Condor

I went back out this morning to the first area that has far less trash to work on this boot thing. I extended the detector shaft all the way out and made an effort to swing out away from my boots. I fashioned a hipstick out of a fiberglass tent pole to help transfer the weight of the coil onto the belt of my pack. It worked pretty good as long as I was going slow. Anytime I picked up the pace bypassing obstacles and such that right boot was giving me a beep. It's workable, I'm really liking the support and stiffer sole for walking in rough terrain. I did manage to find this fellow. Frankly any detector would have found this. I think it got washed out of the bank and settled in the upper layer of gravel after the last storm.

No, the 15 gram specimen at 14".

Thanks Fred, I didn't think about the arch. I just ran the pinpointer of them, yep they're metal in there. No wonder they were sounding off so much. Shoot, I like these boots.

Just thinking about the possibilities, some assumptions are necessary to further the thought. Let's assume the Deus introduces the 5X9 coil as expected. We know the Deus is unique in that the coil is the detector, no control box mounted on the shaft. We know the audio and control functions are wireless and transmitted to a very small pocket sized controller or wireless headphones. The Deus seems to be very accurate on Ferrous, at what depth I can't be sure. So, other than something to function as a handle, the coil could be carried in a pouch or belt holster, brought out and switched on as needed to check the dig hole for ferrous targets and pinpoint non-ferrous. The existing 8" round coil might be a little too cumbersome for this concept, but the 5X9 would be a reasonable fit. I know there have been a few people who have fashioned the same concept with the Fisher Gold Bug machines with varying degrees of success. They still have to deal with a wired control box. I ran the Deus side by side with the GPZ the other day. All I needed was about 10 ft of separation to avoid interference between them. The Z reacted if you pointed the Deus coil at it, but otherwise they played well together, both machines switched on at the same time. Your thoughts?

I got out for a little over an hr this morning. Went to an old area that had produced in the past, but I forgot about how much trash was there and how hot the ground was. Guys familiar with the Yuma area know this as the Laguna's behind Adair Park. Red clay and millions of bullets and bullet fragments. I ignored hundreds of shallow surface targets and concentrated on finding a deep target or something in the side of erosion cut banks. Insanely Hot does not serve you well in these conditions. I've been breaking in a new pair of leather hiking boots and the metal eyelets are a real problem running Insanely Hot settings. No steel toe, just leather reinforcement. I've worn no metal lightweight hiking boots of every brand most of my detecting life, but they were leaving me wanting. I was wearing out at least 2 pairs a year and the rubber soles were not up to the task of extreme cactus or kicking footholds into steep hillsides. Boot scraping the ground for hot rocks and trying to clean up an iffy target signal was killing those lightweight rubber soles. I've got a half dozen pairs in the garage with a delaminated sole on the left boot from me scraping ground signals. So, I bought quality leather hiking boots with firm Vibram soles and so far I'm really happy with the comfort, support and apparent durability. However, I really have to change up my coil swing style when running Insanely Hot. I'm only 5'7" and extended the coil shaft as far as it would go for some relief. Do they make a shaft extension, for the detector I mean? I can't imagine what havoc the new 19" coil will bring. The nugget came out of a cut bank, screaming at about 4 inches.

I often use low Smoothing to even out some of the jitteryness of the threshold. I haven't really tried the High Smoothing. JP's early advice on avoiding the Smoothing has stuck with me. I remember Lunk reporting he has had good success applying High Smoothing in certain situations.

Hey Paul, With your surgery back repairs I think there would be a place for you. Someone I might be able to outrun if that mountain lion gets after us. Seriously though, come join us anytime. We have a good group in the winter down here in Yuma by the Sea.

Hey Brett, You wouldn't want to be here now. These daytime temps are killing me and I grew up here. San Diego weather spoiled me. Looking forward to getting together this winter. Bring that passport and your big-boy courage and head down to Baja with us.

Steve H. coined the phrase last year. Basically, Sens at 20, Smoothing off, HY, Normal. Sometimes I run the threshold up in the low 30's but it's a noisy bugger. My last 2 outings I have been running threshold at 5 and up the volume. Make sure you lower the Volume limiter or you'll blow your ears out on trash. You have to go really slow because the machine is still pretty noisy. If you have hot ground or a lot of hot rocks it will drive you crazy. It's not for everyone and I use it about 70 percent of the time.

We had another cloudy morning in Yuma so I got out the 7k and went out to the zone I had found the better class of nuggets this spring. Temps were in the low 90's with about 60 percent humidity so I was forced to slow way down which obviously paid off. I ran the 7k maxed out with my earphones plugged in and the threshold barely audible. I had the luxury of knowing the area had gold, very little trash and very few hotrocks. I was swinging low and slow, overlapping the swings by half. I investigated any disturbance that made the threshold go steady from its warble. The big specimen was out of the main wash up on a bench and just barely registered a disturbance in the threshold. I kicked out some of the bigger rocks and still barely got a warble. So I dug off 2 inches about a foot square area and the tone was definite. The nugget was ultimately down about 14 inches on a layer of old grey clay. It makes your heart beat a little faster when you dig down and see that clay layer, not much trash makes it down that far. I seriously doubt I would have heard that nugget in my normal prospecting mode relying solely on the external speaker. Crappy weather has made me slow down and be satisfied with covering less ground thoroughly. The second nugget was up in the side bank of a cut in the main wash. With maxed out Insanely Hot settings a nugget that small screams at 6 inches.

Hey Beatup, These came from within 30 yds of where we parked the trucks when we met up for the first time last year. I knew it was a hammered area, but looking to find something without busting my butt. It's a different kind of gold hunting, just looking for a dink or two.

I woke up to a fierce thunderstorm, rained for about 30 minutes at my house, so I decided to take advantage of the cloud cover and swing the old 7000. A balmy 84 degrees with a decent breeze. The 7000 hasn't been fired up for about 6 weeks and I was surprised at all the noise she makes in the Insanely Hot settings. I eventually took the threshold way down so that I could tolerate the reorientation. I knew it was too hot and humid to do any real prospecting so I concentrated in an area that produced a bunch of small stuff this past winter. I maxed out the settings and plugged in my earphones, swinging low and slow, just looking for a repeatable threshold break. I found the first one about 20 ft from the truck. After I concluded that it wasn't surface trash I went back to the truck and got out the XP Deus to see how it would do in hot ground on an undug target. I used the Goldfield program with no discrimination. The Deus couldn't find the target at about 4 inches deep. The 7000 was quite definite on the target, so much so that I thought it was small iron trash. I kept digging and scraping and running the Deus over the hole, still nothing. I dug out about 6 inches and ran the 7000 over it, the target was out, so I went back to the Deus. It sounded off on the nugget in the pile, but needed a pretty brisk sweep speed to get there. The reactivity was at 2. No low and slow for something this small. The 2nd nugget was the smallest and maybe 2 inches down in an old Dozer furrow. Again the 7000 signal was quite definite, but the Deus got nothing on the undug target. I dug out the signal and the Deus hit on a Hot Rock in the pile, but had real trouble hitting on that tiny nugget. I'll remain cautiously optimistic that the alleged new coil option will improve the Deus performance on small gold. In the meantime, I'm going to keep playing with the Deus and learning coin/relic hunting. I've cleared my home schedule and going to head North next week. I hope to be out to N. Nevada by the 2nd week of August. I've got to get out of this ferocious sun and heat in Sunny Yuma. Maybe I'll see some of you boys out there.

I love that SDC 2300 for all around portability and immunity in hot ground. One of the hotspots of blowout quartz I found with the 7000 was littered with volcanic hotrocks. I took out maybe a dozen small nuggets with the 7000 then followed it up with the 2300. I found another 7 nuggets generally nestled up to those nasty hotrocks. If I was as young and strong as Steve H., I would probably drag all those hot rocks out of there, rake it down and start over again. Right now its not but about 115 degrees out there, maybe next winter. None of those nuggets was exceptional depth, the 2300 would have got them all if it was the first detector over it. Anyone buying a first gold detector should give the 2300 a serious look.

Hey Steve, An excellent summary of VLF detectors that have the cross over potential for us gold prospectors. Last year while in Baja I encountered a couple areas the old timers had drywashed and scattered a ton of rusted cans and nails. There were literally hundreds of dig holes by more modern prospectors with some element of discrimination because there were still thousands of undug targets. The Zed was useless in that environment although I tried to cherry pick a few sweet rounded tones to dig. I didn't find anything, but one of the guys I was with dug about 50 targets and got a couple nice 1 gram nuggets. If I could cut that ratio of junk to gold by half it might be worth it. I'm not looking to get rich, just get a little more enjoyment out of the hobby and maybe make expenses.

Hey Fred, I worked right under the power lines, some interference but not bad. I'm studying the Sabisch book to get a better handle on tone discrimination rather than conventional discrim. I wasn't that impressed with the stock GoldField Program. The Deus will never replace my Zed, but I'd like to open up the possibilities some. I may head north next week and spend the worst of Yuma weather in the CA high country or N. NV.

Too bad it wasn't General Hercules who found that one. He could make one hell of a video digging up that bad boy. He can use the F-word so much it loses its shock value.

I've been detecting for gold for over 20 yrs and never had much interest in the coin and relic side of detecting, but I was getting bored in sunny/hot Yuma. I got interested in the XP Deus because of its potential for gold prospecting in heavy trash and started my online research. Naturally, I experienced a good deal of confirmation bias, finding all good reasons to get a new Deus and ignoring all the downsides. I'm really betting on the come with the alleged new coil with higher gold frequencies. Nevertheless, I decided to buy one and get started learning a different side of detecting. Many thanks to Rob Allison at Rob's Detectors for helpful advice and putting together a nice package deal with the Garret Carrot pinpointer. It's only 87 degrees here at sunup so gold prospecting was going to have to be short and sweet. Yesterday I took the Deus out to the PotHoles area where I met Fred this past winter. We had detected near his camping spot and found way too much trash, but a few small nuggets. I brought along a .5 gram and a 1gram nugget for testing. I detected for less than an hr before it got too hot and found no gold. I practiced with my test nuggets in some of the hotter ground and in with the trash. The Deus detected both nuggets with relative ease, the .5 gram at about 4 inches in hot ground. I would not say that it was any better on the .5 gram than the $499.00 Gold Bug, but there are some nifty things you can do by adding different tones to ferrous targets without adding depth killing discrimination. I'm still learning this process, but I'm pretty sure it will have its place in some gold areas littered with iron trash. This morning I decided to try coin/jewelry hunting in the park. Yikes, I was not prepared for cacophony of noises from the trash in parks. After a dozen flip tabs and bottle caps I decided I better learn this detector elsewhere without making a mess of the grass. I understand the whole "plug" thing and the pinpointer helps, but I was not too confident that someone might not bitch about my excavations. So then I noticed that there were 5 new volleyball courts with nice washed river sand footing. I started thinking about Steve's micro-jewelry concept and decided that was the place to learn this new detector. I could dig every target and not make a big mess. I detected the first court and found a few zinc pennies then played around with the detector settings. Since the ground was relatively clean, I ran the stock "Fast" program, but took the discrimination down to 0 and switched the tones to "Full Tones". You won't miss much in clean ground with that program. The photo shows my success in less than 2 hrs of hunting. A couple pieces of micro-jewelry. The one piece has 2 sparkly stones, doubtful they are diamonds, but I'm on the right track. Now, normally I doubt you would see me bend down to collect a zinc penny in plain sight, but with detecting it becomes part of the chase. So I collected a bunch of zinc pennies, shouldn't take me more than 3 yrs to pay off the detector as this rate.

I trolled around some of the other relic and coin hunter forums and found a pretty good post from someone reportedly in the know though he was deliberately vague. The V4 update and coil will allegedly be released in September '16. I'm seriously considering one to start park hunting in the shade since it's 108 in sunny Yuma. My real purpose is betting on the come with a lightweight, wireless system that can detect gold in the trash. I keep thinking about a couple places we hit in Baja where the old timers camped on the diggings leaving behind the usual assortment of iron trash with small shallow gold.

I remember a thread where Steve H. was reconsidering the Deus in light of a yet to be released new coil option that raised the possibility of its use as a VLF gold detector for high trash areas. I searched the web and everything pointed to a summer '16 release, all silent since then. Just wondering if there are any new hot rumors out there, maybe Nevada Chris can give some insight.

Hey Mitchel, This area is about 5 miles as the crow flies from where we were detecting last time you were here. Easy drive with your rig, approaching from the Gila Valley/Mittry Lake road. Probably have to wait till winter though, too friggin hot, even for me.

I had some get after me this winter. There was no more than a dozen bees drinking water at the edge of a small natural pool. They were not flying or swarming at all and I tried to step past them to get up a slickrock slide area. Maybe I stepped on one by accident and he yelled for help because they started lifting off the waterhole and hitting the backs of my legs. Before I could get away from them I got stung 3 or 4 times on the calves. I was wearing shorts naturally. I suffer my share of allergies, but the bees don't seem to bother me.

Summer has arrived here in Sunny Yuma by the Sea. Predicting 110 by next weekend. I got out at sunup this morning in the same spot from the other day. I found these two in a small side gully. Hiking back to my truck I saw a nesting nighthawk and took a quick photo of her eggs. Wide open terrain, two eggs in the shade of a greasewood bush. She tried to lure me away with the old wing dragging trick.

Hey Brett, I haven't been back there. I'd need someone who runs a lot slower than me to tag along just in case. I'll leave it for you next winter. Dennis did find an 11 gram chunk downstream from that spot. The nugget was tucked into the bedrock back in the sidewall of the wash where it turns to red dirt. Maybe we get a good monsoon season before you get here.

News article from Phoenix yesterday has it that a 20 yr old tourist hiker got killed by a swarm of bees in a desert park. Bees were all over the guy when the fireman tried to drag him away and the swarm continued to chase the rescuers. This past winter I was out with Beatup and he chose to abandon a promising target because he heard then saw a bee hive in a rock crevice here in Yuma. Grim business, you just never know.

I went back out this morning and changed up my settings some. I added some low smoothing and switched from Normal to General, maxed out Sens. The heavier nugget was in the side of the wash. I missed it yesterday because the coil needed to be turned on its edge to shoot sideways not up and down. I could never have done that with the GPX series because of nearby powerlines and military jet traffic. That kind of EMI would have overloaded the audio on GPX. The second biggest nugget I didn't miss yesterday, I just chose not to dig it like a idiot. It was up in the roots of a bush covered in blow out gravel from a shallow waterfall. I heard it clearly yesterday but thought it was trash from the blow out and hung up in the bush. Naturally that was before I had found the bigger gold so I was still in prospect mode and not in dig it all mode. I've only been doing this for 20 yrs, one of these days I'll learn to be a little more proficient.