mn90403

Sometimes you have to be a contrarian also just to swing longer! haha

Alexandre, Thanks for taking up the bet! Mitchel

Having no expectations and just hunting one swing at a time will have its own rewards. It becomes part of the background for the better days. Mitchel

Results we like to hear and lets us think outside the box. I like your settings. JP always talks about coil control on the Zed. The more I use the Nox the more I see my coil control has an effect on my targets. The targets don't know how fast or smooth I'm swinging the coil but the audio response is sure different with different swings.

Try it, you'll like it.

I ran down to the beach with my 6" coil when I got it and found 4 rings that session! I was stoked. I've use it quite often in the desert and for whatever reason I haven't found any gold nuggets with it. I did find lots of tiny bird shot which means if gold was there I should have detected it but not so far. It is quite a treat to walk a beach with such a tiny coil and get some good hits. Mitchel

I've managed to get out for a few sessions with these extremely low tides but there is not much to show for it. There have not been many waves to get things moving up. When I try the swimming areas it is long and far between targets. It would have been great today to have a deep punching PI to see if I was missing anything with my 800/11. I did dig a couple of targets in wet and damp sand that were 15 inches! I don't like to say it but this represents about 8 hours of detecting with a few of the finds from dry sand on the way in and out of my beaches. This was today's session. Once again the sea groups things together with it being a key day. This was all I could find on some normally very productive beaches. Come again another day. This session from a couple of days ago covered some of the same beaches I covered today. I found one cheap ring. This session was at a beach I've done good at in the past but haven't been able to park near it recently because of the closed beaches. I got this 20-21 signal as soon as I walked down to the wet sand. It was the ring. Unfortunately it is one of the tungsten/carbide rings but it did fool me. As you can see this two mile walk didn't produce much. This last picture is just another session. The picture is documentation. It's sessions like this that bring the averages way down ... haha Better days ahead! Mitchel

I think I should also add that in ALL of the clubs I belong to there is a group of prospectors who love to teach new people about prospecting. This is where people get access to old timers and have a short cut to success. If you are an 'old timer' and your kids and family don't care about your pursuit of gold, join a club and show others what YOU do so that someone else can COPY you. So much knowledge about people, places and things gold related have vanished before it was passed on to others.

Clubs make it 'easy' for someone to go out and give gold prospecting a try. If you don't like it then you just don't go back. If you do like it you will generally find someone willing to teach and share just like they do here online.

Jin, We still have many clubs here in the states but the number certainly was higher. The biggest is the Gold Prospectors Association of America (GPAA). It publishes a book with claims in it and claims reports. https://www.goldprospectors.org/ I belong to it and several other clubs. Each of them suffers from the charge that their claims are hammered and you can't find any gold on them. The truth is that there was more gold at one time on their club claims but the members keep finding more and more. I found my first piece of gold on a hammered club claim and many ounces have been found on it since then! Good prospectors manage to find gold on flogged patches as they say. It is an alternative until you find an unclaimed patch of your own here. Once a claim is placed in the states on public land someone can keep it as long as they keep paying the fees which now can be more than the cost of joining a club. Most clubs here are non-profits also and they have monthly meetings where new members are guided into their area of interest in the detecting types. One club I belong to is a club first and a 'claim holder' second. By that I mean the members are more important than the claims or the type of detecting because they also encourage beach, park and ghost town detecting outings. All of us can do that on our own but it can be more fun in a club. Mitchel

Who will service the old units? Can anyone make a business model to keep them alive and make money?

Sweet swingggggggg ... You don't need depth on many locations. Mitchel

Well done. The 'ring thing' is a bit like nuggets. Once you find one there is a knowledge in your swing that is just not possible to forget. You get a sense for the water, the energy and the places where people lose jewelry. Make sure you check the banks where people sit between swims and the old, dirt parking areas too. Mitchel

Here is the followup: https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/regional/gold-nugget-found-after-being-lost-on-great-northern-highway-in-was-wheatbelt-ng-b881589459z

The loss is obviously not funny. It is the reporting of the story to the general press that strikes us as odd. As we can see, this happens more often than we know. I've lost a bottle with a couple of nuggets in it when I first got my Equinox. It was found by my friend the next day after I reported to him that I had lost my bottle. A true loss is forgetting you ever had it in the first place!

I didn't read the Twitter report but ... it was probably not 'lost' ... an 83 year old never forgets things now, does he??? Maybe they just have so many nuggets they didn't count all the big ones properly. The police just wanted to un-jam the roads leading to the area.

A '$50,000 A' nugget was lost on the highway 270km from Perth. Reward offered ... haha https://thewest.com.au/news/regional/wubin-motorist-loses-50000-gold-nugget-on-great-northern-highway-ng-b881588392z

Shape matters is all I can say. Does the piece at the top of your picture that is not a closed loop sound different than the piece below it? I could probably interrogate those pieces with my 800 and get a couple of positive audio responses if deep and then I would have to take my chances on the number of good targets that sound that way. The closed piece would probably make me want to dig it if I was new on your beach. Mitchel

I call this detecting the 'staging area.' Before targets are brought up or washed off by wave or tide energy they collect for a few weeks, months or years waiting for the right circumstances to move. I look forward to detecting these areas on my beaches before the targets are ejected up on the beach where I have found them with my Explorer, 3030 and Equinox and even my 5000. My beaches are not a sea, lagoon or a lake where targets remain in nearly the same place where they were lost. They move in what I sometimes call a crab crawl waiting for the energy to be within the finding range. A few years back when we had an El Nino we had new targets all summer long. Targets are sparse now so I have to look deeper. Mitchel

The Aussie story tellers are working overtime to describe this one! https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8445421/Huge-gold-nugget-buried-secret-location-Australia.html

Steve, You are not alone in the 'backing over' your metal detector category. On one of my few nugget hunts earlier this year I forgot the 7000 was leaned up against my 4-Runner. I was with a friend and he stopped me carrying my broken detector! I had heard something but ... I was lucky, extremely lucky ... I broke the bottom lower shaft which is plastic. Nothing else was damaged and I changed it with an extra I had and kept right on detecting for the trip. Mitchel

Good going on the finds. My wet change has been down low recently also. We haven't had much energy in the waves lately to dig out those heavy rings and put them on the move. In my area there is the slope as you described but there is also a layer of living shells capping the sand. We need some big swells to break that cap and get things moving. I didn't go out last night but I went out the night before. As you described there was only a couple of pieces of light jewelry and hardly anything at the top. I was using the Nox 800/15" which kinda wears me out. It has to be right over a target for me to see it. I feel like I know and see better with the 11 and that is what I'll do tonight. Mitchel

Can it be glued back to make it as a spare?

Phrunt, Basically there are 'day parks' and they are open then and they prevent excess trouble and vandalism and night camping if they close the gates. You have to go to a camping park with your caravan or tents and reserve the space sometimes months in advance.

Ok, I remembered in another article I read that the amount of gold shown would not equal the claim of value. That can be subjective I guess when you are the 'hider' but that is really a different question than the truth of the find.