Makro Gold Racer +/- Rocks in VIC goldfields ?

Hi All,

I tested out my new Gold Racer in a Victorian Goldfield of Whroo/Rushworth last weekend. It was so full of mozzies it was unbelievable, even the general store had sold out so I had to duck into Mooroopna and stock up.

I've tried out the Gold Racer on general coin shooting in other areas and pulled out a couple of coins the Nokta FORS relic missed! so I have no problems with relic hunting as it really picks out the non- ferrous so I decided a trip out to the bush and try my luck and some small gold

After lathering myself in Aeroguard Tropical I just used the basic settings on start up in all metal ( I think Sen-65, Thresh-26, iSat-6) then Ground balanced which was around 84, with mineralisation around 70-80%. it varied in different areas but pretty much strong all weekend

It "woowooed" right across most areas with no ID on the screen when I crossed these rocks but when I hit a "hot rock" is was a definite "zip,zip" with an ID coming up. There were a few hot rocks but not enough to be annoying, it was the other which got to me.

I made many changes throughout the day with sensitivity, threshold, iSat but still pretty much the same so I'm not sure are you always going to get the "woowoo" when crossing - rocks in all metal? as it's rather annoying and you could miss the small gold...I am assuming even though there is no target ID, I don't mind hitting a hot rock as it has a target ID.

I then went to DISC1 mode, SEN-85, ID filter-01, Imask-01, tone break-0, this ran very smoothly over the ground and eliminated the "woowoo" of the negative rocks and gave a small "zip zip" when you hit a hot rock, this I played around with and changing back to all metal to test over different objects

I know it's not ideal to run in this mode as a small piece of gold may not even give an ID number, but until I figure it out or some one could tell me what I could be doing wrong in the all metal mode i might have to stay in DISC1 mode on Goldfields.

Out of interest I then went up to Beechworth yesterday and tried the all metal mode, the same thing but not as bad, the mineralisation was around 70, found a couple of hot rocks and a "woowoo" rock. Running in DISC 1 or 2 no problems

After watching Nenad Lonic video's and a couple of others, also wondering if they had the same problem

Any help or comments would be great.

Thanks
Mick

Hey Mick

You are doing nothing wrong in all metal mode. The issue with any VLF machine (especially in Victoria) is the amount of mineralisation/ironstone in the ground. This is why most serious gold hunters use a PI machine. Here in Victoria, we have some of the hottest ground in the world. Even my 7000 will make noises in extremely noisy ground.

The idea is to stay in all metal mode, drop the sensitivity a bit and swing a lot slower. Real slow. And forget looking for an ID number. Listen to the machine and dig all targets.

Hey Mick, is it the Red racer 2, I've been thinking I need on of them for the beach so it'll be good to see how you go with it

B5MECH said:

Hey Mick, is it the Red racer 2, I've been thinking I need on of them for the beach so it'll be good to see how you go with it

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Hi B5MECH

No it's the Makro Gold racer (56kHz). I hear they're no too good for the beach therefore I have my Nokta FORS Relic for that

Mick

I have a racer 2 and using it in 2 tone mode have had no troubles in central Victoria
with the gold racer may be try using it in disc one regards john

Ahh, I didn't read the gold and saw red instead :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
I hope it turns out to be a excellent machine
thanks Mick, Laurence

old hand said:

I have a racer 2 and using it in 2 tone mode have had no troubles in central Victoria
with the gold racer may be try using it in disc one regards john

Click to expand...

Yes, works well in Disc 1 and Disc 2

Yes, all-metal is more sensitive, so if you're in bad ground you will hear about it. In bad ground, Disc 1 is the go, and use as little ID filter as you can get away with. Sweep fairly slow as you do in all-metal, then when you think you may have something you can use a slightly faster sweep - anything repeatable dig.

I think in one of my videos you can see that Disc 2 (boost) gets a louder response even compared to all-metal, but the signal was a bit choppy. Disc 1 was more consistent and every bit as sharp as All-metal. So even though they are discrim modes, being able to turn the rejection down to zero right through the iron range, makes them highly effective. I've got a video I'll upload tonight showing the difference between smooth and slightly hot settings.

PhaseTech said:

I think in one of my videos you can see that Disc 2 (boost) gets a louder response even compared to all-metal, but the signal was a bit choppy. Disc 1 was more consistent and every bit as sharp as All-metal. So even though they are discrim modes, being able to turn the rejection down to zero right through the iron range, makes them highly effective. I've got a video I'll upload tonight showing the difference between smooth and slightly hot settings.

Click to expand...

Yes, I think it was the iSAT setting video.

It would be good for somebody to post a video of the detector in all metal mode going over hot ground ground for a few minutes and seeing/listening to the sounds and how to over come them rather than the last couple of seconds before they dig the target...anyway wishfull thinking I'm gathering SA, QLD, WA, NSW Goldfields would all have different mineralisation to Victoriatherefore the detector would work well in once state compared to others

Here's the vid.

[video=480,360]https://youtu.be/9hBBDqmCcNc[/video]

Thanks for the post Mick64. Nice to hear some news on the GR.
I got mine from Nenad a couple of months ago and haven't been out of the back yard yet.
But...I have found gold already. Yep. I found a men's gold ring, 18ct, 5 grams. I jumped up and down like a kid. I also got heaps of coins and junk.

I'm finally heading out to the triangle in 2 weeks for my first real crack at it. Can't wait to try it out and play with the settings.

Cheers.

SammyJ said:

Thanks for the post Mick64. Nice to hear some news on the GR.
I got mine from Nenad a couple of months ago and haven't been out of the back yard yet.
But...I have found gold already. Yep. I found a men's gold ring, 18ct, 5 grams. I jumped up and down like a kid. I also got heaps of coins and junk.

I'm finally heading out to the triangle in 2 weeks for my first real crack at it. Can't wait to try it out and play with the settings.

Cheers.

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Nice find, gold is gold , you'll have to let me know how you go in the VIC fields. I'm googling to see whats around the South Coast area in the way of nuggets, see how much different the soil is in NSW to VIC

PhaseTech said:

Here's the vid.

Click to expand...

What a great video for the gold racer showing how it runs over ground. That's what mine was doing last weekend so all is good. It was my first time in the gold fields with it. Now that I know, I feel more comfortable in learning the sounds rather than relying on the display. I might add that it was raining over the weekend I went down so the soil was pretty saturated.

Thank you for the video Nenad, nice job

Mick

When ever I find ground like that I ground balance the hot rocks out, You might want to try that, Or take a Ground reading on the meter and then take a reading of the rocks and then set your Ground balance somewhere between the two so the variation is not so different and you targets will be more pronounced,

hope that helps,

John.

Ridge Runner said:

When ever I find ground like that I ground balance the hot rocks out, You might want to try that, Or take a Ground reading on the meter and then take a reading of the rocks and then set your Ground balance somewhere between the two so the variation is not so different and you targets will be more pronounced,

hope that helps,

John.

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Thank you John it does help,
I tried to auto GB on some rocks, but being so small it was hard to GB on them so I just selected ground around them, I didn't think about a manual GB. So with a manual GB can I keep adjusting until the "woo woo" has just slightly disappeared?, would this effect the depth of targets at all?

Mick

Mick64 said:

Ridge Runner said:

When ever I find ground like that I ground balance the hot rocks out, You might want to try that, Or take a Ground reading on the meter and then take a reading of the rocks and then set your Ground balance somewhere between the two so the variation is not so different and you targets will be more pronounced,

hope that helps,

John.

Click to expand...

Thank you John it does help,
I tried to auto GB on some rocks, but being so small it was hard to GB on them so I just selected ground around them, I didn't think about a manual GB. So with a manual GB can I keep adjusting until the "woo woo" has just slightly disappeared?, would this effect the depth of targets at all?

Mick

Click to expand...

Well I can turn on my MXT and the GB will Auto set to 50 and I can lock it there or I can do the same and set it to 83 or just plain Auto GB, but heres what I noticed, at the standard set mode @50 Hot rocks howl like crazy but if I do it at 83 then the hot rocks are not so bad but if I ground balance them they come up at about 84 to 87 and they are gone, But the reason for me saying about those factory pre sets is because if you set yours up the same you will see the changes and there is one thing I have noticed and that is the Higher the GB setting The more sensitive the machine will be, "which" is why when you are in hot ground and the GB is way up high you can hear the ground noise.

To test this out, Set your GB halfway, (normal ground readings) and stick a tiny target to a ruler and set your gain as high as possible and wave the target in front of the Coil moving it further and further away until it stops upsetting the threshold and then set it to 83 and do the same and you will see that the signal is a lot stronger.

Test ONE, grab a Fridge Magnet and set the machines GB to 50 and wave the magnet in front of the coil and hear the way it sounds in different modes,

Then do the same with the GB set to 83,

Then Actually Ground Balance out the magnet with the machine laying on the ground Now stick a Tiny Piece of lead to the magnet, and when I say Tiny say something weighing around 0.05 grams or a 1/4 the size of a Match head and wave that in front of the Coil and you will see that the machine will still pick out the piece of Lead,

Fridge magnets are perfect for doing Hot Rock tests because they GB about the same and they have about the same amount of Iron in them and by messing with the GB you can work out the best GB setting to use when your out in the field.

A Hot rock only makes a sound because it has a different GB reading than the Ground it is on, This is not perfect but it will give you a better understanding on how to set up the GB of your machine. If the rocks are big enough GB on them If not then raise or lower your GB to suit, But running the GB Higher will make the machine more sensitive to tiny targets. Where this all goes Pear shaped is when you have Hot and Cold Rocks in the same place.

Hope this helps,

John.

PS, If you can find one of them hot rocks out in the field and they are too small to GB on then pick it up and lay the machine down with the coil at 90* to the ground and GB the rock while it is in your hand. Ok

Hi guys, after a good break from prospecting and the forum I recently purchased the Makro Gold Racer through Nenad after getting the itch back and went out to the Talbot area on Tuesday, the ground was reading around 54 on the lower mud areas in gullies to 86 on the diggings and would vary anywhere in between within a few meters, this was my first trip to the gold fields with this detector and I also had the warble of hot ground, negative boings of hotrocks everywhere and some repeatable positive signals which turned out to be red clay pockets or charcoal in wet or damp ground. I took a .08g flat piece of gold which I'd got from the creeks in Gippsland and used it for my test piece, I ran the settings in All Metal, Sensitivity at 65, Thresh at 26, iSat at 6, no tracking and it was unstable but I continually re-ground balanced every few meters, I had several times where I wasn't sure if I'd be able to detect a target if it was there due to the ground noise so I put my glass vial with the .08g on the hot ground and sure enough the coil gave a strong zip zip at about 2" with both the standard 10"dd and 7x4"dd so I was happy to keep running at those settings, I did try to adjust the Sens, Thresh and iSat but it wouldn't pick up my test piece on the ground. After seeing Nenads video on "more tips" I feel happy I persisted knowing the vlf would have a hard time of it on hot ground, funny thing is it didn't bother me as much as my Whites TDI SL used to in hot ground with it's mods, it was a pig to run but maybe I had my settings all wrong for that machine, I love the Makro Gold Racer and although I didn't find any gold this trip I'm keep to get back out for a 3 day trip in the next few weeks to give it a serious run and being more confident it will fond gold if I get the coil over it at the right depth.

We were meant to camp out but got smashed by mozzies so came home that afternoon, I located a good puddler I'd been searching for and it was full of iron trash, if the mozzies weren't so bad I would of spent an hour or two cleaning out the rubbish to hopefully snag my first piece of detected gold, maybe next trip.
I'll post a couple of picks tonight when I get home of the puddler and dammed off gully next to it where they processed all the alluvial workings in the area.

Cheers, Pete.

PS: It's good to be back on the forum and a big thanks to Nenad (Phase Technical) for giving me the itch back with those videos on the Gold Racer in the field.

They will put out an unmissable positive signal even when the hot ground is warbling away.You will find gold for sure.I also have a whites tdi modified,nearly always leave it at home now.

I researched this location on Monday night on google to get the history of the working as the wife, dogs and I have camped there 3 times before but not detected, I knew it has reef workings up on the hills and shallow alluvial workings in the gully's as well as a big mullock heap on the upper side of the dammed gully, the research said there was a battery site in the gully, 8 head stamper and whim platforms etc, most has been flattened by bulldozers but there is still some open shafts and apparently they went to 300ft with good gold recovery all the way down.




Here is the dammed gully looking from the edge of the puddler, the dam wall is breached in the middle with shallow workings for a fair way up and down this gully, the battery site and big mullock heap (20-25 meters high) are on the upper part of the dam, we camp right next to the mullock heap.


Here's my little .08g test piece, just put the vial on the hot ground and adjust the setting until you get the best response, it kept me confident to stick with the settings I had even if the ground was noisy.


Anyways, sorry for the derail of this thread but keen to head back out there for 3 days detecting to give it a proper go when the mozzies settle down a bit, if any other Makro Gold Racer user is keen to try out or learn on some mixed ground let me know and we'll work out a weekend before Christmas, there's at least 5-6 gully's with shallow workings at the bottom and deeper reef workings on top of the hills all within walking distance, not guaranteeing there'll be gold but there should be something left to find.
Maybe we can learn more together out in the field if anyone's keep to do so.

A health warning has just come out warning about all the mozzies in VIC, be careful and lookout for symptoms of Murray Valley Encephalitis, Bahmah Forest Virus and Ross River Virus. MVE is the deadly one.

So be careful everyone.