lone wanderer

You only have to type in Calabash Digger on You Tube and you will find the video. I suggest you do so and stop putting words in my mouth, I did not mention the Equinox 800. I wrote very high mineralisation-not good enough for you, well it was 90/100 on the Impact mineralisation meter and at 100 the machine overloads You are trying to stop forum users from putting their views across and this is concerning and not everyone is as perfect as you seem to think you are. We as prospectors are not in the business of constantly eyeing ID,s and only go on tones which is why I like the Impact and anyway ID,s on my goldfields are not reliable and constantly fluctuate between 19 and 90. I suggest you watch the video in question and get your first hand knowledge you crave from it and see how the Equinox performs and contact Calabash not me if you don't agree with it.

Australia is famous to international backpackers to come here to do a lot of partying and trash our beaches as this week happened near Sydney and the rubbish they left behind was disgusting. No way they could do this in most parts of the world without getting jail time. Mind you some of the local farm owners are not slow in raping some of the pretty pack packers and they are over exploited by these farm owners by paying below award wages specified by the government for backpackers.

I stayed in Perth with my daughter for two weeks and she bought a house a few miles inland from the coast in a place called Elliston and over summer the place is muggy and infested with flies. She wanted to buy on the beach and this nearly led to a divorce. Near Perth we went to the Marina which has a shopping centre with curiosity shops, restaurants and cafes and a protected beach with shallow water ideal for kids. The weather was warm and pleasant with no flies.

Would love to detect in North Queensland but the taipan snakes there are too numerous and you can hear them brushing against your tent at night. If bitten you have only 30 minutes but the goldfields which have the nuggets are are very remote and this is a death sentence unless your wife is a nurse and carries anti venom. You can't detect in winter like in Victoria and southern WA as Queensland is tropical and has no winter except in the very South of the state.

My parents and I travelled to Europe when I was 5 and saw Egypt, the Mediterranean and the Baltic Sea. We travelled up and down the Eastern seaboard of Australia and finally bought a house in Melbourne. They got me into more scrapes than I care to remember and once when I was 5 they decided to take a shortcut off the main road to get to Cairns. They told me when we had to cross a channel and I stepped on something we thought was a log but turned out to be a sleeping crocodile. When we crossed this area of high grass we saw a sign with a skull and crossbones on the Cairns side.

I found a dry blowing site at Inkerman in Victoria but it was heavily infested with galvanised steel heavy wire netting in small half inch bits and gave it up. Should have detected the surrounding area. Downhill was the start of a long gully with hundreds of shallow holes but being close to a main track decided to look for more hidden diggings.

Read a book in the 1980,s written by a detector operator-a Garret Deepseeker I think who included many maps of nugget patches with location of dry blowing dumps in the WA goldfields of Australia. He found many large nuggets in these piles and in total found an amazing 1200 ozs of gold in only a couple of years.

Black sand is a different kettle of fish from Wedderburn or PA dirt? We got none in Victoria (black sand)as far as I know and I can't comment on the performance of the Impact. However the Impact does not leave you high and dry at just being able to ground balance. Using a sample 1 gram nugget I did tests there and it picks it up at 5 inches in DI2 and 3 inches in all metal mode giving good signals. Ground is too hot for DEEP mode as it is very sluggish and only picks up the target on every alternate sweep. As a rough rule of thumb you can double these depths in mild soil.

I am enjoying using the Impact in very anomalised ground like hills where a huge number of nuggets were found by the oldtimers including myself found two half ounce nuggets on a particular hill with a Whites in 1982. Finding 18 inch deep mineralised nodules giving good sharp signals just like a genuine target and ferrous objects telling me it has not been properly detected for such a historically rich location. Also 20 feet long areas of extreme ground which overloads There is a question mark regarding whether the Anfibio is as good as the Impact in very highly mineralised ground and whether the Impact is as good as the Deus or better.

I tried to find that video again today and it was a showdown between an Equinox(model not specified) Anfibio and Deus in PA dirt on a 8 inch deep quarter done by Calabash Digger and sorry, it was not Culpeper dirt. Nox no signal, Anfibio faint in all metal,Deus absolutely smacked it on 28 Khz. Unfortunately although I watch tests on the Nox 800 on goldfields the testers never mention how good it is in highly mineralised dirt and watchers are kept continually in the dark. Also thinking the 800 does well at finding artifacts wnich are usually bigger objects but will it find a quarter at 8 inches in PA dirt?

As far as the Impact goes I have used it over 40 hours in various areas in the Golden Triangle of Victoria and including the hottest zone up north and it is able to be ground balanced easily in every location, although I have not found gold with it.In case you don't know the Golden Triangle has the most difficult soils in which to detect in in Australia. The areas here are infested with hot rocks and tin foil making it imperative to use a good VLF with a notch filter. People who use a PI can find gold but have to really work hard for it as they dig up a lot of junk. The Impact has a separate low tone for hot rocks and another one for ferrous. It has a notch filter to mask the tin foil and used with a large 17 inch coil it can go deep in DEEP mode. With the regular coil it can go 20 inches on a tin can in very hot soil. Double that for a mild soil and 40% extra with the 17 inch coil. Of course this is all theoretical and would be interesting if it could pick up the beer can at 56 inches.I have been living in Eastern Europe for 2 years and stuck here due to coronavirus. Its going to last a lot longer possibly years if the new mutated strain gets hold. There are 1812 battle sites here which can be detected and my son in law is going to take me to Smolensk in June.They have all the US brands here and the Nokta Makro at much cheaper prices.

My old Whites 5000D a 1980 model Coinmaster with a 16 inch coil was very good at signalling the mineralisation and it never shut up and good enough at signalling gold nuggets even down to 7 grams at 3 to 4 inches and 2 ozs at 6 inches.Here we have mostly very high mineralisation.Unfortunately someone stole mine when we were moving house and it was the only detector I found large nuggets with because they were there and now its been all hammered.

Rob your teaching your sons well in the best classroom in the world-Mother Nature. When your in your rocking chair years from now  you will realise you already found gold that day but which no gold can buy, the joy of sharing this great adventure we call life with your sons and a big smile will come over you....

From ancient times Wales was a leading supplier of tin for manufacturing bronze and weapons. Ships loaded with wine and olive oil were went from Constantinople which was then called Byzantium to brink back tin.Lets hope Wales can challenge China and Australia in the production of gold? If the gold is deep underground like in South Africa no detector in the world will pick it up.

From the tests done on You Tube between the Equinox,Deus and Anfibio in Culpeper dirt only the Deus and Anfibio got signals.

What people are not aware of is the Impact is phenomenal in very highly mineralised ground and can be used anywhere on the planet except on the rim of a volcano.It is more versatile than any other detector with 12 modes and the COG mode was especially developed for the Impact for alkaline soils.It is very well balanced which offsets its disadvantage of being heavy to a degree.Anfibio is half a pound lighter. In inland arid regions where I use it being waterproof is not a big issue but in more wetter regions I would go for the Anfibio as I had the bad experience of my first detector being ruined as I tried to use it in the rain albeit with protective plastic covering but water has a talent of infiltrating unsealed devices.

Have not tested the Anfibio in hot soils but it should be similar but would not buy it without some proof.Anfibio has the disadvantage of having to be charged from the mains but Impact can be used in remote areas simply by carrying a spare set of batteries. I have 8 rechargeable batteries which are charged from the car cigarette lighter.Anfibio has the option of being available also in a solely 14 Khz or solely 19 Khz  frequency models which to me is is a great advantage as I only use 20 Khz and also makes these two models cheaper.

The Anfibio has a limit available in larger coils, the AF 35 coil or 13.5 inch coil. Whilst the Impact can be fitted with the IM 45 which is a 15X17 inch coil.

PH  All metal has a hot rock tone distinct from the low pitch ferrous tone.All you have to do to increase discrimination from 00 to 01. Great downhill from gold reefs where the ground is thick with hot rocks.All metal is great for finding very small targets down to 0.1 gram in low mineralised soils.All Metal however does not go deep and is best used for detecting shallow targets.The problem of false signals in very highly mineralised soil should be able to be minimised by increasing the isat setting from 01 to 03 in DI2 although I have not tried this yet.Tin and silver foil masked by setting the notch filter in the range 17 to 19 in DI2,or setting the tone break to 19 to give a ferrous tone in DI2 for foil and digging up the high tones so as to not miss any gold.or gold nuggets.I have found the strongest ID numbers in highly mineralised soil to be in DEEP mode and no intelligible ones in All Metal.DEEP is my favorite mode for hunting nuggets and works well in soils below 80 on the min. meter and the DI modes can easily handle 90 on the meter.I use DI2 in the more difficult soils.Nokta only recommend using DEEP mode in low to mild soil and this has always puzzled me.

Also great for people in aged care facilities who have lost their marbles.

Hi phrunt    Nels have a range of 10 coils for each model of VLF detector from the BIG  15x17 inch to a very tiny 5x3 inch.I recently bought the Tornado coil 12x13 inch for the Impact although I wanted a 13.5 x13 inch coil but only coil in stock for the Impact from this European store.There is a 14x10.5 coil which I fancy for nugget detecting in the Golden Triangle. The Tornado goes 20% deeper but at 13 inch wide it is nearly twice as wide as the standard coil which should bring some advantages like much easier to locate targets. It is still very sensitive to nuggets smaller than 1 gram-rated 8.5/10 for locating small targets and can pick them up down to 8 inches deep in low mineralized soil.The Tornado is a good compromise in obtaining more depth but still suited in finding coins and similar sized objects.I was also very impressed by the quality.