Jonathan Porter

Flak, I’ll try to set a good example and avoid replying to the jibes. I am not an innocent in the proceedings and do bite well on the subtle baits that get dangled, floating out a few hypocritical taunts of my own at times.🤥 I feel that some of my comments in the past have pushed the boundaries into what has become a decaying line of unacceptable behaviour, something I need to learn to control when interacting with others. For my part I hope those who have felt offended take this as a peace offering for the sake of everyone else who has had to bare witness. A balance needs to be found where the forum is entertaining and interesting enough to encourage sensible debate without it getting into the tit-for-tat territory. I do love a good debate and putting forward differing views especially on subjects I am passionate about, trying to word things were it challenges POV’s without bruising egos is the hard bit. Hopefully when others post they too will feel compelled to tone things down and avoid being tempted to write in such a way that others are triggered into the same old familiar spaces. We’ve all become very adept at recognising each other’s sensitive points and then cleverly camouflaging them in our words. JP

This thread is a place were I can share and continually update pictures of any of my current gold finds, kind of like a gold diary of sorts. Sometimes I’ll include narrative other times it will be just pictures of what I found for the day. I get out detecting regularly and I use a lot of different equipment some of which is not open for discussion. This thread is NOT about equipment but about the gold I find as I find it. I will try to include pictures of the terrain so people can visualise what the areas look like where I‘m detecting. I would prefer if others do not post up pictures to this thread but ALL DP members are more than welcome to comment and ask questions about detecting related subjects, especially about targeting locations and mind sets and approach. It’s OK to relate to a post and talk about your own experiences, in fact I insist on it. That’s the whole point of a gold thread, to share my daily gold finds and talk with like minded people about how much fun it is to find gold. The Last couple of days detecting things have been a little slow as I revisit old haunts not visited for years. I’m targeting areas associated with old gold finds looking for indications of other nearby locations that are conducive to nuggets being present. The signs I’m looking for are gravels that are exposed at the surface, especially with pieces of ironstone in the mix, then working off the edges into the soil covered zones. Clermont does not have channeled gravels that were originally associated with creeks and rivers but instead has deltas of wash that spread away from the source becoming water worn in the process, this means you can have quiet large areas of deco clays with very little gravels then hit an area the size of a kitchen with good wash that contains gold, sometimes it can be associated with a weathered down localised quartz reef which has acted as a trap for mobile gravels or it will be made up entirely of gravelly wash that has moved on-mass and delta’d out in a fan shape. The trick is to find these areas hidden amongst the tree cover and fine surface soils that hide them. Quite often you will head downslope following the gold then hit a blank of deco that goes for 30 meters then the gravels will start up again. The trick is to try and push the boundaries until either a major drainage gobbles up the contents of the slope or the ground becomes barren. The hard part is to try and decide if the surface soils are laying over gold gravel or just deco with nothing underneath. JP Pics are of the last couple of days in two different locations. Day two

Dogodog, I have tried panning in the past and almost always don’t find much fine gold at all. These little tackers are liberally scattered around a reclaimed area where the bulk of material was removed and put through a wet plant 30 or 40 years ago, the spot would originally have had old timers diggings on it. Every time it rains hard here the place gets revitalised with tiny little water worn pieces ending up on the surface within detection distance. There is very little trash just a section of pale wash over a 50 square meter area, with light pastel coloured sandstones as the basal material which has been producing for me since 1994 when I first discovered it with my Whites Goldmaster VSat, it’s memorable because it was the only place I was ever able to run sensitivity flat out!🤫 From memory I had an absolute ball pulling over 90 pieces for around 1/2 an ounce with the biggest being 1 gram (a monster for that spot), the $250 I made there was the icing on the cake and kept us going for a while. Hard to believe 1/2 an ounce is now worth $1250!!!😜 It’s locations like these that formed the foundation blocks of my detecting career, being able to lock in and focus with VLF detectors when your next feed depended on it was a good grounding that has carried me since 1987. TBH early memories like these seem to have more meaning for me than some of the later successes where many hundreds of ounces were involved, life seemed purer and more simple in the VLF days, every little nugget counted and had immeasurable importance and meaning, I truly miss those days it was scary as hell!!☺️ The whole point of this post was to try and “get off the roundabout“ and away from equipment being used and instead focus on the experience and the results, which is why I edited the pictures. There is no need for speculation because my post isn’t anything to do with that, I’m not making any claims or pitching any product here just sharing an experience. I see other members struggles on the forum when trying to find a piece or two and hope that my experiences (which I often take for granted) can enthuse others. In this case I just targeted an area and used the best equipment for the job at hand, I’m fortunate because thanks to the shop and my field testing job I have a plethora of detector equipment choices on hand, some readily available and some not, as an example I still have my prototype Equionox which works really well here (probably the best VLF gold hunting experience I have ever had at this location, especially the small 6” coil). This location has seemed played out to me many times over the past 26 years and many years have gone by between visits, it still looks exactly the same and has seen plenty of attention from other detector operators, especially the SDC crowd, in those intervening years. And yet it still produces, in the more benign spots they are getting thin on the ground but as modern technologies have improved I’ve been able to venture out into the nastier ground with the same or similar sensitivity used in the quieter sections, extending the boundaries. What I would have given for such detectors and equipment back in those heady formative years🤩, but then again maybe not, I’m pretty certain it was the trials and struggles and subsequent successes that moulded me into what I am today. Certainly it’s those formative years that I draw from when I target an area again, thanks to those wonderful early days the expectation is always positive even if I find nothing. JP

Yesterday was an overcast day which meant lower temperatures, the perfect opportunity to focus on a little spot I have that has very little shade cover. This year has been a weird summer, I have never seen the humidity so high without major rain associated with it, so even with the milder temperatures I was in a lather of sweat just wandering around. Fortunately the gold I was chasing is tiny and shallow so no major effort digging deep holes and getting the heart rate too high which then means elevated body temperatures. I’ve done a lot of testing at this location thanks to the low mineralisation levels a perfect spot for VLF or MF machines. However as is typical in Australia even our quiet ground locations have their noisy sections so yesterday was aimed at targeting the salty ground and the hot rock sections. It’s was good fun getting 17 bits but the pay was pretty ordinary relative to the sweaty time spent!😜 The bigger bits were surprisingly deep with a nice crisp but quiet signal response, the tiny ones were oft times right on the surface which required a bit of prostrate kneeling to get down low enough for my 53 year old eyes to spot them before disturbing the ground running the risk of losing them. JP

I have the complete reverse here with only one area with low mineralisation where the small coil was OK. JP

Jasong, this has been my point all along, Australian’s too have totally flogged patches that just do not produce much anymore, some of the most detected places on the planet are in Victoria which has a very large population who know all about metal detectors because of the huge popularity in the golden years of many many people experiencing life changing finds. In theory if the coils are doing as is being touted everywhere then everyone would be experiencing similar all over the world, in the case of the GPZ the tech has been borne out compared to previous detectors, almost all my old patches have produced something in the way of gold when I went over them with the GPZ, some were spectacular some were average and some were disappointing but most did produce something. In the case of the coils some ground types (a lot) can actually cause the performance to drop below what’s supplied, which says the extra depth advantage is not universal, so we then come down to the main advantage of the coil options, which is size, weight and shape. The key advantage is having smaller or larger than standard with a weight reduction, so long as the ground doesn’t make things too difficult more size options are the key. Clearly the GPZ benefits from a smaller coil, the NZ guys have proven that conclusively.🤠 The problem with going smaller is it opens up the detector to a lot more surface mineral ground variation, so the ground needs to be shallower and less variable to avoid too much noise getting into the audio. If the surface minerals are too extreme the only way to compensate for them is to lift the coil which even by a few mm kills depth on the tiny stuff, so you end up with a Nill net effect or worse possibly a negative effect dependant on conditions. This is why I have always advised caution in this sphere especially when you consider the work around associated with the risks mentioned in other threads. JP Here’s a pic of a nice piece I scored under some brush and dead sticks with the 17” elliptical, the key advantage of the coil in this instance was purely down to shape.

The correct term is “Unmentionables”🤠 It‘s like a Claytons drink, the word you use when you don’t want to use the word, or going around a round-about the wrong way!.🤣

Some of that “Popcorn Chicken”🤫 gold after cleaning up.... Photos do not do them justice.

To keep on topic, here’s a pic of a good sized piece I found in variable ground in Clermont with my son Timothy. This one took a lot of effort because the ground was nasty on the coil and the sticks and grass were troublesome causing a lot of variation in the threshold. 12 grams from memory. Phrunt this one was a nice water worn slug not a corn flake nugget😜. It was a nice solid Low/High response that was repeatable at 18+ inches deep. As readers can see I have spent a lot of time using the X coils so speak from experience when trying to impart information on them. Most of this work was done when I was actively giving feedback on their behaviour and troubleshooting ways to improve them. JP

JW, I asked the question because you posted about Simons recent gold success with his X coil GPZ combo and mentioned how he had found nothing with his GPX4500 NF Evo combo which lead me to wonder how he went with this X coil on the 4500 or QED which you DID not mention. The reason I was wondering is because Reg has come onto a GPZ X coil thread talking up the X coils which is confusing considering he no longer has a GPZ. Everyone following all these posts will be wondering the exact same thing but do not want to get caught up in all the huffing and puffing. I‘m seriously not targeting you JW, but if statements are made that I disagree with, especially ones as obvious as this then I am going to question what is being said. I get questioned and kept honest all the time when I extol the virtues of something I strongly believe in especially when a new detector is released, why should you expect any different? I am not saying the X coils are bad, obviously they are working really well for you guys and good on you for sharing and having a blast, but that does not mean they will provide the same results for others everywhere else, because they don’t! In other areas you have to be selective about your choice of places to detect to take advantage of what they have on offer. They do absolutely provide better sensitivity that’s true but in some ground that extra sensitivity will work against you. JP

Doesn't Simon have an X coil for his GPX and QED? Wonder why he didn't have much luck with his? 🤔 According to Reg... Or is Regs X coil experiences with the mighty QED?🤔 I'm pretty certain Reg hasn't been near one with a GPZ!! My conversations with the manufacturer suggested the PI X coils were very similar in spec and performance to NF and Coiltek flat wounds. Can't really re-invent the wheel there.🤭 Just so readers realise, my posts on this subject have been on topic with the aim to help Mitchel in his quest for gold, based on my realistic experiences with the X coils and the GPZ 7000. I do have a lot of respect for Norvic though because he clearly has had good successes in a variety of terrain with his.😎😜😅 JP

I’ve gone back and added some eX’s for you JW.😇 I used the abbreviation UM because most forum readers are heartily sick of the X coil subject, it’s done tongue in cheek to try and brighten up the mood. 🤠 Lighten up JW, if I thought the UMX😜 coils were pathetic I wouldn’t be putting up pictures of the successes I’ve had with them. I’m looking forward to Mitchel’s latest report on how he’s been doing in his search.😀 JP🤠

Hi Dave, I have to disagree with you about the unmentionables liking a certain type of gold. The GPZ 7000 likes gold regardless of which coil is put on it. If you tried to force the GPZ to demodulate earlier than the electronics would allow the detector would simply not work at all. In my opinion there are a couple of things going on with these coils which is providing the stronger target signal, one is the spacing of the Rx relative to the ground. Obviously if you bring the coil closer to the ground it is going to produce a louder signal especially on the smaller gold. You will notice the UMX coils are a lot thinner than the OEM GPZ coils, this partly explains why the UMX’s saturate so readily, Minelab could have done this with their coils too, so this then should logically bring about the sensible question of why don’t they? Especially in the case of the GPZ19 because if the Rx shell was thinner the coil would be a heck of a lot lighter which we would all greatly appreciate😬. TBH I feel Minelab over-engineer their coils, the fact that the UMX coils are getting away with so much strongly suggests ML could be a lot more liberal with their design. Secondly, the wide Tx winding of the UMX Spiral wound coils does provide a sensitivity increase, I’m pretty certain it’s not because the winding is forcing an earlier demodulation like a flat wound mono does but it definitely does increase sensitivity. To my mind it is akin to a smaller coil having more windings to get the impedance right, the more windings a coil has the greater the sensitivity.The combination of closer to ground Rx and the spiral wind do increase target signal loudness and response but as I have said it also increases X signal and Saturation signals as well as salt signals (you should discover this in WA this year because they have had a very wet summer in places😬). So the major bug bears IMHO in the UMX sphere is poor X balance on the ferrite (although that has improved a lot over time), touch sensitivity in General Difficult (to the point of unusable for me personally in anything but football pitch smooth terrain), Saturation signals in highly magnetic soils (manageable by good coil control) and elevated salt signal when salt is present. So in the right conditions as shown in my previous pictures there is an advantage with these coils and yes they can be used in difficult terrain but the advantage tapers off in proportion to the ground type negating the advantage or even potentially hampering performance compared to OEM. JP Some more pics, numbers of pieces out of the same hole. The ground looks noisy but in actual fact I was able to use High Yield normal here, perfect conditions for these coils.

Let just put things into perspective here JW🤠, I test and use metal detectors for a living.😬 Which part of my in the affirmative public statement ”Would I have found these with the GPZ14? Yep, sure would have“ is giving you trouble?🤔 The main advantage of the 17” Elliptical coil in that particular detecting scenario was in the ground coverage aspect of its contribution, It’s got plenty of sensitivity sure but so does the GPZ14”. In a lot of the ground I work it is a real chore to use the unmentionables it truly is, otherwise I would have them on my machine permanently. If I was working WA all the time, like Davsgold does, I would be using the 17” elliptical a lot, its a good size and weight for all day prospecting covering a lot of ground with each swing and will snap onto the little surface dwellers quiet effectively so long as the ground is not too variable with high X. My early input/recommendation is the reason why the 17” elliptical was made in the first place. The unmentionables are a pretty OK coil now with limitations, I’ve put pictures up off the gold I‘ve found with them, substantial amounts of gold in reality so I ponder the reasons for the inquisition other than veiled attempts to discredit me. The subject about the coils is interesting and has created some pretty informative dialogue but the constant chest puffery every time someone says anything other than a glowing report has worn very thin. I know Steve is heartily sick of all the cranky posting and having to delete irrelevant posts that stray away from good manners, I find it annoying that good material that can benefit others in their quest for gold keeps getting culled because of the bun fights. The reality is the coils are NOT brilliant everywhere, but in the right locations with a little thought they do provide some advantages for the brave.😇 JP Some more gold pics, found with the mighty 17” round, this one WAS missed by the GPZ14 coil!😎

Sure thing, before I do what was the exact weight again?🤔🤪

Here are the results of the last time I used an unmentionable 😀 The key is to locate the right areas where an advantage is to be had. I was quite impressed with the sensitivity of the 17” elliptical and did really well with it. The key advantages here was firstly coverage, secondly sensitivity for such a large coil and lastly weight. Would I have found these with the GPZ14?🤔 Yep, sure would have. JP

Definitely wasn’t trying to have a go at JW nor offend him, my point was that even a magic wand sometimes finds itself lacking. We’ve seen the potential in the right environments but not all areas are conducive to that potential. JP

Fred my point actually was about the, to me, humorous comment that the ground Mitchel’s been going to is too thrashed. Kind of like saying “killed him dead”.😄 I think we can all say we’ve returned to patches that are thrashed and struggled to find anything even with totally new tech, as has been said the gold has to be there in the first place for it to be found. I’m sure Mitchel will persevere till he finds the right combination/location where everything lines up. Obviously the places he has visited thus far are not conducive to that yet. I too have found myself caught up in an expectation that a combination that has blown my mind in one location will do the same for everyone else everywhere else (hence the above humour😆) but sadly that just is not the case. There is enough of these unmentionables floating around now for more people to be coming forward with similar successes as has been constantly shown here, but as I have tried to show in my last post these successes do not happen everywhere, you have to be selective on the areas you spend time to take full advantage. In the case of these new coils the best locations are homogenous low X ground types, because of the extreme near to windings sensitivity of the spirals the full potential won’t be reached unless a combination of factors come into play. The types of locations to target are low mineralised bedrock areas with gold embedded within the cracks and fissures, or areas that have weathered sandstones or low mineral schists that leave a homogeneous talc like soil overlaying the gravels, this way you can keep the coil as close to the ground as possible and the saturation signal and general variability of the ground does not mask or swamp out the deeper missed targets. I did exactly that last year with my 17” round and had an absolute ball. The 17” round in the right conditions has better sensitivity to small gold and better depth than the GPZ14, put it into more variable mineralised areas and the sensitivity part evaporates very quickly but depth is still better than the GPZ14”. However if the X signal starts to become dominant and more especially if that X signal is variable in combination to strongly magnetic surface particles then the added noise negates the advantage so I then revert back to the GPZ14. So far the people claiming to have had the most success are the ones working the areas that provide the coils with the right soil types to take advantage of that success. I look forward to reading more about Mitchel’s exploits as he goes about the task of revisiting favourite old haunts. JP

At no point did I say the coils do not find gold, just that I found it amusing one of the suggested reasons for not finding any with the new beaut latest and greatest was that maybe the ground had been thrashed. That’s the whole point of the coil isn’t it? To try and replicate others successes on thrashed spots that have given up the ghost with the shoddy ML GPZ14 coil!! Isn’t that the constant mantra on the forum these days when the unmentionable coil subject comes up? BTW I was not having a go at the OP, far from it. Here are a few pics of the successes I’ve had with one of my X coils in the right environments, I didn’t keep a tally but it was well in the multiples of ounces in only a few weeks work. and here are a few pics of the gold I found the same trip with the GPZ14 because the other area I was in was not conducive to the X coil. In reply to mn90403, I was not being negative towards the effort you were putting in to get gold with your new equipment. It’s good to see enthusiasm and drive and I have to wonder why my post has been taken that way. To answer your question IMHO the GPZ 7000 with GPZ14 coil to date has been the best detector coil combination I have ever used, the coil works in ALL environments, it punches incredibly deep on large gold and has incredible sensitivity to small gold at the same time. Pic of 3 ouncer found with the standard GPZ14 coil at 2 1/2 feet in variable ground. In closing, I‘ve seen lots of posts over the years about how a coil did Bala Bala blaa, but at the end of the day it’s the electronics that it’s hooked up to that is really doing all the heavy lifting. I posted because I felt an Oxymoron was quite funny and tried to put a serious tilt to the whys and wherefores of the motivators that drive us to keep trying our luck, it was in no way meant to throw a wet blanket on a fellow prospector having a red hot go. JP

This sentence really did make me laugh and is typical of all prospectors and the way we enthuse ourselves to justify new gear or to keep returning to a favourite haunt. The whole point of the X coil is to improve your chances right? So the above comment doesn’t make sense unless the “thrashing’ of the grounds” has been performed by other people getting in there first with an X coil.🤔 Early Bird and all that!! There is no perfect fit for every gold location and ground type, what works well in one area does not necessarily mean it will work well everywhere else. Going to a smaller coil reduces outright depth, increases X signal and surface mineral susceptibility, and in a given time frame less ground is covered per swing. Now I’m not saying that is the cause of the lack of gold in this instance just that there is no perfect bandaid treatment for all scenarios. The amount of times I’ve gone back to favourite old haunts and pulled gold using the exact same gear leaving myself wondering how I missed that is countless. A lot of times a new bit of kit is the placebo that triggers the justification to give it one more try and to be honest is probably just as powerful as any add on you care to invest in. You got to be in it to win it! With the right attitude anything is possible. I’m not trying to burst anyone’s bubble about their faith in something that has brought others success, just that success has to be treated with the respect it deserves to avoid the clouding of reality if you want to maintain having an open mind. So we should target the areas where WE DO realistically have an advantage with what the new bit of kit offers, successful prospectors are always the guys who seem to be able to zero in on the highest probability locations to spend their time. JP PS this isn’t a flame post just an observation based on MANY years of making mistakes and experiencing failure.😬🙂

A few salient points based on logic and please this is not a flame post before anyone gets all bent out of shape. Firstly there are major differences between Monoloop coils and DOD coils, monos are way more sensitive to variations in ground signal, salt signal and saturation signal however in the case of the SDC the narrow band width timings it uses are specifically designed to provide max sensitivity to shallow fast time constant nuggets but at the cost of overall depth, the narrow timings design is why the SDC does so well in salty, highly variable ground types. On a direct comparison in Fine Gold on an in-situ 1/2 gram nugget at 9 inches in noisy variable ground the GPX 5000 walked all over the SDC for strength of target signal (SDC wouldn’t respond until 4 inches of packed soil was excavated), whereas on tiny little surface nuggets especially in noisy ground the SDC reigns supreme. Secondly the 8” coil on the SDC also helps it immensely in salty ground, the smaller the coil the better it works in a salty environment, a small coil also helps with EMI but as has been noted the SDC is still pretty twitchy around EMI sources. For GPZ there is a strong correlation between different coils and control box combinations, so if you swap coils and control boxes the GB and X balance will be quite a bit different from one unit to the next, however once calibrations are performed there is very little difference between units. This means that not all electronics are exactly the same nor are all coils the same, however the controlling software that drives them is assuming the coil being attached is within reasonable range of tolerances required. Not being able to correctly calibrate any of these factors is not good in my opinion. A lot of the discussions around coils for the GPZ is mainly based on size configurations, obviously a smaller coil is going to result in less EMI, less Salt signal and more sensitivity, these reductions will aid somewhat in other areas of concern with regards to X balance and explains the users who’s results reflect environments that are conducive to not needing to calibrate. My feeling is operators should look on these options as being like the old days of Normal timings on the GP series when the Smooth class of “ground noise and hot rock ignoring“ timings became available. In those days noisy ground required the use of a DD coil, quieter more homogeneous soils allowed the use of Monoloop coils, those of us who had access to quieter ground types could enjoy the benefits of what a monoloop had to offer or developed skills to be able to listen through the ground clutter for the deeper penetration abilities of a monoloop.

I work under similar power lines like those being shown all the time with the GPZ14 coil, thats were the GPZ is a major improvement over previous GPX machines. I can even turn the GPZ on in our shop and detect a 0.05 gram piece during assembly and training with our customers, the key is to keep the coil as flat as possible relative to the EMI source. High Yield is less susceptible to EMI than General and Xtra Deep.

Something to consider with regards to water proofing, cutting the coil lead and adding a new connector might then allow moisture to ingress the coil via the lead (especially the leads cut before the curls), the GPZ14 coil is over moulded both ends as part of the waterproofing of the assembly, dependant on where the cut was made could be the reason for the OP’s fail. JP

The science behind the GPZ requires the detector to be calibrated to the X signal, Minelab have given operators a choice, they can use Auto and let the detector control the calibration with or without the Ferrite (Recommenced if you do not want to use the Ferrite or have lost your Ferrite) or they can take control and calibrate the detector themselves or they can just go detecting and use whatever mode they prefer and forget about the Ferrite and X calibration altogether, this also includes opting out of the tech and using something else. (The last option should theoretically save some from having to post ‘late at night quips’)😜 BTW flat wound coil users on GPX, when you couple your coil to the ground, guess what that target like noise mostly is? It’s mostly X signal due to the forced early demod!

High Yield Normal is the most sensitive mode on the GPZ to the Ferrite, in other words that mode will make the loudest Ferrite response over any other. In some instances if the G balance is way out it is best to pump the coil first to get the G balance correct before introducing the Ferrite, the reason you do this is to avoid the G balance trying to also balance out the Ferrite signal at the same time it has to get rid of a lot of G signal. High Yield also saturates the most (when you couple the coil to the ground and a signal is heard as you briskly pull the coil away (de-couple), High Yield is also the most sensitive mode to Salt signals (bring coil from ground height straight up to above your head and listen for a moaning sound as the coil moves through from knee height to above your waist, the stronger the signal the greater the amount of salt present). So best Ferrite balance practice using High Yield Normal is: Check for EMI and perform a Manual or Auto Tune till threshold is a smooth and stable as possible. Bring coil to ground and pump coil till the GB is Quiet (Make sure Semi-Auto Mode is selected). Place Ferrite on ground where there are no target signals, preferably non-saturable non-salty ground. With Quick-Trak depressed bring coil in over Ferrite at front of coil where the word Minelab is on Blue sticker. Move coil slightly slower than brisk left and right over Ferrite till there is no noise then release QT button. Pump coil to one side, you can also sweep the coil left and right away from the Ferrite to average the GB (I personally pump the coil up and down and occasionally combine some sideways sweep if the ground is saturable). Bring coil back in over the Ferrite and check for any residual signal, if there is repeat Quick-Trak Ferrite Balance till there is no signal with GB correct waving over the Ferrite (do not scrub the Ferrite because there will usually be a bit of residual signal left over (not loud). If this method still results in a dominant signal off the Ferrite then potentially you have a faulty coil, try using the Reset-All method holding down the Power button at switch on re-do your settings and repeat above. Re-set all is a HARD re-set and re-sets the GB and Ferrite balance and all other global settings to factory settings.