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WhiteRabbit

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  1. Yes it’s definitely only a handful of people. Heh, love the idea of planting identifiable fakes, that’s a really smart idea! I’m just thinking that one over... Nowhere near as cool as an EMP cannon though 😉
  2. 1. In Britain this just depends on the crime. Violence tends to be dealt with quickly, but calling the police and reporting someone with a metal detector may, or may not, get a timely response. Very much depends. There was a border dispute between neighbours in my village and voices got raised. The police were called over reports of an argument and 6 officers (a car and a van) turned up within 10 minutes. 2. Love. That. 😄 3. It only takes a tiny minority to ruin things for the majority. If we have 20,000 detectorists in Britain and 99.9% of them are perfectly honest, then you’ve still got enough people to do some serious, highly visible damage.
  3. I’m considering exactly this as I’m getting pretty heavily involved in archaeology. Just built a fully autonomous archaeological survey vehicle with all kinds of funky tools for a neighbour who happens to be Britain’s leading / one of the world leading authorities on archaeological landscape surveying (he’s a big name, I’m not, not trying to sound clever here). I’m also a passionate detectorist and so have a boot firmly in both camps; professional archaeology (by association) and treasure hunting. There’s a rift between the two and I’m just trying to get both sides talking to each other. Over here there’s a real snobbery in academic/ pro archaeology and metal detecting tends to be despised in these circles. Yet, I always argue that no amount of academic reading and reasoning would have ever unearthed (say) The Staffordshire Hoard. Some Viking was under attack and stashed his loot in a chest under a tree in a forest that was cut down 1,000 years ago and that chest is now in the middle of a farmers field which he ploughs 3 times a year, then sprays fertiliser all over it (which corrodes metal). Its nice to hear that the farmer and the detectorist are £1.5M richer each and that the local museum has a hoard to display. No archaeology destroyed either. Win times four. Nighthawks bring us detectorists into disrepute and nobody knows our machines better than us detectorists. Hence my question 🙂
  4. I think it is, but I’ve never found a fence I can’t climb (though I must admit that I am a climber). I heard that the “fence was damaged”, so I assume it was a chain link job and someone has just taken some wirecutters, or simply jacked the bottom up and crawled under. Fences are no deterrent if someone is determined.
  5. Honestly guys, you can’t go dumping half a tonne of scrap metal on a dig like this: https://www.thescarboroughnews.co.uk/news/people/in-pictures-amazing-aerial-views-of-scarborough-roman-villa-hailed-as-world-first-3205827?fbclid=IwAR1ESXSUnS0A4a-rLDy6xrNYx_mEI_Ge7pGp1n10MHF8Xsfj0MZRZ9760eM
  6. Oh, regarding cameras. They are just no deterrent. People cover their faces, police are often slow to respond to such crimes and archaeologists don’t usually have the funds to finance private security. Saying that, three people were recently identified from footage taken with wildcams during the day after their mugshots were plastered all over Facebook.
  7. Thanks a lot for the answers, some good ideas. With regard to the law, I’m based in England so the laws will differ here. I’m a network engineer by trade, so I do know about the upper limits on signal strength and I’m also aware of which frequencies / bandwidths are public and which aren’t. Also government licences can be granted for specific uses. Last week a significant Roman settlement was discovered close to where I live. An article about it was published in the local newspapers and *that night* it was hit by what appears to be a team of nighthawks. Nobody knows what they took and, since they will struggle to sell on the open market, their finds will go onto the black market. Consequently, a good chunk of British history may disappear forever. That’s the kind of thing we are up against. Britain currently has very permissive metal detecting laws, but if this continues, then these laws will be changed. I can foresee licensing, then a complete ban on the sale of detectors. I have thought about scattering aluminium scrap all over the place, but you can’t do this on historic sites as it would contaminate the archaeology. What got me thinking was hearing a friend complaining that he thought his detector was broken before he realised he was near an electric fence that was causing interference... Surely this could be replicated. I did look into the designs for a home brew EMP which, believe it or not, may actually be legal to use outside cities in the UK (I’ll have to double check this!), but whatever the case, I don’t want to go wrecking peoples’ property, I just want them to know that hitting x site is going to be a waste of time. Steve, thanks for your input. I appreciate that detectors work on different frequencies and did consider buying a few common models and amping up the signal, but that wouldn’t exactly be cheap (my CTX3030 alone is £1,700 over here). From what I have read, most detectors work in the low kHz, 1.5kHz to 40kHz and so I was wondering what decide would be required to bleed all over this frequency. It doesn’t necessarily need to block signals, just interfere with them enough to render detecting not viable. A shotgun approach might work here. However, your idea about using a frequency scanner and locking into that is more elegant. I’m an IT engineer who does a lot of robotics / IoT work in my spare time, so I could trigger all kinds of alerts / events from this. Ok, this sounds technically viable. I’ll check the laws and devices available and let you know what I discover if you’re interested? I’d also really appreciate any further ideas. Many thanks.
  8. Hello, now here’s an opener that might just get me banned on my first post! Bear with me, my intentions are pure :) Does anyone know if it would be possible to jam an MD signal? The reason I ask is to combat the evident problem we have in the UK with “nighthawks”, illegal detectorists. Over here, any landowner can grant permission for detecting on their land (with caveats, known historic sites are protected by law). What often happens is that such a permission is granted and a detectorist innocently sets about his / her business. Someone less scrupulous spots this person and assumes there may be something important there, so shows up at night with a couple of friends and the landowner awakens to a field / lawn full of holes, then bans metal detecting. Historic sites are also looted. Just an off the wall question, how tricky would it be to build a device to block this on a piece of land? Anyone any ideas?
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