First Gold Nugget Finds With The AlgoForce E1500

[phrunt]

Today I took the Algoforce for a gold hunt, it wasn't the location I was wanting to go to as the one I wanted to go to I had more confidence of finding something, its temperature was going to be too hot, then I saw a closer spot right near JW's house was cooler when I checked its forecast, I couldn't resist and decided to go, although I had little hope of finding anything, being so close to home for JW and his uncanny ability to find all available gold he doesn't leave much behind.

The first thing I did seeing this area has powerlines right through it was to test the Algoforce under them, results can be seen here, I must say though, very impressed! I had a hunch it would be good, it's one of the few detectors and only PI that I have that I can use inside my house for testing.

I next found a 22 shell, pretty typical here and generally screamer targets, sometimes I'm lazy and reject them, risky move but I can get lazy in the heat.  Seeing I was digging it all, the general rule for a new detector I dug it up, pretty neat video, a 22 shell comes up with a Target ID of 22 😛  I later tested the same 22 shell on the Sadie, and was pleased to see it came up 22 on an entirely different coil, a 10" Spiral vs a 8x6" bundle wound.

 

You've probably heard me whinge about the green hot rocks in the past, so I wanted to see how it goes on them, the 6000 can't balance them out in normal but does to a degree in difficult, not completely gone but better than normal, The Algoforce on the other hand, bang.... gone! bye bye Green hot rock! To top it off once balanced out I put a little shotgun pellet I'd found on top of it, a giant big green hot rock and it still was able to detect the pellet as if the rock didn't exist.

I notified JW I was there seeing he lives very close nearby and he popped down for a detect and to catch up, he had his 6000 and 10x5" Coiltek with him, a good combination for the area.  He was also kind enough to bring along an assortment of GPX coils that I don't have to try including the Sadie (mine still hasn't arrived from the NZ Dealer) and a 6" Coiltek round mono.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to test out the mono which I'll explain later but quickly swapped over from my 10" X-coil to the Sadie to try it out, seeing it was the manufacturer tested coil on the detector I wanted to see how it goes. 

The Sadie is very light, quite nice to swing such a little coil in the rougher areas, knowing it has hot edges is a nice attribute too.   In my first video up the top with the 22 shell I explain about the coil cable and how the Algoforce detects it when you pick up and put down the detector with the 10" fitted, I even accidentally left pinpoint mode on when sitting it down and the detector screamed, it was sitting there pinpointing the coil cable and had an ID for it 🙂 Seeing the pinpoint mode doesn't need motion it just screamed on the cable.   I later discovered when switching to the Sadie the coil cable doesn't get detected near as much, those with a Sadie probably will barely notice when lifting up and putting down their detector, whereas with the 10" spiral it screams.  Pinpoint mode will obviously behave the same with the non-motion.  The 10" spiral is much more sensitive than the Sadie, but I already knew this, if someone's after maximum sensitivity to small targets size doesn't matter as much as windings do, the Coiltek 9", 10" X-coil or 12x8" EVO will likely be the most sensitive, never used the 12x8" EVO only owning the 14x9" Evo but I'd likely give it the tiny target sensitivity over the Sadie too.  That's not saying the Sadies a bad coil, its edge sensitivity will give it great benefit over the far less sensitive edges of the spiral coils so if golds up against rocks it will win, it's also good for poking and prodding with the sensitive edges and it may handle some bad ground better too.

I found a little bit of gold under a rock not long after putting the Sadie on, It wasn't detected from above the rock, I was just lucky enough to flip a rock that had a little nugget (flake) under it.

JW had also recovered a little nugget, one he had detected some time ago in the schist bedrock with the GPZ and I think it was the 15" CC, he ended up not being able to find it, thought it was lost and moved on, the coil was probably just too big and awkward for his little dug hole in the bedrock or something to get close enough to it, but it was gone, today he managed to get it with the 10x5" Coiltek on the 6000 smashing out more rock.  It was smaller than the one I'd just found, quite a bit smaller.

Time went by and nothing for either of us, so I explored further and climbed down a bit of a ledge and found a target, I was trying to get it out and it sank down into a hole in the rock of the ledge to the next layer below, I was trying to get it out learning right over hoping I don't fall into the prickly briar rose bushes below, I'd be in big trouble then, and I kept poking the Sadie in under the layer and it kept sounding off so I thought I was hitting the target, so I'd slowly slide out some soil and it would keep sounding off the same, it turned out it wasn't sounding off on the nugget, it was sounding off as the coil cable was getting crushed down and touching the coil.  It is vital with the Algoforce to have a nice secure coil cable that can't go near the coil, it just shows how sensitive it is, the GPZ with small coils like the 8" and 10" is the same especially lifting up and putting down the detector so I'm a bit used to it.

I gave up that method and risked climbing down to the bottom of the little ditch in among the prickles, sadly 3 of them stabbed into my hand, I plucked them out one by one but by the 3rd one I had a problem, it had stuck straight into a vein, when I pulled out the rose thorn a big squirt of blood shot out like a jet, then it swelled up rapidly like a balloon under the skin, it got quite big, about half a golf ball, then in a seconds the swelling went down a fair bit to a blackish lump, and its stayed that way.  I felt quite sick at this point, really dizzy, so I just used the Sadie from down there where I could get into the gap between the rocks better, retrieved the target and climbed back up the ledge leaving my detector and pick on the ledge to collect from half way down from the top, I climbed up with my scoop in hand with the target in it.  Once at the top I was so dizzy I just sat down for about 10 minutes with the scoop sitting next to me hoping it wasn't some junk.  Once I recovered enough, I climbed down and retrieved my detector and pick and climbed back up to recover the target from the scoop.  I was so pleased it was a piece of gold after all of that.

Here is the video of it all,

 

I quite big bit for what's left in this area, that's for sure.  

I felt really weird sort of dizzy sort of drunk but it could be a combination of heat exhaustion along with the weird injury so I walked back to JW and told him what happened and showed my nugget, he suggested I had a sit down which I had planned to do, I sat another 20 or so minutes and just felt worse so I call over to him that I'm going to head home cutting my day short, I stopped for a snack on some wild black berries on my walk to my car as I hadn't yet had lunch. 

I felt horrible the entire drive home, almost vomited half way home going around the lake which is a very bendy road for about 30 minutes along the side of the lake.  

I'm coming right now, no longer dizzy that I've cooled down and had a long cold shower and plenty to drink, I had run out of drink very early in the day too so perhaps I was dehydrated.  Next time more drink bottles coming than just the one little one.

So here is my hand now

A bit black and swollen still.

I really like the Algoforce, it's an incredible detector for the price, a real game changer for people that don't need the absolute best of the best yet still want a very high-performance PI machine with cool features and at a very cheap price.  The more I use it the more I like it. I really hope I'm the first paying customer that's found gold with the detector, that'd be pretty cool.

[Valens Legacy]

Great hunt with your new machine and I really hope that you get to feeling better soon.

Good luck on your next hunt and stay safe out there.

[palzynski]

19 minutes ago, phrunt said:

 

.. I really like the Algoforce, it's an incredible detector for the price, a real game changer for people that don't need the absolute best of the best yet still want a very high-performance PI machine with cool features and at a very cheap price.  The more I use it the more I like it. I really hope I'm the first paying customer to find gold with the detector, that'd be pretty cool.

Thanks Simon for the stories , pics and videos , looks like you have a future best seller with this E1500 ..

[Tony]

Glad you recovered from that adventure......that is Mountain Goat country !

Simon is just out of shot in steeper terrain......just follow the blood trail.

[Lost Scout]

Well now you have a group of north Americans fidgeting and jumping up and down, looking up at the top of the candy shelf that they can't reach.😵‍💫. 

Great job on the gold and thanks for the write up and info.

[Shelton]

Super review and what a story! I hope you are in one piece mate! What about new device performance in iron?

[Lynk]

Thanks for sharing that crazy story and congratulations on a successful go with the Algoforce! 

Quite an exciting report of the detector's potential. I hope all the competition is reading it. 

[GB_Amateur]

Good to hear JW had a Sadie to loan you.  Very few people have a GPX-compatible X-Coil, in contrast to the Nugget Finder Sadie.  (Even I, who gets gold detecting maybe 3 or 4 days per year, has one.)  And as expected that little terrier found a goodie or two in a heavily detected area.

Dehydration is accompanied by all kinds of symptoms, affecting the brain as well as the rest of the body.  I'd bet that was the major contributor to your condition.  Glad nothing worse occurred as a result.  Even driving may not have been in your best interest....

A lot of people are way more excited about this Algoforce developing 'saga' than I but I still enjoy reading about it and you've been great at putting in the hours (quickly) to educate us, so thanks for that.

P.S.  Now that JW has seen the E1500 in action, is he ordering one pronto?

[Steve Herschbach]

Thanks for risking life and limb for us Simon!

This all reminds me of the Axiom in a way. There was no reason to tell people who already own a 6000 they needed an Axiom. There is also no real reason why anyone with a 6000 needs a E1500. It’s for people who don’t have a 6000 and who don’t want to spend that kind of money. I can also see it for the person who has a 7000 and would like a second detector that is much lighter, can use smaller coils, and which overall costs less than some 7000 coils by themselves! But except for very odd situations like with maybe certain hot rock or EMI locations I just don’t see this detector outclassing the 6000 in outright gold detection. 6000 owners can pretty much just go on about their business and ignore all this, unless of course they are the sorts that just have to have another new toy to play with. There are a few of us like that. 

[HardPack]

8 hours ago, phrunt said:

bye bye Green hot rock

An impressive machine. Do you think changing the cable wrap on the shaft with two Velcro straps with the cable slack looped above the shaft would help with detecting the cable? You may want to soak your hand in a salt solution…like at the beach. Thanks for the videos, take care of that hand.