Condor

I packed up the girlfriend, 5th wheel, RZR and 2 GoldenDoodles and GPZ 7000 for a long weekend of detecting with another Forum member.  We've been exploring a gold area off the beaten path for several weeks, finding the odd sub-gram pieces here and there.  The area has very little placer history, mostly load gold from back in the 30's.  After studying the maps we were determined to keep pushing west, hitting as many little feeder gulches as possible hoping to find a hot spot.

Day 1:  I found 2 small pieces after a lot of walking.  Fellow Forum member found nothing but skunk.

Day 2:  We decided to abandon our original plan and go back to an area near an old lode gold mine.  I found the skunk, friend found 2 pieces for about 1 gram total.

Day 3:  Back to the plan, keep pushing west through a series of small gullies.  I hit an area of shallow bedrock for 6 small nuggets.  I get back to the RZR and my friend has that grin and tells me he thinks he found an area worth exploring.  He then pops a 3/4 oz nugget in my hand.  He says "oh, I also found these in the same area, 5.5 grams of chunky nuggets.   Like a lot of fellow prospectors, I'm just as happy when someone, anyone finds some decent gold on a joint excursion.  Sweet, what a day.  He points out the landmarks and gives me a general description of the area because he has to return home to grade college exams.  

Day 4:  I head back out to the area he described.  I spent close to 2 hrs scouting and had about given up finding the zone he described when I saw a fresh dig.  I worked up the gully and saw several more fresh digs, being that we are the only prospectors within 50 miles, I start the search in earnest.  I'm confident he has covered the gully, so I start detecting the flanks and hillside.  I immediately find the 2 small pieces in the photo.  Small in this context is relative to the big nugget next to them, they are by no means small considering my past month of detecting finds.   I expanded out from there and get a faint whisper of a target in the flats between 2 gullies.  I dig for a solid 20 minutes in hardpacked gravel and caliche.  I had to summon a couple friends nearby to come help.  We took turns digging, making sure not to hit the nugget.  We busted out 2 big rocks cemented in the caliche and finally the target was screaming at sensitivity of 1.  Down to a dental pick and a pinpointer to pick around in the caliche and not damage the nugget.  Probably close to 45 minutes and a hole about 2ft wide and 18 inches down before Eureka.  There she is.  

Days/weekends like this are pretty rare these days.  We need one every now and then to keep the fire going and keep pushing that coil.  

Based on Jasong's report that a GPX 6000 was on display in Quartzsite, Beatup and I drove up there this morning from sunny Yuma.  We did indeed see and touch the machine.  There will apparently be other opportunities in the near future including the Quartzite gold show in Feb.  Everything is up in the air, so don't count on anything I say as gospel as far as a schedule.  Nothing is firm, make your own plans accordingly.  The US release is still uncertain but it was suggested perhaps late spring or early summer.  I think mid Feb might be overly optimistic.  

However; we saw and ran the machine albeit in the gravel parking lot of the RV show.  Only the DD coil could be run because of the EMI.  As of now, the US sales will include the DD coil and an 11" mono coil.  There will be a 17" Mono available as an accessory for the machine, but it's US availability upon release of the machine is still in question.  The African market has a corner on the market at this point.

My observations are this:  As stated elsewhere, the machine is an ergonomic dream.  Well balanced when fully extended with really nice carbon fiber shafts.  The battery pack is detachable and has heavy duty rubber coating on the bottom to absorb shock plus the machine balances perfectly upright when setting it down to dig.  The Minelab spiel is no different than the star chart shown previously, so I can't really comment on the accuracy of those claims.   

We ran the machine in the DD mode to eliminate EMI.  We detected  .1 and a .2 gram nuggets in the parking lot at a height of about 4 inches.  All of that is meaningless as far as it's actual performance in real world conditions, especially as it pertains to the Mono coil.  This sneak preview was never intended as actual testing and it started raining while we were there.

From my perspective, I would seriously consider a trade down from the GPZ7000 purely from the ergonomics and portability.  I would hesitate if the 17" Mono was not immediately available.   I'll hit 67 yrs old this summer and just don't get up and down the rough terrain as well, especially with the weight and balance of the GPZ hanging off my shoulder.  

That's about all I can tell you from a 30 minute preview in a gravel parking lot.  

I got out for a couple hrs yesterday with forum member Beatup's brother.  It's summer in Sunny Yuma, approaching 100 degrees around 9:00am so we started right at sunup.  We were 30 minutes into a desert wash that had produced good gold for him this past winter.  We split up at the first junction of washes I went left, he went right.  I had taken about 10 steps and froze mid-stride as an 18" DiamondBack rattler slithered through my legs from behind me.  He paid me no mind, and gathered himself up under a jumble of rocks 10 ft away.  He never rattled, hissed or made any aggressive motion, early morning temps around 70 degrees.  All I can figure is he was under a small boulder and as I passed he decided we were heading in the same direction, the gravel wash being his own territory.  The fact that he was decidedly moving on his way and didn't stop and rattle probably saved me a pair of underwear.   As dear old Fred Mason would say, "don't kill them, you're the trespasser" and I rarely do.  I have snake chaps, but generally have excuses not to wear them, oh well.  

The good news, I found a 1.5 gram piece and brother of Beatup found a whopping 5 grammer.  As old Sgt Esterhaus on Hill Street Blues used to say "remember, let's be careful out there".  

I was sitting out the "Rona" virus and hunkered down near Quartzsite in my toy hauler trailer earlier in the month.  I wasn't really hitting the detecting very hard, mostly exploring an area unfamiliar to me.  I found a couple small bits, ran into a "tiger" rattlesnake (very unique coloration) and a Gila Monster during my travels.  I've hunted the desert southwest most of my life and only seen 3 Gila Monsters, ever.  Nasty acting creature, hissing and making half hearted charges.  Black mouth and flicking tongue are pretty convincing to keep your social distance.  Then disaster with the Rokon and a reminder of the laws of gravity and old age.  The culprit, a steep rutted road with a big rock on a banked turn.  I considered changing to a lower gear for engine braking, but nah, I can do this in high gear.  About halfway down I was reminded of that physics thing, something about "objects in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an opposing motion".  The steep downhill put me in motion, unable to make the banked turn, the rock, it turns out is an opposing motion.  I landed hard on my left side, my left leg under the 250 lb Rokon with a perfect sized rut to bang center of my thigh.  Man that hurt, I'm going on 3 weeks now still hobbling around on a sore leg.  As most of you know from my other Misadventures, this isn't my first crash so the die was cast.  

My girlfriend had been interested in getting a RZR so she could accompany me on my explorations and we had looked a couple used ones.  When she saw my injuries this time, that clinched it.  Even my 27 yr old son was making that clucking sound and head shaking.  'You're going to really get hurt one of these days, Dad'!  So,  we got serious and searched Craiglist in both AZ and S.CA.  We found a nice, lightly used RZR 900 2 seater, with all the stuff, doors, roof rack, bead lock wheels and tires etc.  More than I wanted to spend, but considering I might get a few more good years out of this 65 yr old body, probably well worth it.  

So, if any of you young bucks are interested in my Rokon, it's for sale.  I'll post it over on the For Sale section for a full description.

I've been getting out for a few hrs 3 or 4 days a week down here in Sunny Yuma, plus a weekend trip to Quartzsite.  My thanks to forum member Will for showing me a new area in the Q where I found the 2 biggest nuggets.  The 17" round X Coil on the GPZ has been my go to set up.  I really like the ergonomics of the 17x12 coil, but the 17" round has really been finding some tiny gold at depth. I lost a few weeks of detecting after my GPZ started losing audio after a few hrs of detecting.  I sent it in to the Detector Doctor and they couldn't duplicate my issue, since then its running fine.  

I've been detecting the same areas here in Yuma for the past 10 years with the old GPX 4000, the SDC and now the GPZ.  Nuggets are getting pretty hard to find in these hammered areas so I really look for the new edge in detecting.  I'm fond of the Sp01 booster connected directly to the Z then connected to quality earbuds at the booster.  I took some of JP's advice on lowering the volume of the Z, then using the booster to raise it at the earbuds.  What I understood to be JP saying was a high volume on the Z is also amplifying surface mineralization,  creating clutter noise and concealing deep targets.  I'm no expert, but it sounds reasonable so I'm going with it.  I'm thinking the X-Coil  and Sp01 are giving me a new edge on missed gold, maybe.  The concept, nevertheless, keeps me out there plugging away and trying to put that coil over some yellow stuff.  

I took a separate picture of the tiny gold.  None of them will register individually on my cheapo scale, so I had to group them to get a weight.  Some of these tiny nuggets have come at incredible depths, at least considering their overall weight and audible response with such a large coil.  Probably 3 to 4 inches for most of them.  The 17" round seems to be hottest right between the center windings at about 2 inches off the edge.  Sometimes a side to side sweep on tiny gold loses the signal.  Pushing the coil and center windings at the signal brings them up smartly.  

Mitchel just seems to be having a run of bad luck on gold with his X Coil, mine has exceeded my expectations especially on really small gold.  

I've been a little hobbled with the sore ribs from my misadventure in Baja.  I hate being cooped up, so I was out poking around in the placer fields of Yuma despite really bruised ribs from my crash in Baja.  Anyone my age has broken ribs in their misspent youth, but at 65 yrs old, they mend much more slowly.  Nevertheless, I get bored and have to be outdoors.  We had some rain in Sunny Yuma last week and in some locations in the desert canyon washes ran a lot of water.  I went out exploring with the GPZ 7000 and the 17x12 X-Coil.  I wasn't really interested in trying to dig deep targets with my bummed up ribs, so I concentrated on newly exposed desert wash walls. I passed on a ton of probable trash targets not wanting to dig deep trash that would trigger muscle spasms and shorten my day.  Ultimately, I marked some good sounding targets for later examination and dug a few that showed shallow hardpack.  Towards the end of my morning I waved the coil over some bench gravels with old drywash fine tailings.  I got such a clear signal that I knew if it was trash, at least it was very shallow.   I pushed the gravels around with my boot and the target moved proving that it was indeed very shallow.  I got out my plasitc scoop and started sorting out the likely target.  On the second scoop I get a booming tone that normally indicates old copper scraps or pieces of copper wire.  I was amazed to see this gold nugget in my scoop.  This nugget doesn't register on my El Cheepo Weed Scale, but even the best scale might find this nuggets weighs in at a few grains.   I believe that the toe of the  17x12  X-Coil which measures at about 8 inches in the sweetspot is far hotter than the Minelab 14" standard coil.  I didn't mention that I used the 17x12 exclusively in Baja, and was going over ground I covered last year with the standard Minelab coil.  I found at least 8 gold nuggets that I missed last year. Nevertheless, feast your eyes on this magnificent gold nugget the X-Coil hit with a hard tone.  I have no affiliation with X-Coil, its manufacturer or distributor. 

Dennis and I took a quick trip down to Baja MX for some detecting.  No problems crossing the border at Algodones and no hassles at the military checkpoints.  Day 1 is really just a travel day.  A lot of Baja Highway 5 is still under construction from San Felipe south.  The road got washed out from a storm 2 years ago and the repairs are slow going.  Day 2 we got a good start taking my Rokon and Dennis's Yamaha Fat Tire bike about 3 miles up some tricky technical ground of gravel and calcrete bedrock.  From there it's another 1.5 mile hike to some of the old placer workings.  These placers have been worked off and on for over 100 years so all the easy stuff has been drywashed and detected.  I concentrated on 100 yards of old black schist bedrock.  The nuggets originally worked down into small cracks and got filled up and over by years of weathering.  All of these nuggets had to be chipped out of the bedrock no more than 3 inches deep.  The bedrock is tricky because it has varying levels of mineralization and hot zones that hide the target signals.  I found that by running max Sensitivity and low threshold with the Patch Locate feature I could pick out faint whispers from the background of hot ground.   I picked up probably 10 or 12 nuggets the first day.

Day 3 was a lost day.  I got halfway up the wash when my back tire went flat.  Normally, we carry everything to fix flats, but this one had "chingered" the valve stem.  I had to disconnect the rear chain drive and limp it back to camp on the front drive.  I did a fair amount of walking and pushing through the steep rocky areas. Back at camp I pulled the wheel and drove 70 miles back to San Felipe for repairs.  20 minutes work and $10.00 got it going again.  My day was lost so I drank beer and had an early dinner.

Day 4 I intended to explore a zone about 5 miles from the end of the trail for the Rokon.  I had gotten close last year and although I didn't find any gold, there was a fair amount of old iron trash.  I thought that I just hadn't walked quite far enough to find some virgin ground.  My ideas were dampened a bit on the way up.  I discovered that my newly repaired rear tire couldn't handle the low tire pressure and kept breaking the bead.  We used the Mexican method of setting the bead by pouring some gas inside the tire and hitting it with a match.  Whooomph, bead set, but I still had to run 20lbs of air pressure to keep the bead from breaking down again.  I normally run about 4lbs of air in the Rokon tires since there are no shock absorbers as we know them.  That much tire pressure was making the ride hard as a rock and I hit a rough patch that bounced me high and hard enough that I came unhorsed, landing my ribs on the handlebar.  Ouch is an understatement.  I've got a bruise the size of a softball over 3 of my left ribs.  I gutted it out and still explored the new zone for no joy.  I found 4 small ones on my way back in the bedrock I had worked the day before.  Swinging that pick to break open the bedrock was a new experience with those banged up ribs. 

Day 5 was the travel day home.  You just never know how long the wait line at the border crossing will be.  Sometimes as much as 2 hrs, this time about 45 minutes. 

It's always a good trip when you can walk away from it.  Minor injuries and break downs are all part of the journey.  I'll be ready to do it all again in a week or 2, when these ribs quit hurting. 

Thanks to Davesgold and the X-Coil manufacturer, I got a gifted 17x12 Spiral Wound coil. The manufacturer took notice of my multitude of problems with the connector modification and sent me a new coil from Russia.  Bravo Zulu X-Coil for prospector support.  The weather has improved here in Sunny Yuma so I replaced the 17" round with the new coil and took it for a spin.  I balanced it over the ferrite with no problems and I experienced no bump sensitivity. 

The first thing I noticed is how well the coil balances on my modified hip stick rig.  I do a lot of detecting in the walls of desert washes, putting the coil on its side.  The 7000 tends to get the "wee waas" if you don't keep them flat, but this coil seemed to really tone it down and it balanced really nice for less strain on my arm and shoulder.  On relatively flat ground I think I could swing this coil all day for less wear and tear on my 65 yr old frame.  I ultimately didn't find anything in the walls, but I hit some old hillside drywash tailings and popped these 3 nuggets.  All were at moderate depths but I was amazed at some of the deep iron bits I found.  Without some side by side target comparisons I can't say that my depth is improved, but I'm getting a lot better ground coverage and I can poke it in between rocks and obstructions.  Even if this coil is no better than the original Minelab 14", it's a lot more versatile.   This will be my go to coil from here on.  I'll stick the 17" round on over worked out patches, but this is my new secret weapon.

Again, many thanks to Davesgold and X-Coil

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