mn90403

That is a great patch ... do you tell the land owner? haha I think I would bring out my flashlight and keep hunting unless he was a great friend and would let you back! Nice birthday. Mitchel

Thursday we were by in Rye Patch and while I didn't get any nuggets Lu got 4/1g with the 2300. We hunted until dark (about 7:00 PM) and then got back to Santa Monica about 5 AM! Are the drive times shorter in WA?

Paul, I was just there today and I didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Lu and I took pictures at the old Hudson (??) then drove up a couple of miles past your claim toward the upside of Rabbit Hole. It was a road no one uses because you can't get across the big wash coming out of the Rabbit Hole valley. We had to turn around and go back (past your claim) to get back on Jungo Road. There were very few tracks (maybe 3 only) to near your claim since the last rain and now I've added a couple of them. There were piles over toward the old power lines and older activity but no new holes on your claim. I didn't add any either. (I know you have a camera out there some place!) Tomorrow back to Rye Patch. Mitchel

We spent time out near Rabbit Hole today and Jungo Dry (Wet) Lake. No nuggets and no meteorites ... a bit more wind today and some light snow showers were in the area. Tomorrow back to Rye Patch and then drive back to Santa Monica (8+ hours) so we plan on some color!

It is another great day here with some high clouds filtering the sun. Today is a day for exploring what the winter has done. One thing it has done has been to fill up the lake. All of the flats now have water over them. The fishing is not so good yet as the fish that were concentrated now have extra miles to go. They may be in different temperature groups but that is another sport for a different time. Now is a time for Jungo Road. Mitchel

Randy, I'm in Winnemucca for the night. I have two more days here. The weather is great but my choices of where to hunt have been bad the first day. Mitchel

Rye Patch here I come! Zed 19 is ready! I'm going to areas hit hard by Zed 14s and everything that came before them.

Does anyone need a prospecting partner anywhere in Arizona, Nevada or California this week? I've got Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. My detectors are loaded. I just need to travel from Southern California. The weather is going to be great in Rye Patch or ... PM me if you have a proposal. Mitchel

Very nice!

On February 26 I went to a lecture at the UCLA Meteorite Gallery and the topic was tektites. The lecturer was John Wasson who has studied these for many years. This PDF explains what he said better than anything I can remember. http://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2015/pdf/2879.pdf

Very nice all.

An 'outsourced' or 'in-house' state of the art interface with other devices and platforms would not be too distracting I would think. They just need someone to write the code.

WTG Lunk and Mom!

I'll take the ring to my local coin store and they will shoot it with a gun and tell me what it is made of. They are very good about that. Mitchel

I'm not familiar with a lot of GPSs. Which one do you prefer? Mitchel

Steve and JP, You now make me think of the device we use most often that has memory and GPS ... our smart phones. One time I went to the Minelab Detector Day here in Southern California. It was about the same time the 3030 came out and Kevin Hogland had one at the ranch where the event was held. We were all impressed that IT had GPS where we could put our Findpoints without using a separate Garmin GPS. Some of us met a guy there who had developed an 'app' (newer idea at the time) that would track and have Waypoints and Findpoints. He had this on his phone and was showing us how he was using it for his relic hunting. He didn't need the GPS from Minelab! Not all of those smart phones had GPSs then and I guess some of those that did had more of a battery life problem than those that didn't. This might be the same technology that JP refers to as a 'resource hog' and maybe deserves an update from Minelab? Steve is wanting some memory resources available which may not be possible on the present boards used for the 3030 or the 7000. Dumping seems to be the best management method now as Dave, Steve and many others have discovered. I hope that Minelab has the testing to show that these memory, power and resource issues don't actually affect the coil send and receive capabilities. Mitchel

That puts things in perspective.

I have always turned the GPS on with the detector just as I do with the 3030. What I didn't do until recently was turn on tracking. I now like it. I've gone back to my find points and found more with GPS help from the detector and I suspect I'll never stop using that. It is probably worth a try to turn it off as Norm has suggested. A friend of mine didn't want to use the GPS because it used too much power. I've killed the battery a couple of times last summer by staying up all night and detecting for about 14 hours or so. Then I used the 3030 battery to finish off the day. Thanks for the question Norm and your answer JP. Mitchel

He's mapping the big nuggets!!

GB-Amateur You are right about the gold and silver being in the center. It is on the label on the ring and it didn't really 'sound' like gold either. I'll have to take it back to the beach with me now that it is cleaned and see if the sterling silver overrides the gold. The composition of the one on the left is not known to me yet. It has no label. It didn't need any cleaning. Neither did the Gucci.

I have normally run my 3030 at +3 in auto for the last couple of years. But ... That turns out to be unnecessary I have found out. What you say? Everyone has spoken of the conservative 7000 settings and how they don't 'light up' the ground about your target. I've started trying that and I have now changed what I hear. Sometimes I can hear a target better at depth with a -1 or at least the A or +1 depending on the beach. It does not seem to affect the depth it hears with my 17" coil. The sound seems less muddied so to say. I've gotten over some targets and looked at the screen and it reads the same no matter the sensitivity I'm testing. What I do get is a quality difference in the audio. I was using the more conservative settings at a beach last week where I had found the 'Sounded Like A Penny' ring. These are two cheap rings and one more 14k gold ring with a silver band. The ocean has a marvelous way of sorting things into patches. We just have to find them. Mitchel

How low do you go?

We (in the states) have many fewer opportunities for the virgin patches and try to discover an old patch with gold left or go to a wash that has had movement bringing new gold into play.

Who promoted this story? My friends down here wonder why I'm not up there now (like a fresh meteorite fall or something) just filling my pockets with nuggets. News media generally doesn't 'pick up' on what we do but I heard it on the radio news station for 2-3 days in a row. It didn't make any sense then and it still doesn't. They're not going to let anyone on that site. They're restricting the Auburn Recreation area and many of the rivers up there so a little (or a lot) of rain is not going to change the State of California's mind. They think us miners do more damage than Mother Nature/God/Weather and want to keep us out and away as much as possible. If there is gold there ... I hope someone sneaks in! Mitchel

Old patches come alive! Good detecting. Mitchel