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Calmark

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Calmark last won the day on June 16 2023

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  • Gender
    Male
  • Location:
    Chico, California
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    Real name: Mark
  • Gear In Use:
    GPX+Evo coils, GPX 6000, Nox 800(Sold), XP Deus 2 w/ 9in, Legend(Sold), Garrett Axiom, ML Manti +M8

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  1. I wish you a speedy recovery. We look forward to seeing you posting again soon and reading about your detecting exploits.
  2. This detector looks promising so far as a prospecting unit. The ID is a very intriguing feature. I wonder if an ID scale might have uses later on with proper testing in your Cointopia location. I hope it does!
  3. Gerry, sorry I came late and missed the party during your training session. I'm glad you guys came away with a few nuggets despite the tough conditions. Yep, the Axiom performs very well. I don't feel I'm under gunned when out detecting with my brother using his ML 6k, or when I loan my dad my 6k. It finds nuggets plenty small and really shines signaling well on the coarse gold older tech has been more blind to. I definitely appreciate the ability to switch settings to suit the conditions like I was able to do during my last trip to Rye Patch. It "paid" off having a second detector along. I have plans to take the Axiom into some hot rock infested sites later this summer. I've included a picture of that same wash on Tuesday afternoon as I left. I just got out before the roadbed was so deeply eroded it would have drowned my truck to cross, haha. After I got through, I watched several whole sage brush bushes float by on the brisk current!! Talk about a nice mini-monsoon!
  4. It can be tough to get nuggets at Rye Patch any time of year, but when you and I were there, the soggy ground and weather made it even more of a challenge for sure. I'm sorry your group didn't get any gold. I detected over 3 days last summer in June and also got skunked using my ML 6000 in dry ground. I helped two older greenhorn guys with vlf machines who were there set up their machines and scan some signals I found. One had a gpx 4500 he didn't know how to use, so I had him switch that machine and to his 11in mono and set all the proper settings for him. I saw both later in the afternoon, and they had quite a few dug targets, but no gold. We all had a great time camping out and sharing the fun of prospecting and that's what its all about.
  5. I haven't been chasing deep or big nuggets with my Axiom so far. I've swung the 11x7 mono coil nearly exclusively because its small and light. Apart from those advantages, its finding tiny gold, even near the surface I've missed with my gpx 5000. At some later date, I'll probably buy the Garrett 13x11 mono and rescan some areas with the hopes of picking up some deeper and bigger nuggets. Generally, I don't dig many nuggets past 6-8 inches, but have gotten some 12in+ in the past. Right now, with hard-baked dirt, I'll likely wait until fall and rains to soften the ground before I switch to a bigger coil. For now, I'm happy finding a nugget or two per trip that have been missed in the past, even if they tend to be on the smaller side.
  6. The second nugget I found weighed .10grams, but has some caliche/mud atatched to it still. It was very very faint in "fine" timing and sensitivity 2. I tested the signal while still in the ground changing settings. At sensitivity 3, the target was much clearer and definite. I did switch to "salt" setting and did not get a response at sensitivity 2 or 3. After the testing, I set the Axiom to a sensitivity of 3 for most of the rest of the day. I did use sens. 4 briefly, but preferred the quieter 3 setting. I believe the ability to manually select different modes or timings on the Axiom are what set it apart from more automatic units like the ML 6k. Got salt? Switch to salt mode without need to swapping to a different DD coil. Too many tiny shards of iron from cans or wires wasting time? Switch to normal timing to knock out the tiny targets. And even low sensitivity settings find the gold, and quite tiny and coarse too. I have more sub .1gr nuggets with the Axiom so far than I ever got with the GPX 5000 and even my SDC!
  7. I just spent a short while at the famous Nevada Rye Patch over Monday evening and into Tuesday afternoon. The desert this year is extra beautiful and green in the summer with all of the past recent wet weather. I hoped to stay dry doing some detecting and perhaps find some Nevada gold. Well, I at least completed one goal, but failed on the other. I had to wait out a rainstorm for about an hour after a late day arrival. I grabbed my ML GPX 6000 with Goldhawk 10x5 coil and gave the area a test. There were still some puddles on the ground and the top several inches of ground were soppy wet. The 6k is a bit noisy, even with the 10x5 coil, and the saturated ground added to the noise. As it would soon be dark, I decided to pack up the 6000 and use the Garret Axiom with 11x7 mono coil the next day, as I've been able to get it to run more quietly in some tough areas due to the added controls and lower sensitivity levels it offers. The next morning was overcast, but the puddles were mostly gone. After a bit of fiddling to lower audio on the Axiom to 4 threshold, 2 sensitivity and volume 14 while using my ML Koss 1/4in headphones, I was off detecting. Since Rye Patch has been very heavily detected over the decades, my experience has been there aren't too many signals to expect, so I was happy to get my first within 5-10 minutes. I got a faint, but repeatable signal near a sagebrush bush, even with a low sensitivity setting of 2. I figured it would be a shard of bullet or sliver of iron can, but nope, it was a caliche-encrusted, very coarse nugget down about 3 inches! What a way to start the day with a success. I figured I'd cover that area even more slowly and after finding 2 tiny slivers of iron, about 30 minutes later I got an extremely faint signal. A few scrapes and it was in the pile and turned out to be an very tiny nugget! This one was about sesame seed size and also very coarse. The Axiom with its extreme stability and almost no falsing with the audio/sensitivity lowered, still hit that tiny target, very impressive! I renewed my efforts the next 4-5 hours, since it was a race against time. The clouds darkened quickly and it began to look like rain coming yet again with huge dark patches of clouds building nearby. I did dig some other small trash signals and a couple of recent bullets, but no more gold. As the first rain of the early afternoon started to soak me, the thunderstorm hit HARD and I decided it was time to head out. I'm glad I did because the main road in/out had some flash flooding and unfortunately is going to have considerable water damage for a while in spots. People with 2wd vehicles might have trouble passing in the near future. I was glad to finally score some Rye Patch gold after being skunked there in the past. I can now check off finding Nevada nuggets from my list. Low and slow, as others often state, was key, as was making my Axiom as quiet and stable as possible to discern solid signals from saturated ground noises. Also, determination was key. I told myself before the day's hunt, if signals are there to be dug, then there can still be gold, and sure enough there was.
  8. Great analysis and similar to what has occurred to me the past few days while out using v1.0 for around 8 hours now. Nice to visualize the various combinations in table form, so thanks for that. People are definitely going to have to watch their coil battery level more. Just yesterday, I realized I had been in 14khz General program for near an hour. I nearly always avoid DHC P6 since it drains the coil charge pretty fast. I forgot I had changed to 14khz, but luckily I started the day on a full charge and was close to home, ao no harm done. I can see people now forgetting what freq offset they are in for long periods of time and perhaps use the unintended one while swinging or draining a battery faster than expected, so we all have to watch out! Another parrallel that occured to me, and will make sense to Nokta Legend users,is the new offset frequencies for the Deus 2 are similar to how Legend users can toggle M1, M2, and M3 and select their preferred frequency weightings. Most are additive, but M3 is designed to be ground subtractive. The new Park M3 is like the D2 in DHC with its low weighting, and hard-hitting on high conductors. Some food for thought for any Legend owners contemplating getting a D2 in the future.
  9. You found a pretty one, despite the low weight. Last spring I got a fairly plain .68 gram lady's/girl's 14k gold ring with my Deus 2 in a park. Rang up at VDI# 38. I really only got it because less than 10ft. away I found a small silver ring and scoured the nearby area. I generally don't dig numbers that low since small foil comes up the same.
  10. This 11x7in mono coil on the Axiom is SWEET. I find it about the perfect size for most of the rough, rocky, or tight situations where I hunt. I don't feel too bad using it in more open areas either since 11 inches has pretty decent coverage. And it feels extremely light and balanced as well, very appreciated. I would 1000% rather use this combo over my old SDC 2300 and its less than stellar ergonomics. My previous favorite coil was my Nugget Finder Evolution 12x8 mono. I like this Axiom mono coil even more. The NF coil almost never left my GPX 4500 after I mounted it. I don't think I'll take the 11x7 off of the Axiom again any time soon either. These smaller coils can find really small targets and even go deep on larger gold. The 12x8 evo found the 1.2oz nugget pictured in my profile at about 12 inches and the big nuggets often take care of themselves. I also used the hot edge of the mono coil to great affect yesterday. I was able to use the left rounded "tip" of the coil to exactly pinpoint several of the smallest nuggets. I was actually able to forego using my pick and scooped the gravel from between bedrock ridges. Super nice to get the target in the scoop with just a single deep scoop and saved me a lot of time on target recovery, no doubt.
  11. Gerry, I'm glad I was at the top of your list to get an Axiom right when they came out. I immediately sold my SDC 2300 after emailing you. My dad still hasn't hunted with it yet, but I don't feel too bad for him since he's been traveling and golfing... Please feel free to use my experience with the Axiom to share with others. I think its a great machine, especially for anybody who doesn't already own a higher-end PI detector, or even for those who do that want some versatility. As for the shotgun pellet size #, it was the smallest bird shot size. It didn't stick to my magnet either (and I had to find it again when it dropped, oops!). It came out with the first scrape of my pick, but finding a pellet that size with a non-vlf was eye-opening for sure. The Axiom was in fine mode and sensitivity was on 4 of a possible 8. Ground was "just" highly-mineralized and not "severely" mineralized like where I took the Axiom on my first 2 outings.
  12. With a day's break in recent very rainy weather here in northern California, my brother and I decided to hike into an area we've previously detected successfully in the past to ease some "cabin fever" that's built up. What better chance too than to start what is hopefully a very "golden" 2023. Despite some wet toes from crossing a couple of newly flowing small streams, and further wet feet from trekking through wet vegetation all day, we both found our first gold of the year among the sloppy mud and gravel. I mostly hunkered down on a small area with fairly shallow bedrock hunted by me and my dad in the past using our SDC 2300 detectors. We've been through briefly with our GPX 5000 machines too. Since bedrock is shallow, I was using the Axiom plus 11x7in mono coil, and I focused on the remaining shallower targets this trip. I ended up with 8 nuggets and had 4 come out of fine tailings pile in a spot measuring 2ft by 2ft. I bet these nuggets were lost out of a sluice by the old time miners since they were so small, but the Axiom signaled on them no problem and let me know they were there. They are definitely on the smaller end of what I usually find and I was impressed at how well the Axiom did detecting them. The weights are: .05g, .07g, .10g, and .13 grams. The .10g was about 3.5 inches deep and I had no problem hearing it. I also found in the "mini patch" spot a lead pellet of the smallest size (I don't know the #), so I finally got a real taste of how sensitive the Axiom can be. Despite digging a few ground noises in the super wet dirt and losing a bit of time, in general, today's performance results definitely upped my confidence in the machine as far as sensitivity to small targets for sure. I'm looking forward to more outings this year with the Axiom. I'm enjoying getting more comfortable using it and I like having plenty of options for changing settings if needed. I have some tough sites in mind to try it out later in the year. I wish you all a Happy New Year and a prosperous 2023!
  13. I'm in complete agreement too that I'd like vibrate enabled when the m-i6 is paired. I searched for a long while online after my first day pairing to try to figure out how to enable vibration, but it doesn't seem possible, sadly. I now prefer to use the pinpointer as a stand alone since I'd rather give up the extra sensitivity controls when paired in order to keep the vibration feature.
  14. Dirtshark, gold is not easy to find at all due to there being soooo much aluminum and other trash out there on land which makes locating gold much like searching for a needle in a haystack. Its been 6 months since my last gold on land, so it takes a long time for most of us. ID# 14 is definitely a number where I also find a lot of tiny can slaw and larger, wadded up foil. I chose Field M2 for this search because unlike Park mode, Field doesn't compress ID# range 11 to 14 into mostly an 11 ID#. A #14 for this pendant gave me a clue from the number it was something likely more solid at least. I tend to use Park mode and/or M1 when I feel like ignoring more of the lower numbers (and hopefully only aluminum) targets in a really trashy area.
  15. I finally managed to find some gold with the Legend today during a brief stop at a play structure in a park. This particular spot has a base of sand and gravel and a newer top layer of rubber mulch. The plan was to use the Legend + 6in. coil to dig up all signals including all of them in the foil range in the hopes of getting some gold. Well, the plan worked and the Legend now has a 14k gold angel pendant to it's credit. The chain ended up being just plated. I was running disc pattern (G)ground and 60 tones. Sensitivity was at 28, Field 2 mode. I set my first tone break down from 11 to 8 and had IF at 8 with recovery speed 5. The pendant gave a solid ID# 14 reading and as you can see in the picture, was right near the surface. The chain was actually just below a leaf in the picture. Depth was maybe 2-3inches. Interestingly, away from the junk chain, the pendant gave an ID# of 15. I guess the chain pulled the ID down a little. I got zero response sweeping the chain once out of the hole, so it was only found by being with the pendant still. Even though the pendant only weighs .82 grams of 14k, its a start and I hope the Legend keeps on finding more gold.
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