mn90403

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Fred, Don't be afraid of your detector. It is not your computer ... or at least not totally like it. Here is an old bit about early computers that could have given you that trepidation: For all of us who feel only the deepest love and affection for the way computers have enhanced our lives, read on. At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, 'If Ford had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.' In response to Bill's comments, Ford issued a press release stating: If Ford had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics (and I just love this part): 1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash.........Twice a day. 2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car. 3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this. 4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine. 5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive - but would run on only five percent of the roads. 6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single 'This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation' warning light. 7. The airbag system would ask 'Are you sure?' before deploying. 8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna. 9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car. 10. You'd have to press the 'Start' button to turn the engine off. PS - I 'd like to add that when all else fails, you could call 'customer service' in some foreign country and be instructed in some foreign language how to fix your car yourself!!!!

Fred, Exactly! They pick it up and send it back. Better than I had thought last week. By the way, the modular design of the 7000 means it is 'not so delicate' and rather simple. This last software update mentioned that both portions must be connected in order to upgrade. This means the screen which is in the screen chassis that has the USB connection and the other portion (I think the part Paul misplaced) which holds the battery. As you know from your 3030 and your 7000 there are two connectors which plug into that bottom portion. One is for the coil and the other is for the screen board. There are no screws on the 3030 but there are screws which allow you to remove the upper portion of the shaft on the 7000. This should make it simple to fix something that goes wrong physically on the 7000 now that they have extra modules and units. When you are ready Klunker give Tracy Johnson a call. Mitchel

Minelab sent an RMA number and also a UPS pickup shipping label. It should be there by Friday and back to me sometime next week.

Enjoy your target hunting sessions as you learn your detector. Gold will be one of those targets and if you are in the right place you will find lots of gold targets and fewer bullets. When starting out don't over do it. You might want to stop after a couple of hours and take a break. Make sure you go back to that house where they were picking up gold after the rain! Mitchel

I have read the Minelab email again and think I have done right. They want the screen chassis to be sent to them. This includes the handle, the cord and the screen which has a board behind it. It is also the place where the cable is plugged in to upgrade and transfer data. If this is ok it will be off to them tomorrow 2 day delivery insured. What is the value of the screen chassis? Mitchel

Fred, I have removed the screen with the cord and handle from the shaft. That is a sealed unit. It was easy to remove because the only screws (hex head) loosened were clamp screws which makes the handle tight to the shaft. I will call them and make sure this is the portion that they want. Mitchel

I've had my Zed now for over 2 years and less than 3. It is still under warranty. About a year ago I notice the pixels on my screen had developed a line in the lower right corner. I called Minelab and my only option was to send back the entire package in the original box. I may have done this at the time but I would have to wait a couple of months to get it back as there were no replacements available. Soon after I called the pixel lines went away and I have been using it just fine. Recently the pixel line has come back with even more lines. It is just a little distracting especially based on what I paid for it! Last week I called Minelab and they said they had plenty of units available. Call them back with the serial number and they would send an RMA number for me. When I called back they asked me the problem and I told them. I was then told I don't need to send back everything. I could send them the screen portion of the detector only. They would then send me a replacement screen which also has other parts of the brains in it. I imagine there is a board in there with the video and other functions so that would be replaced also. I don't know what is in the lower part of the detector. Has anyone had this 'fix' done and what are your results? They told me the day they get my screen will be the day they send out the new one. Mitchel

Norvic, I agree. I can't see anything that will let me feel confident swinging faster. The ironstones are quieter in Locate Patch. I didn't use semi-auto. I just left it for the night in auto. Mitchel

If you can copy and paste a file you can do this install and/or uninstall. Get the file and paste it on the detector and it will install itself. The specific instructions are written everywhere. Once you have done it you'll say what JW did!

Good picture!

Fred, I know some nights they are out there trying to fill their belly with a roo. It is just the right size for the one rattler I did see on a cool morning. They end up around Jim's house and in his dog's water bowl. The one I saw is still out there somewhere. Mitchel

Thanks Strick, I feel for the guy. I avoid everyone I can when I'm on the beach. You never know and if they are close then it may be too late. Unfortunately there is another part of the story that is also alarming. I'm almost elderly! I'm walking the line now based upon the way the story has been reported. Mitchel

Randy, The other night with a bright moon there really was not any problems. In the past I had a few problems with the moths that are attracted to light. They would get inside the car. There are a few roos about. They are not the Australian roos mind you. It is a little rat. http://www.ocregister.com/2009/08/25/kangaroo-rats-still-leaping-in-oc/ During the day we have seen a couple of rattle snakes around but if you are looking in front of your coil swing then they won't be a problem. At night it is cool and they are less active or in a hole somewhere. Mitchel

Thank you JW. The Zed lets us hear a few different sounds that have been silent on other detectors. I hope everyone is able to set up the Zed to their liking and can hear the sweet sounds of success. Mitchel

Dave, Thanks for the read. I know it gets long when I see it and try to find parts of it. Let me make it clear that I was testing High Yield, Normal, Locate Patch. I took it out of difficult for the entire night. I did change the Sensitivity a few times. Mitchel

Two nights ago I went out to our 'local' patch about 3 hours from Santa Monica to test the new software upgrade. I was anxious to see if this update would remove one of our biggest problems which is a very magnetic and loud hot rock that we just call an ironstone. Our search area is a several square mile patch of desert that is now between 105-115 every day. In years past this area had been dry washed extensively and it had also been an area used for WWII training with fighter planes. The ground is relatively mild but there is a fair amount of iron that sticks to our magnets but the amount of fine gold is quite low. Most dry washing was for nuggets it seems. Our attempts at fine gold recovery has been minimal. We detect this ground now because some of the areas have been pushed and worked in the past 10-15 years with VLFs and other Minelabs including the 5000s. Last summer we discovered that we could grid certain areas and recover nuggets with our 2300s and 7000s. We had a lot of fun through the summer and fall working the area with three of us getting an ounce to two ounce each. The largest nugget we found with the GPZ was 6 grams and dozens in the 1-2 gram size and hundreds under a gram. That's the background ... this was the test. I showed up to a nearly full moon about 1 AM with a temperature of about 75. Skies were mostly clear, no wind and it was fabulous. I started up the GPZ with the 14 inch coil and my wireless WM12 with headphones. The update was installed so I let it go through the startup. It still installs to high yield, difficult and audio smoothing low and no locate patch. I used the ferrite ring and I laid my two test nuggets on targetless ground for testing. One is about 4 grains and the other one is about double that. The test targets were easy to identify on the surface. The threshold was smooth with the sensitivity at 9. It was time to use the new Locate Patch and normal. I turned this on and then went to re-tune by keeping current settings. I redid the ferrite ring and swung on the test nuggets again and knew it was working. Still smooth and time to go into the field. One last test. I tested swing speed. It said with this new software you could swing faster. I tried that. I was surprised to find that at a moderate swing speed (a speed that I would use at the beach) my test nuggets became invisible on the ground. They tracked out! I had to slow down to hear these small nuggets. Now I headed out into the field. I went over ground we had hunted several times in the past. The ground was quieter as I was not hearing the ironstones that we would in the past. I know this because many of the ironstones we had dug before were laying beside a filled in hole and I could test the response. I stayed in this area for about 2 hours going to areas I had found nuggets up to 2 grams but did not find any new ones. It was time to go to a different area and I wanted my GPS find spots but this was not supposed to work with this software. I looked anyway and voila ... they were there! All of the Find spots were still readable (after I enabled the GPS) and I could go to them with ease. I went to a location where I had found a couple of nuggets in the past. I pumped up the sensitivity to 15, put on High Smoothing, threshold about 25, volumes 12 and 12 and went at it. It was still stable with a slow swing and after about 30 minutes I got a distinct target under the edge of a bush. I foot scraped and dug a little and moved it. I knew it was small and expected to have the same small target problem I was having all night. How do I get it in the scoop and hear it? Well, this one was different. I got it down to the sand and knew it was not trash and there this little seed nugget (.5 grains) was in my headlamp. Who needs a Monster when you can find them like this? haha At least it wouldn't be a skunk! I gave it a Find Point and it recorded next to the others and I was happy. I'm thinking now it might be possible to go back to the old version that is compatible with Xchange2 and download this. I haven't tried it yet. The hunt was on the area for another 30 minutes and then it was off the our most recent patch to see if this new upgrade would help find more nuggets there. I drove about a mile and started hunting. It was at this point that I would say that about 80% of our ironstones are not sounding like a nugget (sensitivity is now on 10). All of our trips before these ironstones had to be dug and now I was swinging over them and most were silent but some still screamed with the coil directly on them. I tried switching off the Locate Patch and then swinging on the ironstones. They screamed at me with it off. I turned the Locate Patch back on (without a new re-tuning) and they still screamed at me. I tried walking away and getting the old ground memory back but they still screamed. It is probably necessary to use the ferrite ring as your last step for using any of the new (or old) settings changes with the exception of sensitivity. It was now 8:30 AM and the temperature was at 90. Time to get out of there. I like the update. I just don't know how much faster you can swing the 14. I didn't even take the 19 with me. I only briefly turned on the Salty Soil. One of the things I was thinking about that night is the sounds and music. A sound is not necessarily music but they are similar because they are waves. If anyone has ever been in a band or played music you know how to listen for a certain instrument and in some cases hear the specific notes and style of instrument. Some of us need to listen to a solo, some a quartet and some can listen to an orchestra. When comparing this to style of detector signals and sounds you just don't want noise or static or filters to mask your instrument (nugget sound). Once we know what a nugget sounds like and we recover the nugget then we are hooked. It becomes easier and we find more and more if it is still there. I think anyone with very hot settings likes to hear the full orchestra! A conductor can do that and must do that to make beautiful music. Not everyone can be or wants to be a conductor. We just need that sweet note of success. This software won't bring back nuggets that have been removed. It will help us eliminate more of the noise. It will help the GPZ give us that nugget sound on more of the remaining nuggets so we can have a new technology patch while they last.

I made it back from my moonlight trip. I'll post it in a separate thread. Let me just say here that most of our ironstones have been removed as a target with the Locate Patch software. That still does not make more gold to replace that we already found!

You have all the advice you need already. You are finding lead. You can find gold. We find much if not most of our detecting gold where gold has been found before. If you know someone who will tell you about or take you to an old patch you might be able to find some 'missed gold' or you might expand the patch on the edges. Look at that location where gold has been found before on Google Earth. Study it and map the nuggets you found or the patch where it had been worked. If you still don't have any gold then take that new land knowledge and find a patch of your own. Mitchel

I'm planning on a moonlight hunt tonight where the temperature will not get below 75 at sunrise. I'll be going over ground we have hit before with some of these new settings. I'm going to find some of our ironstones and see if there is any tracking difference. I'm also going to use Locate Patch on a known patch. I hope the changes make a difference in performance and if I find something it was just not a missed coverage piece so I'm going to look under fewer bushes! Mitchel

Thanks Lunk. Always a treat to read and see your reports. Mitchel

Don't let your wife read this forum ... or edit your thread! haha

Are you going to save it all up for one big picture?

This means the snow is gone! haha

Steve, Thanks for the reply. I got the update and transferred the file on Chrome just fine. I was just not able to get Xchange2. Maybe it is the extension. The download was blocked. Is the GPS disabled on the 7000? If it is still working it just can't be shared on Xchange2? Mitchel