Challenge Completed And Missed Nuggets Found

[jasong]

Last year I posted a photo of a wash in Quartzsite showing a bit of horizon in the background along with some basic clues. I challenged anyone to find it. Partly to give out a place I found many years back that I knew had good gold since I had my time with it already. And partly also to prove it could be done from some very basic info.

Someone found it last year, took them a couple weeks of searching. I was hoping they'd post here as they ended up with about 3/4 oz, and they are a forum member. The area is getting some significant use by ATV'ers now, I assume to go somewhere else since they don't appear to be prospecting there, but where I used to have to hike a half mile in you can drive right to now. 2 parties passed me by as I was detecting, and one had detectors with them. So I'm not going to show anymore photos of the area as I there is now too much use back there.

Anyways, I revisted the wash. The challenge winner's friend showed up a few hours after I did, and probably was surprised to see someone else back there, they appear to be raking stuff down now. I hope they don't destroy everything back there, there are lots of other places to discover too, I meant that as a learning place meant to teach someone how to find similar places on their own, the type of topography, signs of old timers, and geology to look for, and not necessarily a place to mine out and stay at.

I had previously run my 17x12 X Coil there (and the stock coil), pretty much the only X Coil that I haven't been all out impressed with, and so I really wanted to try one of my favorites - the 17" X Coil - there too at some point. I finally got a chance to get back down. I was not let down, paid for the trip and more, and still really love this 17".

Got a 10 grammer that gave a low-high with some tone curl on it, kind of a weird broken signal, strange given how chunk and solid the nugget is. Thought it was going to be a lunker from that signal, but hit bedrock at about 14 or 15" and lost hope. Still, not a bad find. This was right in the wash so I guarantee that for whatever reason, none of the previous coils heard this nugget. Very mild ground, I always run full bore settings in here with any machine or coil. There were some large rocks I moved before I started digging, so the true depth from the coil might have been more like 18".

 

Ended up with 2 half grammers also. This one was about 9" deep, and was just the faintest little signal, but still unmistakably repeatable. 

I only got a photo of one, but you get the idea. I traded both of them off at the store when I got into town for some supplies.

I was going to put the 8" coil on and try to snag a handful of smaller bits, but I had another spot I wanted to hit (skunked) and I was hungry so I headed back to Q.

Most of the trip was for exploration in other areas, checking some totally unknown places out, most without even mines or prospects. Just going off geology and aerials. I spent 2 days exploring and got the big skunk. So nothing to report there. Stopped in to Quartzsite to see if the 6000 might still be here but no luck.

My primary use coils have pretty much settled into the 8", 12" spiral, and 17" spiral. (I bought the 12, the 8 and 17 were sent to me free of charge, as noted in the past) I think I have most bases covered with these 3. The 17" is sensitive enough that I literally have to have my phone and keys in the top part of my backpack. It picks the phone up itself, the metal inside, not the EMI. Both the 12" and 17" will pick up my Garrett AT pinpointer at shoulder height when it's off, so I have to put it on the top of my shoulder on my back, and even there I can still sometimes just barely hear it with the 17". And this brings up a new point, we have now reached levels of sensitivity where eventually we may not be able to carry anything on us at all if sensitivity increases further.

I've seen posts lately questioning wether one really needs coils other than the stock, or saying the stock coil is great. Let me say unequivocally, that in almost all the places I've detected, that is simply not the case at all and that the GPZ absolutely benefits from a range of coils. Sometimes greatly. That is just fact in my mind at this point. And there are maybe only a small handful of people in the world right now who have more field time in than I do on a wide range of coils on the GPZ so I'm, speaking from experience here and this isn't guesswork. So wether one is looking at the NF options to come, or willing to make an adapter for the X Coils, if one is sticking with the GPZ and is serious about detecting, I absolutely recommend you look into whichever coil option works best for you. But don't stick with the stock coil, I am not impressed with it at all. I am struggling to find one place I might even take it with me to use and I cannot. Again though, I detect mild to medium ground mostly, not hot ground.

The 6000 might make all that moot though, interesting times to come ahead! 

There's a horizon I can show you. We got another 3" of snow after this and so I decided to explore down south. Unfortunately one place I was going to visit got 12-18" of snow and so that trip got momentarily delayed.

That's my land. It may not be me there anymore as it's under contract to a new owner right now. If it goes through then I'm off to do a ton of exploration and to find new opportunities. If it falls through, I have a lot of mining to do next season.

[GotAU?]

Thanks for the informative writeup, Jason.  I am still just a beginner at this with very limited experience as I just started detecting this year.  It’s through you seasoned guys that I’ve been learning a lot, and I appreciate it! -Anthony 

[jasong]

Also, the amount of sensitivity to tiny iron targets on the 12" spiral and 8" have made me wonder how the 6000 is going to be in trashy areas. Both coils hit tiny iron waaaaaaay smaller than tiny gold. We are approaching sensitivity levels now where even almost invisible tiny iron trash makes a good sound. If the 6000 is about equal to the GPZ+12" on smaller, shallow gold, I have to assume people will find a bunch of new tiny trash in washes they thought were cleaned out. Because that's what keeps happening to me. 

The problem is when you start hitting that stuff at 4" in hardpack. A bootscrape doesn't move it. So you dig each and every one of them and make glacially slow progress.

Some have the patience to dig that much trash. Me, I have to move on. Actually, maybe that's one singular use for the old stock coil I can see - intentionally desensitizing your GPZ in places you want to glide over that trash.

I'll be interested to see how the 6000 deals with that particular issue. I almost wonder if they have some sort of algorithm to minimize iron signal response. But that seems unlikely since that is basically what discrim is, and we know the 6000 doesn't have discrim.

[flakmagnet]

Another very clear and tantalizing post Jason. Thanks for putting in the effort.

Enjoy the rest of your time out there.

 

[Jonathan Porter]

Really good write up and it’s great too see that the X coils are doing there thing for you jasong😎 . The year before COVID I was fortunate enough to get into some really mild mineralised ground that was essentially virgin, my partners had already done two trips to the area that season before I could get there so the main patch we had eyeballed the year previously had already had a smashing from the guys. The basal geology is largely altered sandstone so when it weathers out the soils are reasonably benign except in the laterite areas where all the ironstone has leached out onto the surface, things get a bit troublesome there so standard coils and Difficult timings were the go.

I had a 17” Spiral wound X coil with me that Elnur was good enough to send my way to test the ferrite balance modifications he had been working on and this coil was one of the best X coils I had used to date.

I decided to target the main patch where the nuggets were in a layer of gravel beneath a layer of gritty decomposed sandstone, the stuff was so fine the wind was pushing it around.

Little piece I heard just sitting on the sand after a huge wind storm that lasted for 4 days. I’d say one of my friends had dug it out and the wind blew the soil away.

Here I could use the GPZ in High Yield Normal with the sensitivity cranked from to 14 to 15, absolutely amazingly quiet ground for Australia. I got a good glimpse of what it must be like for you guys in the US using Normal all the time, absolutely amazing the depth I was getting on gram pieces, some well past a foot. I pulled in excess of 2 ounces in very short time going over the deeper sections of the main run.

There was no real X signal in this ground so the detector just purred along, but this coil was pretty good on that score anyway.

Plucky 12 gram bit off to the side of a friends old patch. The country  is bare because of a fire earlier that year.

The extra coverage of the 17 was really useful in this open terrain, but the real bonus was the sensitivity on the tiny surface gold or the deep stuff. 

Few bits out of the same hole, the coil was chattier on this ground because it had more Ironstone, from memory I had to use Difficult or suffer the hot rocks and ground noises.

I’ve spent considerable time using these coils in a variety of terrains around Australia, I have never had an issue with the coils themselves other than early stages or the manufacturer only the misinformation and the resultant discord when I tried to put balance to the discussions. The risks are still real, do the adapter wrong and it gets expensive, However I never had a problem with any of my adapters.

Here in Clermont where I live the ground is extremely variable and high X, because the coils are so sensitive they can be problematic in our ground especially with saturation. If all the coils made now are similar to the one pictured the high X ground should no longer be a problem, so the way to look at them is similar to the old days of Normal timings (SD, GP days) where you needed a DD coil in DD mode for noisy ground and used a Monoloop coil in the quieter deeper soils, the same applies with these extremely sensitive X coils, use them in Mono type quiet country and go have some fun. Same thing will apply to the Concentric coils when they become more readily available. 

JP

Few more pics

[geek4gold]

23 minutes ago, Jonathan Porter said:

I have never had an issue with the coils themselves other than early stages or the manufacturer only the misinformation and the resultant discord when I tried to put balance to the discussions. The risks are still real, do the adapter wrong and it gets expensive, However I never had a problem with any of my adapters.

Hello Jonathan, This is very interesting as I got the impression that you were dead set against the X coils. What misinformation, discussions & discord are you speaking of. Can you elaborate on the misinformation please & who & where did it come from?

I guess there is always going to be a risk factor involved if one attempts to do the adapter themselves if doing that kind of work isn't their forte. I am picking there are quite a few very fine wires to deal with & not much room to play with in the soldering process. What generally happens to the detector if things go wrong & what would the cost of repair be to an already expensive detector.

I recall a comment that I thought was from you, or maybe it was from somebody else, that said your adapters were made for you by Minelab. Guess you cant get a safer adapter made than from them.  

Nice gold finds too by the way.

G4G   

[Steve Herschbach]

9 hours ago, geek4gold said:

What misinformation, discussions & discord are you speaking of. Can you elaborate on the misinformation please & who & where did it come from?

No. It is water under the bridge. We do not need to revisit the past but move forward. This forum is about detectors, and anyone making it about people will be gone. It stops now - this is my only warning on that count.

[Northeast]

Just now, Steve Herschbach said:

No. It is water under the bridge.

If I could use my 30 likes for this post I would!  👍

[jasong]

I should have a chance to try them out on what some would consider medium to hot ground here in the US next week. It's not a place I've detected at all with the GPZ so I will start in Normal and adjust from there. It will be a fun trip with a bit of time to detect as well. It's a private invite to private land though so I'm not sure how much I can really show.

We do have some pretty hot ground here, places where I was forced to run Enhance or even use a DD. Since I'm totally mobile when I'm in AZ I just chose to seek out and stay in the easy ground (in my 4500 days) since I could run full bore everywhere and I knew most people around me (at the time) were staying in Fine Gold, which meant I was finding a lot that others were leaving behind. I got used to the geology and so as I expanded out, I tended to search for similar places, and so I end up detecting a lot of mild ground.

But it will be interesting to see how they do in some hotter ground next week. I'll still try to run in Normal if I can, and then adjust accordingly from there.

[Jonathan Porter]

The subject has been done to death here G4G, suffice to say I was against the trivialising of the modification aspect of the adapter and the risks if things go wrong. To fix a blown GPZ is north of AU$3K, so not cheap. It would have been good to have been able to push the deal through on securing the proper leads but alas things didn’t work out for many multiples of reasons best left alone for sake of the forum.🥴

Originally I had a tech at ML do me a favour and build me an adapter so I could have a play, so yes that is true, they were curious at the time too.🙃

So in summary, I was never dead against the X coils and really like the guy who developed them, just the tacky politics and lack of full disclosure.