X Coils In The Q

[jasong]

I was in Quartzsite looking for flea markets for 2 days with my girlfriend (she is not a fan of prospecting). I snuck off for 2 hours to do some detecting with the 17x12 X Coil which Al had given to me for free to make up for the problems I had with the early X cords. I've not had any issue with cords since then, they stretched again but not enough to bind up in the shaft and inserting/removing coils has been easy now. Since time was slim I decided to hit a wash fairly close to town which had produced a little over 1 ounce for me with the 4500 and GMT, but which I had not visited with the GPZ at all yet. I figured it was the best chance for me to find a nugget in a short amount of time. Most of the gold found previously was 1/2 gram to 2 grams here. Not much smaller, and not much bigger. The wash has bedrock from surface to about 3 feet deep, a nice quiet gneiss and schist assemblage, pretty standard in Q. Part of the reason for the mild soils. I also thought odds were good that I'd missed all the deep, small stuff back in 2012 and that it'd be perfect to clean up with the GPZ/X combo.

I'll try something different this time and I'm going to show the horizons and surrounding land. Anyone who really wants to track it down and find it, go for it. As I detect less and less, someone new or just starting can figure out where they are at. This is looking down towards some mountains that can be ID'ed. The part of the wash that produces gold is about 1/2 mile hike uphill from here, and is currently unclaimed.  

The 17x12 ran even quieter here than in Gold Basin, no problem running at 20 gain, HY, Normal. Though I run in low smoothing because I like a stabler threshold than most so I can move faster and concentrate. Within 5 minutes of hiking to my spot, I got a decent signal, a bit quiet but repeatable. Mostly only sounded off in a circular area under the coil, as if the coil were an 8" round, and I couldn't hear it towards the ends of the coil. I scraped 2 inches of gravel away with my boot, and the signal was now pretty stout. After breaking out the pick, I got down about 15" and started exposing jagged bedrock. I put the coil on edge and pinpointed the signal to a small area between bedrock juts and then began chiseling and brushing away gravel until I found the nugget with my pinpointer, so I could get a picture in situ. It's at the point of my finger inside a crack that required screwdriver excavation.

I pried the nugget out of the crack after fidgeting with the bedrock a bit, and was a bit surprised to see it was larger than expected, in fact this is largest nugget I've found in this wash.

I figured it was 3.5 grams by feel. It ended up running around 4.5 grams and paid for all our gas and food for the 2 day trip down. So I was happy, for what was at the time about 15 minutes total into the short time I had to detect on this trip. 

The hole is at the bottom of my coil. The nugget was wedged down in that bedrock which is unfortunately covered in shadows in this photo, and the total depth was just shy of the length of the coil, so around 16-17". There is a new ATV trail almost to the point where I started detecting so I can't help but feel at least 1 person has had a Z14 over this wash, but I'm not certain. This nugget was sitting almost vertical, and I suspect that is why it was missed previously and not a screaming signal on the 17x12, though the signal was definitely sharp and unmistakable. 

Another 30 minutes of poking and prodding into the rocks and bedrock, and I pulled up a deep drywasher nail and a the head of another nail. Both sharp and loud signals right in the gut of the wash that my 4500/GMT combo had missed 7 or 8 years ago. I was near the start of the wash, thus the end of my journey and thinking it was about time to turn around and hike back down. And then I hit my final target on the short hike, a ~1 grammer which was also a sharp and pronounced signal, and also right beneath a stretch of exposed bedrock. It's at the tip of my finger, didn't have to dig around with the screwdriver for this one.

Here is the sum total of what I found with about 1 hour of detecting and 1 hour of hiking there and back. This is a wash I detected back in 2012'ish with a range of 4500 coils and my GMT (before I had a GB2), probably 8 or 9 times total. I covered most of the upper portion of the wash that had produced nuggets for me in the past, though I suspect I could pull another 1 or 2 out of there if I tried with the 10". I'm also pretty certain the 10" would have missed the larger, deep nugget, but I can't be absolutely certain.

Total weight, not bad for an ~hour of work. 

And one final horizon shot right where the nugget zone starts, up towards the base of the mountain. For all the internet sleuths and greenhorns who can't find anyone to share locations with them to get them started. Good luck.  Enough clues here to find the area for a dedicated individual.

Overall I was happy with the 17x12 in the rocky wash/bedrock areas. It ran smoother here than Gold Basin, both dealing with ground mineralization and EMI. GB gives me these zips and zaps that are absent here, and struggles with the BIF and basalt, and it's real hard to run this 17x12 full bore in washes there with high black sand concentrations. The magnetite chunks in Q gave me problems but they do with the Z14 and 4500 too, so nothing new there. The main issue I have is the edges seem to not be sensitive enough on this coil compared to the rounds. So while the geometry allows you to push into tight cracks, you aren't always getting full sensitivity in the depths of the cracks as you would with the 10" round. The shape of the area of maximum sensitivity within the coil is odd. A simple sweep often misses subtle targets unless you are over one of the sweet spots, and the sweet spot doesn't appear to just be a smaller ellipse within the elliptical coil, it's some odd shape with hotspots within itself. That sounds confusing, but I have a hard time explaining it better. I think Condor mentioned it already, but pushing/pumping the coil into tight spots over the center of the coil (if possible) often works better to hear the coupling between very tiny or very weak targets to determine if it's good repeatable or ground mineralization. I've been doing this out in the open in the flats in GB too, especially in areas of high mineralization, to determine what is a good target. 

One thing is certain, in the US it's mostly about knowing where to go, or knowing someone who knows where to go. Or having exclusive access to land. This shows why. This was found in 2 hours, but only because I was lucky enough to start detecting at a time when a lot of people ran their detectors subpar by copying settings off internet forums, allowing me to find a lot of stuff the others missed. Those days are largely gone since the GPZ levels the playing field today. I couldn't walk into a goldfield I've never been to an expect the same results, it was only my knowledge of what and where I found gold in the past that let me do this. So, don't get discouraged if your results are not the same. A new guy would simply just have to hope to stumble on this place by dumb luck since all the leads are gone now, while I can just hike right to it. So maybe this will help someone new find an "old" place. 

I don't detect as much as I used to these days as I have other projects going, but Al (X manufacturer) sent me this coil for free to try last year, and I figured it'd be nice to do a write up since I wasn't able to run my GPZ on the commercial project I have going due to EMI interference from the CAT 336. The coil performed great here though, and it was nice to just get out and finally do some detecting for fun.

[Lunk]

Great post, Jason. Just goes to show there is still good gold to be found in Q for the dedicated detectorist...well done!

[2Valen]

Great hunting and great writing about it. Glad to see you find the nice shiny stuff on your trip, won't your girlfriend be happy now.

[mn90403]

Well done.  More time needed.  😁

Mitchel

[flakmagnet]

Great write-up Jason. You have a great way of sharing your experiences and your conclusions. Glad to know you are out and about, we always benefit.

[jasong]

Thanks everyone! Definitely need to take a full trip down there at some point with the Z+X. I have a few other spots I haven't visited since 4500 days, but they will require a full day of driving/hiking/detecting. Unfortunately a lot of old areas I found good gold in have new claims over them now there though.

Phrunt - not sure about the spiral vs bundle and the edge sensitivity, but that might be what's going on. However, I know when I was running my 12" spiral wound coil in the washes though that it seemed a lot more sensitive along the outer edges than the 17x12 elliptical does.  My 17" round is spiral wound too and it's pretty sensitive along the outer rim, it'll tag 0.1 grammers no problem out there. 

If that bedrock stuff was the bulk of my detecting I'd probably lean towards the 10" or 12" rounds just because they seem more sensitive on the edges. I should have tested a few targets over Mitchel's 15x10 when he was here to see what sort of hot spot pattern it has compared to the 17x12.

[mn90403]

I'll come back!  haha  How long will you be there?

[Steve Herschbach]

One of the most balanced posts I’ve seen on the X Coil. Thanks Jason. 

[cobill]

Jason, 

Glad to see you back on the gold! Great story and explanation on the X coil operation at Quartzsite. How do you think the 17" x 12" will run in Northern NV with wet, salty ground?

Bill 

[Jonathan Porter]

54 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

One of the most balanced posts I’ve seen on the X Coil. Thanks Jason. 

Agreed Steve, well written and factual with some excellent pictures. The country looks so similar to the Pilbara in WA without the red of course but still strikingly beautiful, although it must get extremely hot during summer!

15 hours ago, jasong said:

The 17x12 ran even quieter here than in Gold Basin, no problem running at 20 gain, HY, Normal. Though I run in low smoothing because I like a stabler threshold than most so I can move faster and concentrate

Jasong if its OK to discuss this subject? Audio Smoothing is a noise floor filter that raises and lowers the target signal acceptance, the problem with it is once raised anything that does not reach the acceptable level of signal strength to break through the filter will never be heard no matter how much other settings are tweaked. Might I suggest as an experiment to open up the filter by using Audio Smoothing OFF then lower the Sensitivity till the threshold sounds OK to your ears relative to the ground signal,  you can also in conjunction with this adjust the first page bottom right Volume control to get the balance right so there is an acceptable amount of feedback from the unit in your quiet ground types. 

On the very edge of detection targets, adding Smoothing really does kill the outright depth and I have found that testing on in-situ known targets gives a false impression of what is actually going on because the general wandering around listening to the threshold without any knowledge of a target is not taken fully into consideration with this testing method. Familiarising yourself with the localised ground conditions plays a huge role in depth detection as your brain does a lot of averaging and is primed for that slight break or pitch change. IMHO increasing sensitivity then having to use filtering is counterintuitive, filtering kills the lead in and tail out information reducing the effectiveness of using a full Range of Motion on the deeper iffy targets.

Not trying to tell anyone how to suck eggs just suggesting a different approach, I hope its OK to mention this without seeming contentious?😬

JP