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.