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Back around 2008 I was involved with the use of the White's TDI in a very big way at my mine at Moore Creek, Alaska. I made various posts at locations around the internet on our success with the TDI but never did get around to collecting it all together in one place. Until now. I just made a belated entry on Steve Mining Journal titled White's TDI at Moore Creek, Alaska - Summer 2008. Lots of gold nugget stories and photos there - check it out. Also added a page about the TDI itself I am still working on but a ton of information there at White's PulseScan TDI Metal Detector already so went ahead and posted it. 0.31 ounce Gold Specimen found with White's TDI

Hi steve, just thought I would drop a line on testing tdi at winnemucca 3 days. Ended up pretty good. walked a lot of the desert, found a lot of lead. Then I found a nice little area that has been over by numerous detectors before. The ground was to hot down there to run with geb off, so ran with it on Gain around 9 ground balance 9 to9.5 pulse 10 most of the time, low conductivity a little noisy but I could work with it fine.i havent weighed any thing yet nice heavy pieces though. Area I found I would test tdi against gb and there was two pieces tdi could not see at all. These were all flat pieces of vein very thin. Anyway was great weather after snow first morning, overall pretty pleased with first pi machine, especially knowing mineabs and everything else has electrified the ground here before me.

Recently got this tdi, have studied over and over everything I could get my hands on to gain a little knowlege of this PI. I have only hunted 3 times so far(6hrs.maybe) what a cool, machine never been around them but wanted to try one. First time out was overwelming, almost, wrote everythig down I did. 2nd. Time out was getting to understand it now, alot of experimenting found 8 coins and a lot of you name it.running in all full gain pulse 10 in this ground gb about 8. Wasnt sure if I had brought a long enough shovel for it's capability, wished I had a tape I dug 2 beer cans burried easily24 inches first 6 or 8 inches was dirt and rock then pure wet sand.It would have hit these even deeper, you guys that run these already now that. Trying to teach myself the different variations of targets, gonna take time for sure. Have a few questions I hope to get some answers to. By the way I ran 2 coils experimenting.(7.5-12") I did some air tests with some nuggets I have found with gb2, apparently the current doesnt hold well on porres nuggets under 6 grams, maybe my settings, but I tried with it set full power and didnt get much response on the porres, I think I read it cant hold current very well on targets like these, is that true and to what extent? Havent got to do any under ground testing yet ground still muddy and frozen. Thanks for any input here rick I want to take this to the desert shortly, now wondering if it will still go very deep on these big nuggets that could be over half ounce we now there are more here, just want some input on this dellima. just hoped it would go deeper than gb2 that have found several BIGnuggets here.

Last Saturday I decided to get out and enjoy the unusual, for January, weather here in N. Calif. I met my partner Reno Jim and headed for a spot we've hunted for years. We didn't expect to find anything, maybe a crumb that had been overlooked in all the trash. It was just a good day to get some exercise after the holidays. While Jim worked the banks digging trash, I started up a dry creek bed rechecking exposed bedrock I'd already hunted before. I came to a spot where a 10 ft section of new bedrock has been exposed. It looked like a gully washer had come through and blown off the overburden. It was just above a spot I had done well at in years past. I wasn't expecting anything as I had seen fresh dig holes further down stream. Within a foot of hitting the new bedrock I got a good signal which I knew for sure was a bullet. I scraped a bit of dirt off and the signal was gone. Checking the dirt, there it was, right on top, a nice little 1.5 dwter. Wow, that was easy. I wonder how that got missed. I moved another foot up stream, and bang, another signal. Again, I was sure it was trash, it was so big and loud. This one I checked with the pulse delay to see if it went away like a nail, but it was still there, so again, thinking it's a bullet, I scraped off the dirt and got the signal in the cup. It couldn't be a nugget, that first one was a fluke, the only one in all that bedrock. But, sure enough, out rolled an ugly 3 dwter encased in red quartz! At this point I thought I'd better call Jim over to hunt the rest of the spot. He'd been on a long dry spell. He hunted that spot the rest of the day but could only come up with one tiny little .1 dwt grain. I left him to clean it out and moved further upstream. Around the corner was more bedrock that I had hunted at least a dozen times over the years. A couple of nails later came a loud booming nail signal right in a little pocket of rock. And again, scraping the dirt out with the pick, again, I look down and see a huge flat nugget just laying there. I couldn't believe it! How could I have missed it before? Because it was SO big and loud, I just passed it up KNOWING it was trash. Geezz, you think I would know better by now. Glad I wasn't hearing nearly the iron trash of years past because I was using my TDI in low conductivity which knocks out the larger iron. We were both using the TDI SL with the 9x5 Jimmy loop. So, by the end of the day, we each had found one more small piece for a total of just over 1/2 oz. The big ugly slug weighs 5.7 dwt. Good start to the new year! Digger Bob

Editors note: Mark contacted me regarding the use of a PI, specifically the White's TDI, to try and get better performance on coins at a difficult location. I asked him to post here to get the ball rolling on the subject - Steve H The reason I'm asking these questions is because where I live all the old schools used coal for their heat source. After burning the coal the waste was spread out over acres of land to get rid of it. Most is the size of a bb up to maybe a small marble. It is some sort of iron makeup because it attracts to a magnet fairly easily. And as you well know a regular VLF machine is rendered about useless with the exception of very shallow targets. Over the past 7 years I have owned or borrowed each of the following machines and none can get any depth over 4" in these areas. The following is a list of the machines. Tesoro Vaquero, Tejon, Lobo Supertrac, Garrett A250, Teknetics Eurotek Pro, Fisher Gold Bug Pro, F75 and the LTD version, Whites XLT, DFX, V3i, Minelab Explorer SE, Etrac and CTX 3030. Please keep in mind, not all the machines were mine. Some were loaned to me just to try in this bad coal cinder ground. One interesting note about the Minelabs, when auto sensitivity is used the machine will throttle down to 8 or lower in these areas. Now you might be wondering why I'm so interested in this one particular area well it is because it was one a huge group of ball fields used back in the 40's right on up to the 70's. I have pictures of actual ball players and at times there were hundreds of people watching games. Now that said, there should be many silver coins at this location, but none have been found and I can only guess it is the ground. Because over the years we have buried coins at 4" deep that none of the machines mentioned earlier can detect and 4" is not deep for any of these machine. So my assumption is that the material robs the transmit signals from the machines to the point depth can not be achieved. I have talked to Carl at Whites and Dave at 1st Texas about these extreme harsh locations and actually sent them each a 4 pound box of this material to test. Dave suggested ground balancing to the material and using the motion all metal mode to hunt. This provided some positive results, but only to about 5" in depth. On the other hand Carl was working on a PI prototype at the time and could only provide his comment, which was, no VLF would be able to perform at these locations. After reading many of your post and watching your videos I decided to contact you for additional information. I sent Carl another message after reading about your postings on the Whites TDI and here is his reply. Re: dirt Quote Originally Posted by markg Carl, a guy that hunted the digging in Virginia swears that the Whites TDI will punch through this kind of dirt. I know you can agree or not on this subject. But the cost of buying one to try would be a gamble. What do you think? Quote Originally Posted by Carl-NC just tested your cinder soil with a TDI... it's actually pretty mild compared to my Australian soil. The Oz soil is strong and has a very tight ground balance setting, whereas the cinder soil is weaker and has a broader GB range. So I think the TDI would handle this stuff easily. Regards, Carl I guess I really would like someone close to where I live visit and try a pulse machine. That way I would know. I can provide an open invitation to hunt about any evening.

ATX, TDI, GPX. What is it with detector companies and three letter acronyms? I liked it more when they were called Coinmaster or Goldmaster. At least that gave you a clue about what the detector was supposed to do. The three detectors representing the state of the art in ground balancing pulse induction (GBPI) metal detectors. The Garrett ATX, White's TDI, and Minelab GPX 5000. You rarely see them all pictured together so I thought I would post one. Garrett ATX, White's TDI, Minelab GPX 5000 These three detectors are all very good at what they are basically made for, which is dealing with ground mineralization and hot rocks that make using VLF detectors very difficult. In particular VLF performance is severely impeded in extremely mineralized ground. In low mineral ground a good VLF prospecting detector running in all metal mode can deliver results rivaling PI detectors with the added benefit of having good discrimination options. Anybody doing much prospecting, however, will eventually run into locations where ground mineralization and hot rocks makes using a VLF such a challenge that a good ground balancing pulse induction detector is the only real option. The GPX 5000 represents the current state of the art, and is the easy option if money is no object. It is well designed for long hours of prospecting, has an incredible variety of optional coils, and can handle most any ground conditions with many tuning options. The Garrett ATX provides performance that comes close to the GPX at a much lower price, with the added benefit of being waterproof to ten feet. Actually, this is only a benefit if you need it. Otherwise it makes the detector heavier than need be and limits the available coil options. Still, if the GPX is not an option the ATX would be my next choice in a new detector with a warranty. For those needed waterproof it is the only real option along with its predecessor, the Garrett Infinium. The White's TDI is an older design but still very capable. It costs less than the other two options, and unlike the Garrett it has light weight versions and models that can be hip or chest mounted. It is a good option to explore for those on a budget or needing the most ergonomic solution. The TDI is also a very respected beach detector, like the ATX above, but it has no waterproof option.

Can it be done?