One Detector - One Setting - One Pass - Gold Gone

[jasong]

There are places in AZ and NV where 95% of targets deeper than a foot or so are all gold. And very little trash.

I have to assume there are places in Australia like this too though I've never been there. But in these sorts of areas, any target at 3ft is gonna get dug if it takes all day or an excavator because it's big gold!

A detector that could get another 12"+ of depth in all types of ground over the GPZ while maintaining sensitivity would be killer in places like these. It'd be worth the money, pretty much any deep find like that is gonna be a lunker. If there was a way to put an accurate depth gauge on it so I could only dig targets deeper than a foot that'd be even better. Something like radar ranging except underground so we didn't have the size/geometry of the target interfering with depth calculations.

[Tortuga]

6 hours ago, jasong said:

There are places in AZ and NV where 95% of targets deeper than a foot or so are all gold. And very little trash.

I have to assume there are places in Australia like this too though I've never been there. But in these sorts of areas, any target at 3ft is gonna get dug if it takes all day or an excavator because it's big gold!

A detector that could get another 12"+ of depth in all types of ground over the GPZ while maintaining sensitivity would be killer in places like these. It'd be worth the money, pretty much any deep find like that is gonna be a lunker. If there was a way to put an accurate depth gauge on it so I could only dig targets deeper than a foot that'd be even better. Something like radar ranging except underground so we didn't have the size/geometry of the target interfering with depth calculations.

I'd love to hunt an area like that, maybe Quartzsite? I haven't been there yet.

I'm always on the prowl for the "whispers" with my GPZ. Have dug one nice 2oz gold/quartz specimen that was about a foot and a half deep. Deepest target I've dug so far and took over an hour to excavate it. All the other gold I've found has been down about a foot at the deepest and some of it has just been sitting in the topsoil. 

[mn90403]

I am challenged by the 'depth sounds' of the GPZ.  When testing recently it is clear to me that I have to 'tune in' to a different expectation of the sound of a deep target.

I've found small (.2g+) and very small (less than .1g) targets up to 6 inches and this is the majority of targets and nuggets in the area where I hunt.  I've only dug a couple of targets over 8 inches.

Recently up in Rye Patch someone using a GPZ dug a 1/4oz nugget at 16 inches and a friend of mine dug a 6.8g nugget at 18" in Southern California.

We know if you get over 5" you have a 95% chance of it being gold so I'll dig a deep target if I can hear it.

Is it just 'anything' repeatable and when you dig it gets louder or is there a better deep indicator?

Mitchel

[jasong]

Tortuga - there are definitely some places in the Q vicinity like that. I've found sunbakers there and I've dug nuggets at 20 inches with no sign of bedrock underneath yet.

MN - Others probably have other techniques but catching faint ones for me (Z or X) is about combining 3 swing concepts: always "feel" where your coil is, always swing at the same speed, always overlap ground. If you do that then your brain gets used to the same "double blip" timing of a faint signal that is rarely to never replicated in EMI and I just end up "feeling" it as a good signal. The two blips are also usually of the same quality and character if your swing is flat and constant, whereas EMI and sometimes even ground noise is not. Ground noise double blips are much more "smooshy" most of the time (not always, especially hot rocks) so your ears can discrim them. 

Or you can just brute force it: go glacially slow, dig anything remotely spurious, grid twice (90 degrees offset), drag your coil on the ground. That's just for patches for me nowadays though.

I'd pay $5k for a detector with a completely smooth threshold and a foot of depth over the GPZ with a 17x11 stock coil as well as immediate availability of a 14x9" and 18" coil, as long as it wasn't heavier than the GPZ. I'd pay $7k and not resell it after 6 months if it had an accurate depth and maybe even size gauge on it. But for reference, I don't think the GPZ should be selling for any more than $2500 new either, so there's that.

I think it's possible with octo-core 2+ ghz 64 bit ARM chips and whatnot that we have today. Or a parallel bank of them. I'm sure a detector engineer is reading this and rolling their eyes at me though. But I think it could be done with a delay short enough to be imperceptible to our brains.