GoodAmount

Good equipment + good research + boots on the ground + curiosity and determination + detectorprospector forum = success. Thanks Steve and everyone who contributes here for adding to my success. I can honestly say that without this forum I’d still be working a full-time desk job. I hope I can help pay it forward to others too.

I carry a couple of spare inner tubes and a repair kit, but would also benefit from tyre liners. I’ve collected enough thorns and nails over the years to know to always go out with backups. I used to use thorn-proof tubes, but they have a thicker/stiffer wall section and would quickly tear where the tube is bonded to the valve stem when the tube crept around the rim - even when running high pressures. You can’t glue a patch there either. After getting stranded once, I reverted back to regular tubes and just carry a couple of spares.

This is my rig. I can go places in stealth mode that larger vehicles can’t get into - it just takes a little longer to get there. I’ve modified my 7000 to fit in a pannier bag so I don’t miss the gold. 🙂

I thought the same thing a couple of years ago when I first got my 7000 and was shocked when my prospecting buddies were doing better than me with their 2300 and 6000. I went away to Inglewood with them (which has some patches of very variable, highly mineralised ground) full of confidence that I had the most powerful machine available and would come out tops using it at its max power in normal HY. I got absolutely caned by them, coming home skunked and with my tail between my legs, while they both did really well. I now use difficult HY sense 14 in that spot and come home with a competitive, if not tops, gold take. I use normal wherever I can, but difficult where I must.

I’ve tested this many times and there’s no golden rule sadly - as with most of our conversations here on DP, results are variable depending on the ground. On some of the heavily mineralised ground I hunt small pieces (sub 0.05) don’t even register in normal because the background noise swallows up the signal even at low sensitivity, but they sing out as distinct targets in difficult. Conversely, on a quartz tailings piles you bet I’m switching to normal - it goes WAY deeper on specimens, especially if you can crank up the sensitivity. I like to go over heavily mineralised spots in difficult HY with highish sensitivity (16-18) first and if I hit gold I’ll clean it out in those settings then try again in normal with lowered sensitivity. In some cases I’ve uncovered more gold, but more often than not end up digging ground noise for an afternoon. If there’s bigger gold in the area I’ll persist for as long as I can stand it. Over the past few weeks I’ve been experimenting with lower sensitivity (12-14) in difficult HY as recommended in previous posts by JP and my gold takes have actually increased, but I’m not sure if that’s because of the setting change or just dumb luck sticking the coil into the right spots. It’s certainly a quieter and more pleasant experience though.

Gerry, that’s a taped up x-coils 15CC in the background. I hate scratching up my coils, so I douse them in duct tape. (I’m around here often, just lurking in the background 🙂)

Yesterday’s finds in Central Victoria. You can certainly see a lot more of my hand than most of you other blokes. And that’s a good day for me!

I’ve also got carpel tunnel in my detecting wrist, which makes long hunts difficult. I use a Futuro brace with the aluminum splint removed and replaced by plastic strips top and bottom so I don’t set the detector off every time I pass my scoop over the coil when recovering targets. It doesn’t fully fix the health problem but it makes a big difference to my comfort during the day.

I’ve got a NF 17x13 and haven’t used it since getting the X-Coils 8” and 15” CC. I’ve found most of my gold with the 8” - It’s significantly more sensitive than the NF 17x13. It’s both super sensitive to tiny gold and easy to poke into spots that other coils can’t get into. This is a winning combination in areas that have been hit hard for decades by other detectors and coils. It doesn’t cover much ground though, so it’s worth having a bigger coil for patch hunting over larger areas.

Nice work Mitchell! What timings were you using? The 15” CC should ping pieces much smaller than that too …and the 8” and 10” even smaller still. I find if the ground I’m hunting is heavily mineralised and variable, it’s worth running over it in HY Difficult with sensitivity bumped up as high as I can go. The 15 CC purrs along quietly, but still stays sensitive to the small stuff. I find Normal typically hits deeper targets (in mild ground), but hear the teeny-tiny shallow bits better in Difficult.

I’ve been designing myself a new anti twist carbon-fibre-shaft kit for my 7000 so I can collapse it down to fit it in my ebike pannier and the lower shaft was originally made of carbon. It worked out great, but the machine was running noisy for a reason I couldn’t figure out, so when Gerry originally brought up this topic I ran a piece of shaft over the coil and sure enough it sounds off like nobody’s business - especially with an 8” X-Coil. I swapped out the carbon lower for a plastic one and the machine now runs noticeably quieter. I don’t own a 6000, but if it made this much difference on my 7000, it’s definitely worth swapping out your lower shaft for a glass fibre one.

That’s devastating news Doc!! My thoughts and prayers go out to you and your family.

I can certainly understand you feeling like the detector should be able to give you more than your ground will allow. Running it maxed out all the time takes away some of the joy in decision-making and using your nuanced detector skills from the detecting experience. It would be great if Minelab were doing what Nokta are doing with their software development and responding dynamically to user needs. Imagine a 7000 with a beast mode! Your experience is very different from mine. I’m rarely able to run my machine maxed out and love it when I can. Today I was only able to run it in HY Normal for about 10 minutes on a 2x2m patch of quiet(ish) slaty tailings. Even then I had to knock the sensitivity back to 15 to reduce the moaning and groaning. It paid off with a nice specimen that I’d missed on a previous hunt in that spot where I’d left it in HY Difficult. Some of the people I’ve bumped into here in Victoria swear by running HY Normal Sens 7-8 in difficult ground, but I find I miss a lot of the small gold that way. But truth is that I should be making use of all the timings and coil selection on my patches to maximize yield, which takes discipline and time I many times lack. 🙂

@phrunt I didn’t realise there was a sensitivity decrease for V2 coils. Interesting, I thought it would have been the opposite. The 12” spiral would be a good option, especially if it has the sensitivity of the 8”, but its weight is 1100gm, making it less appealing for scouting sidewalls of trenches and sharply inclined gullies. It would certainly suit some of the ground I hunt - I wish I could afford all of the coils! 🙂 @davsgold That looks like noisy ground for sure. Thanks for letting me know your settings - they’re similar to what I use, but I can usually bump up the sensitivity to 18-20 in HY Difficult if I’m running the threshold at 12. In really variable ground with the 15” CC I’ve been finding I can still ping tiny specs at reasonable depth if I drop the machine back to HY Severe THS 12 and keep sensitivity high. Even though the machine is desensitized, it runs nice and quiet so I can hear the faint signals that get lost in the noise of the higher timings. This strategy doesn’t work as well with the 8” though. @fourtyniner The 8” was the best investment I’ve made for the Zed. It’s paid for itself many times over. I’ll certainly buy another one if it ever breaks.

Thanks for the tips phrunt and davsgold. The key thing for me here is the weight of the coil vs sensitivity when patch hunting for days at a time. I’ll usually swap from a larger coil to the 8” after I’ve pinged my first bits and move very slowly if there’s gold to be found. Then swap back to a larger coil afterwards to pick up any of the deeper bits I’ve missed - which quite often isn’t very many. @phrunt, you’ve been a great advocate of the 8” and I’d be interested to know your experience with owning both the 8” and 10” given the size difference isn’t that great. The 10” is about the same weight as the 15x10” DOD - could the 10” suffice as a patch hunter? In your opinion, does it give adequate coverage for that function given it doesn’t lose too much of the sensitivity of the 8”? @davsgold I’d be interested to know how mineralised/variable the ground that you hunt is? How noisy is the 15x10” spiral in it and can you comfortably swing it for days at a time? I’ve got to run the 17x12” at a lower sensitivity in the ground I hunt, which is why I’m wondering if a 15x10” DOD might be a better option.