Some Things To Take Note Of With The Algoforce

[Nedkelly]

Pieces of conduit or poly pipe with a slot about 15mm cut out also work well . 👌 

 

[phrunt]

More cool information about the Algoforce, it ground balances very salty soil fine, even in Ultra Fine gold mode using a super sensitive 10" fully spiral wound coil.  This took me by surprise as the last time I was at this spot was testing the GPX 4500 with the Nugget Finder 14x9" EVO and had quite a bit of difficulty with ground balance, The Algoforce barely even needed balanced, it wasn't even bad from switch on with only a small portion showing on the mineralization bar, this was resolved with a ground balance.  I was in ultra fine gold mode, on the GPX 4500 I had to drop the timings down in sensitivity, I can't remember which worked well.  It maintained good pellet sensitivity once balanced, not as good as in mild soils, but still pretty good.

You'll notice the sun reflecting in this photo above on the screen, so when I have the same photo with the sun behind me even further like below, you'll see just how good the screen is in direct sun, it loves it, it's brilliant in full sun, so different to the GPZ that's damn near impossible to see, it's good though, as the Algo has so much information on the screen, really good information.  I must have found 15 or more 22 shells today, for the first 8 I was checking if they were 22 shells after getting their 22 target ID, then I started playing a game of odds, any big booming that with an ID of 22 was likely a 22 shell so I didn't waste my time. 

In may not look it in the photos but this soil is so weird, it's almost white and full of salt.

I hadn't calibrated my coil in its slot as I was using it for another coil so I calibrate it in the video, you can see this being done for those interested in seeing a coil calibrate.  I had a bit of trouble pressing the two buttons at once with one hand to start the calibration while holding my phone to film 🙂

Note my Ground balance numbers, 50 00, default is 50 50.   It would be nice from the manufacturer to update the manual to indicate what these numbers mean in some way.  50 00 is a bit of a surprise number combination, must be the salt.

Didn't spend long here at all, had too much to do, but it was worth a try to see how the detector worked in salt and it worked brilliantly.

I think it's going to be a great beach detector; I wonder how it would go with a mono coil in the salt flats in Australia.

Another little bit of information that may be of interest, it is looking like you can use the mineralization bars on the screen as a form of Iron probability meter, when going over an iron junk target, they rise right up like it needs ground balanced, pass over the target they drop back down.    I tested this quite a bit today, every bit of iron I knew was iron before recovering it by using this method.  I need to experiment with this more and see, and do some iron air tests.

I have a lot to learn yet but the Target ID and other features of this detector give it much more of a VLF like feature set, and could really be taken advantage of.

[FishBamboo]

Good to know. Looks like both hot rocks and iron can be identified by the minerization bar and minerilzation numbers. Nice job Simon.

[phrunt]

9 hours ago, FishBamboo said:

Good to know. Looks like both hot rocks and iron can be identified by the minerization bar and minerilzation numbers. Nice job Simon.

Too early to know for sure, maybe larger good targets do it too, that's what I've got to test, I just stumbled into an area with iron junk, I haven't yet tried normal targets to see if they do the same, like a non-ferrous coin.  The small shot pellets I was finding obviously don't do it 🙂  It would be great if this turns out to be the case, I'll find out today, but the bars certainly go up with an iron target, hopefully they don't with a non-ferrous.

Here's a short video of the Algo ground balancing in some very iron sand rich soil.  It generally takes 5 pumps on the coil to balance anything out, later in the video I am pumping the coil, without the balance button down to show how out of balance it is, I then press it and my pump speed changes so show when I've pressed it, and it balances within its usual 5 pumps.  You'll see the bars on the ground balance meter growing as I swing over the iron sand concentrated ground; these are the same bars that shoot up on the iron targets I was hitting.  They're the bars in the middle of the screen below the number.

Once out of high concentration areas of iron sand like this even though it remains in balance in the milder areas with the same balance setting, I like to balance again as I believe you get better sensitivity to tiny targets that way.  

It's such an easy detector to use and understand.  I really like its fixed ground balance; I wish the 6000 had a way to do that too.  It has enough settings to give you some control while still being suitable for a beginner as it's very easy to use and understand, there is nothing complicated about it and navigating the user interface is very simple.

Woody's done another interesting technical video on it too.

 

[BigSkyGuy]

10 hours ago, phrunt said:

Another little bit of information that may be of interest, it is looking like you can use the mineralization bars on the screen as a form of Iron probability meter, when going over an iron junk target, they rise right up like it needs ground balanced, pass over the target they drop back down.    I tested this quite a bit today, every bit of iron I knew was iron before recovering it by using this method.  I need to experiment with this more and see, and do some iron air tests.

Phrunt,

Does this mean that you do not see the bars increase for non-ferrous targets? Less increase for non-ferrous?

Thank you!

[phrunt]

Just now, BigSkyGuy said:

Phrunt,

Does this mean that you do not see the bars increase for non-ferrous targets? Less increase for non-ferrous?

Thank you!

I'm going to confirm this today, I only noticed all this yesterday and I got home late at night from a big adventure gold hunt 🙂

[dig4gold]

57 minutes ago, phrunt said:

I'm going to confirm this today, I only noticed all this yesterday and I got home late at night from a big adventure gold hunt 🙂

I am guessing that you found no gold as you haven't posted about it, & I am sure you would have had you found some. Obviously you had a long day looking but came up empty handed on the gold. If you were hunting old past producing grounds then this detector is no miracle machine despite its cool features.

How was your shotgun pellet count? If getting pellets then there is every possibility that each one of those signals could have been a piece of gold. 

D4G

[Steve Herschbach]

32 minutes ago, dig4gold said:

this detector is no miracle machine despite its cool features.

 

Nobody ever said it was a miracle machine so this is a classic straw man presentation. This whole idea of this needing to outperform the GPX 6000 and GPZ 7000 at one third the price or less was brought up before, and I flat out said no, just go use the GPX 6000 and be happy. Same still applies here. If that is what anyone is looking for then look elsewhere.

[phrunt]

16 minutes ago, dig4gold said:

I am guessing that you found no gold as you haven't posted about it, & I am sure you would have had you found some. Obviously you had a long day looking but came up empty handed on the gold. If you were hunting old past producing grounds then this detector is no miracle machine despite its cool features.

How was your shotgun pellet count? If getting pellets then there is every possibility that each one of those signals could have been a piece of gold. 

You're correct, I didn't find any gold, I was going over ground I'd done before with the 7000 and 15" CC and 8" X-coils along with the 6000 and 10x5" Coiltek, and even the Equinox 800, it was an area I'd found one of my biggest nuggets along with a few small bits so I really wanted to just check out how it performed on the same ground doing the same things, and if it did find anything I'd missed,  The area has quite bad hot rocks too, yet I never found one, the E1500 went over them like they didn't exist.

It was just nice to experiment with it and hit the heavy junk area trying to take advantage of the Target ID to experiment.  JW was with me and he was smart for someone trying to find gold, he went to the spot I found a nugget right as his 6000 coil died the last time we were there so that area hadn't been as detected and we knew nuggets were likely hiding there, he found 3 little bits with his 6000 and Coiltek 10x5" in the time we were there, which was only a few hours.   I could have done the same sort of thing but just wanted to experiment more, learning the detector.  It won't easily perform miracles finding gold where the others have already done, I never expected it would but wanted to try experiment more with the Target ID feature and just see how it behaved in various situations.

We ended up spending a big part of the day not even detecting, driving exploring gold producing areas I'd never been to before, largely as I was too worried to try take on the 4x4 track up the mountainside, it's a challenging drive, even the drive back down the various gates along the way had all been bent and buckled by being crashed into by vehicles with their breaks failing so it was good to have someone experienced with me to take on that drive for my first time, I got stuck once where even in 4x4 mode my tyres just skidded but he advised how how to get through that 😉  I'm not an experienced off road driver.

I learnt plenty and saw a whole lot of new detectable ground that I could experiment with in the future, a little more confident to take on the drive myself now, in the right weather as long as there has been no rain for quite a while as I would get stuck 😛

It was nice to get out of the mid summer heat and go cool off in some snow too.

There is a town down there, can barely see it.

This is Jw that found the 3 bits of gold with his 6000 and 10x5" in the thyme bushes.  My 10" round would have struggled in that area anyway, I'd have to put on the Sadie.

[phrunt]

Unfortunately, good targets like coins shoot up the mineralization meters too.  I didn't notice it with pellets as they're too small to shoot up the meters, but larger targets like coins do.