Algoforce At The Beach

[phrunt]

This posts a bit of a waste of time but any information is better than nothing.  The coast has had pretty bad weather for a while now, today was meant to be a break in the weather and it was nice and sunny at home when I woke up so I thought I'd try take the Algoforce to the beach and try it out, I was going to be in the area anyway as my dentist is near to this beach and I had an appointment, seeing it's over an hour's drive each way to my dentist I figured it's a good opportunity to kill two birds with one stone and hit the beach before the appointment.

Half way to the beach the wind picked up, the sky was grey and it was raining, great! I'd not want to live on the South coast of NZ, it's sure got some weather issues, drive inland an hour and you're in a vastly different climate.  It doesn't help some storm from Antartica is sweeping over our island over the coming days either, so I'll have to try the beach again another day.

I did film a small video while there, I dug a hole in the sand and put a $1 coin at the depth the Equinox started to lose the target, if I went much deeper the Equinox didn't pick it up at all, I was worried when I backfilled the hole the Nox may lose it but it kept the target, it was up averaging the ID's a lot, it should ID the coin flicking between 21 and 22.

The Algo at that depth gave a near perfect ID on the coin which should be 66 according to an air test, I also experimented before backfilling the hole with the coin in there and the Algoforce was picking up the coin with a target signal deeper than the Equinox would.  The Algoforce does lose the Target ID's at some point in depth when it still had the target signal.  From this little experiment I've worked out on this beach at least I would be able to ID this coin much more accurately and deeper than the Equinox 800 can in the settings I was in, which was Beach 1, all defaults, ground balanced and 24 sensitivity. I didn't play around a lot as it was only about 5 minutes after I jumped in my car to leave the heavy rain kicked in.

I did briefly take the Algo down to the salt water and have a try at ground balancing and it worked fine, this was all with the 10" Spiral X-coil, my most sensitive to small targets GPX coil so I was quite happy about that.

The tide was right out so I didn't go all the way to the water to dunk the coil, It was too cold.

I only didn't take my Manticore to check against it as when I went to grab it I had left the M8 coil on it and was in a rush to get out of the door so I couldn't be bothered trying to find the other coil and fitting it, so the Nox got the job 🙂  I think the Manticore would have done better than the Nox.  Pure estimate, the coin was about 20 cm deep. (8 inches)

The Beach does have some black sand, not ridiculous like some beaches around NZ, but still enough to cause a bit of havoc with VLFs.

Here's the Video, I've kept it unlisted on Youtube as it's not very good and doesn't give all that much information but the best I could do given the circumstances.

I'll try again on a nicer day when I have more time.  I'm also kicking myself I didn't dig the target I found when in the wet sand, it could have been a ring, the right ID range, I was talking myself out of it as I would have had to go to the car and get the shovel and I just wanted to leave 😉

This is the weather I was dealing with; it's meant to get worse over the coming days and all the purple area is going to be snow, blue is cold air.  Red and yellow are the warmer air.  I'm guessing the maroon colour over Australia is the crazy hot air, we don't get that here 😛

 

[Guys gold]

Thanks for taking the time.

[Bootscrape]

Thanks for posting that Simon.... it concurs with my impressions of the Algo on the beach. It will be able to get some good depth with a good 12 to 15 inch coil. Not a bad comparison with the bigger stock 11” Nox coil. I’m thinking of investing in a 12” Evo for beach duties as well as + gram deeper nuggies.

A different colour scheme, but you can see the hot conditions we’re enduring in Oz.

https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=-216.43,-24.91,755

btw, the link above will show the weather conditions in real time, so will have changed since I posted.

[Tony]

Invercargill??......I was there when I was backpacking in the mid 80's. I can remember hitchhiking that way and the old gent who picked me up asked if I was lost and if I actually wanted to go there 🤪

It was late July and the weather was something else I can tell you.

I found a nice warm bar and an even nicer Kiwi girl 😍

[GB_Amateur]

On 3/12/2024 at 11:09 PM, phrunt said:

The Beach does have some black sand, not ridiculous like some beaches around NZ, but still enough to cause a bit of havoc with VLFs.

Assuming it's magnetite, isn't this analogous to saying "oh, I got bit by a poisonous snake, but just some swelling, pain, high fever, and vomiting,... not ridiculous"?

When you were swinging while no targets were under the coil there appeared 02 and 03 on the screen.  What does that mean?  And has anyone figured out, concluded, been told whether the TID in pinpoint mode is or isn't from a true IB process, making this a hybrid detector?

Thanks for the vid and report.  Snow before the Autumnal Equinox?  Sounds like the northern part of our North American continent!  I've experienced snow (flurries) on 1st Sept. in Northern Manitoba, and I was headed (far) South the next day!

[phrunt]

1 hour ago, GB_Amateur said:

Assuming it's magnetite, isn't this analogous to saying "oh, I got bit by a poisonous snake, but just some swelling, pain, high fever, and vomiting,... not ridiculous"?

When you were swinging while no targets were under the coil there appeared 02 and 03 on the screen.  What does that mean?  And has anyone figured out, concluded, been told whether the TID in pinpoint mode is or isn't from a true IB process, making this a hybrid detector?

Thanks for the vid and report.  Snow before the Autumnal Equinox?  Sounds like the northern part of our North American continent!  I've experienced snow (flurries) on 1st Sept. in Northern Manitoba, and I was headed (far) South the next day!

The Id on the screen when swinging is the ground minerilization, so if you're heading out of balance the bars next to it go up and that number increases, as you can see, I was well balanced.

NZ has a lot of pure black sand beaches where a VLF is lucky to get an inch on a coin, this one just has it scattered around and it usually forms in wave lines from the tides, and yes, it's magnetic.  The tide goes right up to where I was standing up near the top of the beach, it's a really shallow beach, you can go a very long way out and it still be shallow.  They mine the stuff out of some of the beaches that have the larger quantities of black sand, they'd mine them all if the government would allow it 🙂  Not far up the road from this one there is a beach with more black sand than this one where people sluice gold from the sand, have claims on it and all.

We can get snow all year around, and often do, it snows on the mountains regularly in summer and this summer it did snow often on the mountains, but it doesn't normally reach ground level until about about now, and it hit ground level in a few places yesterday.  We don't have high elevation towns, all people tend to live well under 1000 meters, (3200 feet) so snow isn't overly a problem outside of some days here and there in winter.

The bad beaches don't just have it in pockets like this one, all they mostly have is black sand.

[Rivers rat]

thanks for the vid can wait for a proper (long) hunt

 

 

RR