Calmark

I just plug in the headphones provided with my Equinox and haven't bothered to mess with the wireless stuff.😉

I wish everybody a super prosperous 2020!! 😀

I'd reccomend using the 15x12 Commander coil to cover ground more quickly to help locate a productive area. Use the 11" Coiltek later to locate any smaller nuggets the 15x12 misses. It's pretty sensitive for the size, so it won't miss many, so don't be afraid to use it to locate even small nuggets.  Best of luck finding a hot spot!

The coil springs in the battery compartment may have taken a set. You might try gently stretching them longer to ensure the batteries are making good contact. 

Good luck!

The origin of my login is pretty simple. My name is Mark, and I'm from California. ?

My brother and I found a couple of nice patches this spring.  I used my SDC 2300 and he his TDI. After cleaning out the "easy" stuff, I decided I needed to get a used GP 3000 I'd had 4 years and never used going and bought a new lead acid battery.  I also got it a new NF Evo 14x9 coil. 

After cleaning out the next layer of deeper gold with the GP 3000, I got myself and my dad both GPX 5000 units so I could teach him how to use it while out together.  He and I both found some more good gold in the patch area and surrounding it. 

I then added a 17x13 NF Evo to my GPX  and found some deeper gold I'd missed previously in the main patch area. 

Now that its getting harder to find gold in my patch, I decided I'd go after some of the smaller stuff that has to be there, so last week I had an Equinox 800 arrive.  My brother also got one at the same time.  I also got us both the 6" coil to go with it.  My last VLF was a White's MXT in 2005 and I never found gold with it other than 1 class ring, so now I have some more modern vlf technology for coin and jewelry searching when I'm not out swinging for gold. 

So, for 2018 I revived a Minelab GP 3000 by getting a new battery, bought a GPX 5000 and just got the Equinox 800.  I think I've become a Minelab fan.  ?  I definitely I have the bases covered very well for nugget hunting with the PI and hot VLF.  Thanks to the capabilities of the Nox, I also think I have any coin, jewelry and beach hunting also covered very nicely!  ? 

While I don't have a particularly fast internet connection, I do notice the site loads faster for me than prior to the hardware upgrade.  You could call it "semi-snappy", so a very nice improvement.  

Thank you for your efforts at making this site top-notch!

So far in the Chico, CA area we've gotten under an inch from the storm.  I heard reports of the foothills and mountains getting far more than where I live in the valley.  The ground is now pretty saturated and if some of the predictions of 5-10+ inches fall in the high areas and melt snow tomorrow as the temperature rises, then there may very well be some high enough water to clean out the sediment and vegetation that has built up in the creeks where I snipe.  I live right next to a levee in the valley, so I really don't want too much flooding to go on.  Just enough localized stuff up high to churn things good for us miners .

It's always nice to be rewarded with a couple of nugget after a hard days detecting.  Keep at it and I'm sure you'll find others!

I managed to get out 3 times with my Minelab SDC 2300 in the CA motherlode and once to northern Nevada.  I found 4 small nuggets totaling about .5 grams.  My hope is to get out a lot more next year to some new places and increase my finds.  

You did really well with the SDC.  That is a lot of individual finds and it will only be time until you pass over a large nugget!

Great job going slowly and sniffing out those nuggets!  You two are to be commended for managing to keep going for so many days straight!

That big nugget is a sweet find, Rudy.  I'm surprised you didn't find it while using your GP 3000!  

I was out with my brother near Sulphur last weekend.  We saw signs of rain with a few puddles left over.  A few areas we dug around a little were damp a few inches down, but mostly where the water looked to have pooled after the storms.  Other areas that were higher, like old dry washer mounds looked better and were pretty dry.  Lots of luck to you!

You are onto a good patch there!  Very nice gold and some good sized nuggets too.  I need to find myself a patch like that...

Nice finds and fun times it sounds like.  I hope to visit the area with my SDC 2300 sometime, maybe even as soon as next month.  Good to see there are some good nuggets still to be had out there!

Yep, this area is like the Yuba River near Downieville, but on a smaller scale.  That's good, except the few most obvious areas along the creek for holding gold have mostly been looked over.  I think my best chances for big gold lie up the hillsides where its very steep and rugged with lots of obstacles like brush and leaf litter.  Either that, or just keep plugging away in the trashy areas where something has to have been missed.  But, I'll definitely try the areas near the water when the going gets tough to try to squeak out a few finds.  

Nice nugget you found by the way, mn90403!  That one was a whopper and a really pretty piece.  

Nice nuggets, and not even very far from home!  

Very interesting the SDC missed that 2.9g piece at 12".  It seems the GPZ really is for the bigger, deeper stuff.  I really do like how portable the SDC is though...

Featheredfishhead,  I hope to keep breaking my record for nugget size with the SDC.  I've found much larger stuff in the water in the past, so I know its out there.  I hope I can find an area like yours that hasn't seen much prospecting action sometime too.

I was out in an area not too far outside of Nevada City, CA up around the town of Washington to give you an idea, Rick.  There are tons of old hydraulic pits in that general area.  So many, a guy couldn't even hope to cover them all in a lifetime.  But, I'm thinking I'd like to find some more remote areas off the beaten path now that I have confidence in the SDC finding the gold.   

Hello everyone,

I though I'd share a little about my success with the Minelab SDC last week.  While I've lived in Butte county, CA a couple of decades, I generally prospect in Nevada county, as that's the area I'm most familiar with. This past trip to was to a small creek that has hydraulic pits above it and extensive bench workings just above the water.  I used to dredge in this creek until it was shut down to dredging with the ban.  I've tried various White's detectors here in the past with no success, since its very mineralized and I couldn't tell the difference between faint real signals and all of the false signals I'd get with the detector.  

I bought the SDC last February, (just before the GPZ came out, of course!) and my first trip there I did manage to find my first detected gold ever with a sub .1 gram nugget and one about .2g.  I really enjoyed how stable the SDC was and was able to hear the whisper signals that told me where the gold was hiding in bedrock.  Last week's trip, I decided to go for potentially larger nuggets and detected the bench cobble piles for 3-4 hours, but only found the usual nails and iron trash, along with a few lead bullets.  Thinking I needed to hit shallow bedrock along the water if I didn't want to go home skunked, I did just that.  After 30-40 minutes I got a decent signal on a high spot on the bedrock.  Laced with tiny cracks, I thought it was a good sign the signal could be gold.  Sure enough, I got the signal into my scoop after chipping the bedrock and ended up with a nice water-worn nugget weighing .25g, my biggest yet!  I had avoided the skunk, so that was a great way to enter into the late afternoon.

After no more finds, I headed upstream in the direction of the car and worked another area.  After digging a few junk targets, I got a nice signal that was stronger than the last nugget.  It was where a small crack had formed to the rear of a little bedrock ridge that would be in the water during the winter.  I had a good feeling about that signal and a whack or two with my pick broke off the bedrock.  Once I cleaned the spot, the signal was in the scoop.  And sure enough, it was an even larger nugget!  It was the same size, shape and thickness of a 1/2 a sunflower seed and I could see how it would have fit perfectly in that tiny crack.  It weighed .65 grams, so that made two nuggets on the day for nearly a gram.  I'd generally find more in a day of dredging, but overall, not bad at all I thought for only my second time out with the SDC.  

As it turned out, that was it for the day, as I only had about 1/2 hour until it was nearing dark and my batteries ran out.  I figured I got about 5.5 hours of use from the rechargable batteries, and definitely need another set for those full days out detecting in the future.  I definitely feel like the SDC really helped me hear the signals I did in this nasty area other detectors I've tried weren't able to handle.  Now, I didn't enjoy digging all of those square nails, but if this PI machine lets me concentrate on signals that are real, then I'm more than happy to dig some trash in the quest for those nuggets.  

Here are some pictures of the larger nugget just dug and the two of them together:

Just today, on my second trip out this year, I found my 3rd and 4th nuggets with my Minelab SDC 2300.  

My other 2 days of detecting this past year with my brother's White's TDI and I didn't get any.

That's an extremely nice pile of coarse CA gold!!  Generally speaking, did the 2300 or GPZ find the most pieces and which machine found the biggest ones?  I guess what I'd really be interested in knowing is if an SDC would have missed a large percentage of those nuggets?  I have a SDC 2300 and if its able to get most, I won't feel like I'm missing too much when out there.  

Thanks for sharing the videos.  You sure built up a lot of suspense by releasing them separately  That was a huge chunk of gold you found and I can't wait to see how it cleans up.  That was a very successful trip for sure!

Way to go!  That's a nice collection of beautiful nuggets.  That big one is a great find.  Its hard to believe the old timers missed it.  Nice job sticking with it and getting the GPZ to help you find the gold!

That's been a hot little patch, with some very nice pieces too!  I'm sure you plan to go back.  I hope you can find some others hiding there.  

That's a great day for sure!  I'm starting to get the itch to go out now that it has started to cool a bit in my area.  We had a little rainstorm the other night that did help clean some of the wildfire smoke out of the air.