Hot Rocks and Tin Foil

RR. I always take my 1 gram nugget with me whilst out detecting and play around with different modes,and how they react in different levels of mineralisation. I threw away all the tin foil found that was manufactured at the end of the 19th century, so next time I dig it up I will lay it on the ground and get the ID number.
I consulted the Impact manual (no need to contact the manufacturer) and it describes how to deal with this problem in detail. You first select Notch Filter and set the range on the horizontal bar (0-100 and on top of the menu screen) with the cursor by using the + and - buttons ,then press select. The range can be say -5 to +5 on either side of the ID number. The detector will then either reject any audio signals in that range or can be set to give an iron tone. I will also get the gold ID and make sure that the range set in the Notch Filter does not overlap. As I only use the 20 Khz frequency all I have to do is save the settings.Changing the frequency or mode, you would have to set the Notch Filter again.

Well I don't know where Rob has got to but I hope he is giving them settings a workout In that site and with a bit of luck he might even have a Nugget or Two to show us ?

Hope so, Good luck out there Rob :Y:

Thanks RR. I haven't taken the Impact on an outing since October,but yesterday during the Easter break we went to a picnic/camping area near Mt. Alexander to look for coins but in the first 20 minutes found only pieces of foil and gave up as it was too hot for me. I however got the ID number of 18 and it was the same for every bit of foil found,which was surprising.
Using this I set the lower notch filter to 13 and the top to 23-it took me 20 seconds to do and a row of small black lines showed up on the horizontal bar scale( at the top of the menu screen) in the range which I had just set.This masked out all the foil on the ground I had previously dug up and the notch filter is a great way to ignore any signals coming from foil in the future,and this will save me a lot of useless digging on the goldfields and everywhere else.
The same procedure can be used to snuff out any unwanted annoying rubbish like say .22 shell casings,however any notch filter range would have to be well apart from the ID of the object you searching for. In the case of gold nuggets,the ID is in the 30,s in the DI3 mode and well away from the range set for the foil.
As far as an iron oxide coated gold nugget scenario goes, I would expect you would get a simultaneous low and high signal together with the Impact.I got the same signal yesterday with iron and foil sitting together in the same hole.

.

Ship of fools. in very highly mineralised ground which you get in Vic,s GT and which in some places borders on near extreme, usually the LF machines which work in 50-70 Khz have a hard time ground balancing. Manufacturers call these machines the Gold Bug,Racer Gold and Gold Monster and which I find very amusing. They are however very good at finding very small bits of gold in low/medium mineralised soil as you get in the USA and some places in Victoria.One VLF machine which I wont mention for fear of repercussions works very well all areas of the GT and even has 5 and 7 inch coils for the smaller gold which are reputed to punch very deep for their size, but these coils are very slow in covering a decent area.For this machine it would be advantageous to fit a 40 cm coil to cover virgin ground a lot quicker and seek out larger and deeper nuggets.
Reducing the frequency,gain and size of a coil will make any particular VLF detector more stable in the soils mentioned.

Gotta love the Deus! Are you running an HF coil ? 77Khz = super sensitive to the small stuff, Run in All metal Mode ie Program 10.... dig everything that catches your ear, keep an eye on your mineralisation bar, if you get a signal and it's 40% or higher theres a good chance its mineralisation..... i'm still learning but i hope this helps. You can't notch out conductivity targets without reducing your chances, I run in Program 10 and if the ground is really volatile i'll use tracking until i hit a target then back to manual until you isolate it.

Cheers Graeme

oldtimerROB said:

Whilst gold prospecting in the Golden Triangle I have encountered a lot of degraded tin foil at the head of gold bearing gullies where nuggets were found-usually next to surfaced areas where the diggers set up camp.__________>8-------------------->8___________Have a 2,3 and 4 tone discriminating modes on my detector so there should be some way to mask the tin.I have not seen tin mentioned in my manual or how to mask it with the various tones.

If anyone has solved this problem I would be obliged to hear about it as the prospecting season is not far away.

Click to expand...

Impact is a VLF and not a HF like yours.I was on a hill at Goldsborough yesterday trying to test the Impact to its limits,and it finally succumbed to the feared volcano. No tin foil there but lots of false signals.No problem with ground balancing. Running on DI3,DEEP and COG at 20 Khz and came up against an even bigger problem-got false signals.Dug down 18 inches and the signal had moved or split up.The ground is really hot with lots of anomalies which cause the detector to overload every few feet and COG mode was affected just as the other modes. This hill pushes VLF detectors to their absolute limits.Nokta take note-HELP. Trying to find deeper and larger nuggets than with the All Metal Mode with which I had previously found nuggets on this hill with a Whites but does not go deep-around 6 inches.No ID,s with those false signals. Min.Meter well above 40% more like 80-90%. In future will try a new tack-raise Isat to 8 from 3 presently and may help with the falsing, or even lowering the frequency to 14 or even 5, as I have that option.Any option up for grabs as this is desperate! Went to a reef afterwards and between the heaps found a small bit of solid gold about 0.5 gram in All Metal Mode as it is really sensitive to small shallow gold at 20 Khz.Tried DI2 and it seemed better than DI3 in the low tone for identifying nails,but no large and deep nuggets found there .When that reef was first discovered there would have been nuggets lying all around even on the surface.

oldtimerROB said:

Went to a reef afterwards and between the heaps found a small bit of solid gold about 0.5 gram in All Metal Mode as it is really sensitive to small shallow gold at 20 Khz.Tried DI2 and it seemed better than DI3 in the low tone for identifying nails,but no large and deep nuggets found there .When that reef was first discovered there would have been nuggets lying all around even on the surface.

Click to expand...

So where are the pictures of this Nugget ?

I sold the two nuggets from the hill 35 years ago at $10 a gram.Initial offer from the Melbourne jeweler was only $8 a gram.I lost my camera cable somewhere in the house and so cannot post photos on the forum.

Madtuna. Impact p#$@es on all others when in the Golden Triangle. I dare you to take the p#$% out of that one, :lol:

Woop woop the first OTR gold nugget on the Impact arty: arty:
The Minelab blokes will be looking over their shoulders now.

(PS OTR, I got my Monster 3 weeks ago and the nuggets already weigh in combined over double digits but may the gold gods bless your soul son.) 8.(

oldtimerROB said:

Madtuna. Impact p#$%es on all others when in the Golden Triangle. I dare you to take the p#$% out of that one, :lol:

Click to expand...

Well If that be the case, Then for the life of me I can't work out why all these other Guys are finding Gold and your not ?.

Maybe it's time for you to join a prospecting Club and find out where your going wrong, With a detector that is that good No Nuggets should be safe,

Personally I think that operator error is a major factor and that is an easy fix, The rest is down to research of the local areas, This machine has sniffed out every hot rock and lump of lead big enough to say "Hi" to the coil in a 500k radius so I think you need a new plan of attack.

No more cynical BS.I will only respond to technical reports about VLF,s and not HF machines which cant handle the anomalies found on hills in my exclusive area of operations. If you cant write a constructive comment you should not be allowed on any forum.It is the fault of the administrator that this forum has so many bullies spoiling the whole experience of joining a forum.

Should I bring the Monster? Shoot out, Impact vs The Rest? I have time available.

oldtimerROB said:

No more cynical BS.I will only respond to technical reports about VLF,s and not HF machines which cant handle the anomalies found on hills in my exclusive area of operations. If you cant write a constructive comment you should not be allowed on any forum.It is the fault of the administrator that this forum has so many bullies spoiling the whole experience of joining a forum.

Click to expand...

I don't see anyone bullying you, and you can't blame the admin, Any backlash lies at your feet, You have made some wild claims to hardened/seasoned prospectors regarding how wonderful your Impact is and how it is better than any other detector including PI machines and every Gold Proven VLF on the market, This bagging of other machines has been going on for over a year now and in that time you have not found 0.001 grams of Gold yet all those machines you have bagged are finding Gold in the 4 corners of the Globe,

If you want to find Gold then you need to listen to those who know, Your Impact can do the job as well as any VLF so your lack of success is more a case of operational error, Your "Know All" attitude is holding you back, You are never going to find any Gold because you won't listen and people won't bother to help you, the only way you might find Gold is purely by accident, so don't bother putting the blame on the admin or other members because they have all tried to help you but you think you know best, but the point is they are finding Gold and your not, So good luck,

Ridge is spot on OTR, you came out thrashing and shouting and headbutting scaring off any one with a general interest. You flipped over on Ridge, bagged out several models of detector and then found next to nothing.Geez you even talked about your issues in another forum prior! If you can't see all the chances you had to laugh along, to perhaps learn a little more, or to be open minded about performance, then it's not the administration's issue mate, it's yours.

I had one of my direct reports complain about my management and I asked him what he would change, trying to give him a chance. After telling me he didn't like any of his managers in the last 40 years of working, well you just know you aren't going to reach some people. You, like him, can't realise it's possibly your approach thats causing it , not others, not administration. Relax and have a laugh at yourself once in a while Rob.

It's just gold and machines buddy, why so serious?

I fell victim to the professional pot stirrers early on 12 months ago and it has not let up ever since.It started because I used some colourful language early on so whats so wrong about it between us blokes and I cannot see for the life of me why I was singled out for such abusive language by some members and very harsh treatment by the admin.
Thanks for the offer Old GT for the shootout but due to health problems I haven't been out detecting the last 6 weeks and I wont be going again as I am going to Belarus for the next 3 years.This winter I had to go out by myself and camp out overnight.It is also too dangerous as I loose my balance a lot and nearly fell over on a ridge. I still genuinely believe the Gold monster and Gold Racer cant handle the harsh conditions found at Dunolly on the hills and are best used for combing the stream gravel beds or goldfields of low/medium mineralisation.The GPX 4500 does not identify hot rocks and tin foil and it would be no good for me cos I really struggle bending down and having to dig them all up.I was severely criticized by one member for bringing my wife out detecting last winter in the cold and he used insulting language as well.I have to detect with a walking stick and need her to carry around the pick and scoop as I cant carry all,and I was really gutted from this criticism and they were picking on an invalid and admin was criticising me for defending myself from the insulting language.Well I hope they are proud of themselves. We had to carry around and pitch a 22 kg. heavy canvas tent and all the equipment and tables and it gave me a lot of pain.I even bought a wooden walking stick from India but the handle broke off after only 2 hours detecting.Luckily I bought a very sturdy plastic one from Belarus. The Impact is extremely good in the very high mineralisation found in the GT but as I wrote in the extreme conditions on this hill i am convinced it gave me some false signals and I wasted a whole day digging two holes 20 inches deep in the rock.I have not changed the standard settings to compensate but on second thought I should have used the COG mode there or tried to alter the isat,disc. and gain. No one has given me any advice or help but again I copped a lot of criticism. I was looking for larger nuggets of 12 grams and over to show my adopted son and daughter in Belarus cos they have never seen natural gold and are very interested. The son 27 years old is very interested in Australian Outback culture and wants to come here detecting for 3 months.I bought him a black akubra hat and he is very proud of it and wears it everywhere.
In the future we plan to come back and buy a small caravan and fit a wood stove and travel and camp on the goldfields full time. Yes it is very serious stuff and I might not survive it, but I believe in doing the extreme things in life and to follow our dreams,as sitting in a nursing home I would degenerate and die a lot sooner.We may even go to the West to try and find a patch by the grace of the detecting gods who look down on us.

The concept of the GP/GPX series was for them to ignore hot rocks and not ID them and ignore bad ground, If the 4500 does not ID hot rocks then it is working correctly which cuts down lost time digging false targets, One of the biggest problems with a VLF is that they do ID hot rocks, there is a couple of ways to deal with them when using a VLF and that is to either set the machine up so it does ID them correctly or Ground balance them out which then requires very exact coil control because the detector would no longer be ground balanced to the ground so maintaining the exact coil height becomes very hard to do because of having to raise and lower the coil over other rocks and uneven ground which will cause many false signals,

Modern VLF detectors from the last 15/20 years +/- have lost the ability to ignore Hot Rocks where as the older machines could GB them out to some degree but with a minor adjustment of the DISC the older machines could make the all but vanish, The newer machines can GB them out to a degree but they will still give a soft false signal on hot rocks, Newer machines have better recovery and separation which everyone has become preoccupied with but when it comes to hot rocks they just don't cut it,

Well good luck out there OTR hope it all works out and you find the big one.Stay safe and good on you for not giving up and going to that nursing home. :Y:

Hey Rob, hope you feel better soon. Keep at it as best you can. :Y:

Thanks guys for your encouraging words.I was house bound the last 6 weeks with a sore back but now getting better after digging that deep hole on the hill at Dunolly which at 20 inches depth the blessed signal was still there in the rock but had moved and split into two signals and I concluded it was a false signal although it was a good sharp signal and not ground noise.The all metal mode could not pick up that signal before and after I dug that hole. I had found another signal identical to it in rock about 30 meters apart and dug down 12 inches and after the deep hole I had dug decided to leave it be.I had gone to Bunnings and got a 2.2 kg pick especially for that hole and even with the large pick 20 inches is about my limit given I had a heart attack 6 years ago and with my scoliosis.The pick is very good value at $20 and is a green Saxon pick with a sharp pick end and a chisel end on the other and ideal for hard ground.It also feels light due to the plastic handle and once you bang in the pick on the Bunnings car park tarmac it doesn't move like you get with wooden handles.
After we get back from Belarus in 2021 and with a caravan, we decided to bum around the Eyre Peninsula coast for the rest of the summer surf fishing and then head for the Coolgardie goldfields to try our luck..