Well it absolutely hammered down rain here all day today so I was watching out the window for a break for most of the morning, after a Bollow (my dog) gave me the nod that it was time to head out bush we set off in the rain. It only stopped raining for an hour and i was determined to compare the the 14 x 7 NF, 11 " minelab and 14 " coiltek elite mono's.
As i didnt have the time to wander around looking for targets a controlled test it was.
to make it fair i did a full factory reset and tested with defaults in deep and general, dd first.
1 gram - the Coiltek and the NF both beat the minelab in deep by 2-3 cm but in general the NF beat the others by 2 cm which i attribute to the NF's clear crisp signal response.
15 gram - Hands down Coiltek flogged the others in both settings, in deep by 10cm and general 5cm. Second was NF by 3cm over the minelab in deep. Nothing surprising here with the coiltek being 14 " 25% is a reasonable gain for the additional 10 inches in circumference in the windings.
0.11 gram - Minelab won this one by only 1 cm in general but in deep Coiltek by 1cm over minelab and NF last.
0.03 gram - Coiltek would not respond to this piece at all, minelab and NF both had a solid signal at 1cm that would pull you up.
These results were not overly exciting , what i did find was that the nugget Finder response was a lot sharper and i'm sure this is why it seems to be the preferred coil for heavily mineralised ground that we get in the Golden triangle.
At this stage i wasn't overly excited by the Coiltek but after changing up to my preferred settings with the 4500 in enhanced boy was there a notable difference.
What i did find was that the left side of the Coiltek elite was supremely more sensitive than the rest of the coil and going through each target i was impressed at its consistency. the 15 gram piece was now sounding off with a good "woohoo" at 55-60cm and for me if i can hear a 15 gram at 60cm and still hear a .1 gram at 3-4 cms with the same settings then i would say this is the best all rounder coil ive used.
The biggest downfall for me was the falsing which was alot worse yesterday when i was hopping over mullock heaps, today a little less still there when moving about. I think this may be due to the fact this coil has been passed around a bit and as a demo coil its probably not had the best treatment.
although a little reluctant i'm going to bite the bullet, i know coiltek after support is pretty good so i'm confident they will fix any issues should they arise.
I think between this coil and my 8" commander mono i wont carry any other coils in the field. fingers crossed i'll get a chance to hit some of my good spots once the rain dies down and i'll find out if its really as good as it seems.
It should be noted that controlled tests are rubbish compared to undug real world comparison so take this with a grain of salt but my believe is if there is advantage then there is advantage and adding in EMI, soil mineralisation and atmospherics will make a small advantage a much larger one.