same with my 3030/17 on the beach. I don't understand why this isn't the support spot for all 'heavy' detectors! There is the nugget from this hole. A bit flat but I think it was sitting on edge. It looks bigger than its .25g weight. Looking back where I parked. It was not much of a distance. Later I found a piece of trash under a bush. I took this picture to show that you don't have to be directly over a target to hear it with a CC. I heard the bullet casing and dragged it from under the bush with my foot. Tiny, tiny screamer that was getting blown away by the wind. That was it as far as nuggets went. This was the picture of the snake I saw in the road on the way in. I'm going to post it separately to help us be aware of them.

Equinox yes. And it is possible to tell but it is easier to dig rather than miss something. The stakes by their shape want to give off a 'quarter sound' or high pitched 'dig me' so that is what you do to get the trash out of the way and see if they are masking something better.

I've been busy with some other detecting lately out in the deserts. I like those nuggets and meteorites. You can kind of target those and know what you'll get. When you go to the beach (just like a park) you can get coins, relics and jewelry. Today's best finds were a couple of rings. The first was a stainless steel ring found after a couple of hours of mostly nothing except those tent stakes. My beaches have been very stingy the last few weeks so I was glad to get it. I slowed down with the 11/800 and began to find 'patch' stuff. I like patches. I grid them and just enjoy having a few targets together rather than long walks always. My clues were that I was out on a pretty low tide and things were seemingly deep for the 11. I'm normally a 15 user but the 11 was on and I didn't expect much and was back to where I started when I got the stainless steel ring. It says 316L and weighs 6.7g. I continued on just above the black sand line and found other coins and stakes and then I heard a faint 'penny' or it could have been. I made it down a full scoop (6") and it was still in the bottom of the hole. A couple of more scoops, around 10" I got it out. It was a nice shine for the early morning. This is a 10K with lots of little diamonds. It weighs 7.8 grams. My first gold ring in quite a while and first one with the 11" in even longer. I'm ready to take the 3030 out this week with the 17" and see if I can renew a liking for it and look at some of my old find points.

I've worn it out ... you have to replace some things once every 20 years or so, right? haha