Falcon MD-20 Gold Tracker

[salmonriverhotrock]

Last summer, I picked up a Falcon MD-20 from a well known dealer in Alaska who had a limited number on hand marked down so there was the excuse to treat myself to one. My area of Idaho has historically been panned, sluiced, and dredged very hard and the locations not under claim are mostly known for Flour or Micro Gold but I have yet to find any in pocket form or any abundance. I have done some bed rock and various other locations with my White's V-SAT Gold Master and it does hit on very tiny lead bird shot but have yet to find a nugget let alone a picker. We do however have a lot of quartz in veins through all kinds of rock but again, I have never found anything but see now and then others chipping and digging away at the same.

The Falcon MD-20 though will detect very tiny gold and so was why I bought one for checking pan classified and other rock. On real Gold samples, this machine responds just as the manufacturer describes it's response. The interesting part is, on some rock I sampled that responded positive, after crushing and panning it out, no visible metallic and to my surprise, no response at all. I re-panned the captured water and material and with Jet-Dry but still had the same results. The remaining like un-crushed rock, I can move the probe towards it at certain spots like what I crushed and it sounds. Pulling it away, no sound so this one has me puzzled. I do know this will detect small amounts of Flour Gold in my vials where my V-SAT will not. By no means am I doubting what this machine will do but am curious if anyone else has encountered this with the MD-10 or MD-20? With the stinking low life Federals shutting down recreation dredging and withdrawing our lands from us prospecting around here, I figured this machine would not be as high profile in electronic prospecting as swinging a detector and could plead I'm Rock Hounding. If anyone else out there has had some experience with a Falcon Gold Tracker, sure would enjoy hearing about it.

 

[Hoser John]

Is it run by a tr-vlf-or PI signal????John

 

[Dave J.]

It's an eddy current loss system (a principle often used in "pinpointers" and security wands), running at (as I recall) 300 kHz. And will find tiny gold up close. However it's not entirely immune to the effects of magnetic iron minerals and will respond to electrically conductive sulfide etc. ores.

 

[salmonriverhotrock]

John, I honestly have no idea what principles this machine operates on, just have not found any Data on the specifics of the machine other than it is All Metal and operates at 300kHz. The probe end has a manual sliding copper band that is referred to as a "Copper Sensitivity Ring" that I assume alters the detection field so to be more or less concentrated and the machine does have an auto ground balance control and a on-off/sensitivity control.

 

[salmonriverhotrock]

Thanks Dave, I will have to take a look into this Eddy Current Loss concept. It looks to me then that physically crushing the rock diluted the sulfide concentration changing detection.

 

[calibil]

I have found that some small particles can be hot rocks or other non gold material , lead - silver that will sound off, try using a small magnet over the area and recheck. The unit is very sensative to the eaths electromagnetic atmosphere because of the 300khz

 

[snakejim]

The Falcons work pretty well in the desert when looking for a place to run a dry washer. They allow you to prospect without water. Use a large plastic gold pan with a large flat bottom, a screen about 20 mesh, and a magnet. Screen the dry material into the pan and then run the magnet over it to remove the magnetic black sand and iron trash. Shake the pan of material to get the heavies on the bottom. Next run the Falcon against the bottom of the pan from underneath. Inspect every signal as some might be bird shot or pieces of lead, etc. and not gold. Good luck!