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Gold at Last

A

Anonymous

Guest
Hi All,
Well, it took a while to get over my slump but I managed to find 3 gold nuggets with my pseudo Goldquest my latest trip to AZ.
The bragging rights are aligned with the smallest nugget that weighed in just a little over 1 grain. I really didn't expect my detector to be able to find a nugget that small since my experimenting with chunky nuggets in that weight range didn't seem to provide much of a response. However, this nugget is extremely thin and flat, making it appear larger, surface wise. The second nugget (actually, the first found) wasn't much larger weighing in about 3.5 grains and the third nugget is a gold/quartz combination weighing in at about 1/3 oz.
What was neat was a friend of mine, Bob Trower was there and took pictures of my detection of the smaller nugget. I had found the 3.5 grainer first and tracked down the others I was hunting with to let them know. Anyways, Bob followed me back with his camera while I scoured the ground for other nuggets. He managed to take pics (something I wasn't aware of at the time) when I got my signal from the smaller of the two nuggets found at this location. The little one was about 1" deep. Those pics won't be posted since they show just how fat I really am and I would probably not fit on a 17" monitor anyways. However, I hope to either post a pic of the nuggets or at least send one to Mr. Bill for posting.
While in AZ, I did get to take a few minutes to try a real GQ and compare it to my pseudo GQ, thanks to Seeker. I compared detectors and found them to be quite close sensitivity wise when my add-on sensitivity control was at minimum. The GQ would detect both of my smaller nuggets quite well.
I also got a chance to experiment with the autotune feature on the GQ and we found the best position seemed to be about mid position. Surprisingly, the signal from my small nugget seemed to be more distinct at that setting, while the ground signal seemed to diminish.
With the GQ autotune at mid position, the ground produced little response at the location we were, indicating the detector would work very well at this site. Since I had a more accurate feel for a real GQ, I can say there were places where I hunted previously, including where I found the nuggets, where the GQ would have worked very well.
There was one location I visited where the ground produced a much stronger signal even on my detector equipped with a DD coil. However, what seemed strange was, once the ground was extremely wet from the ever present rains for two days of my trip, the ground response seemed to dimish. Now, I never really did any specific testing between dry ground and wet ground, but it just seemed that the ground response changed a noticeable amount by the additional moisture. This may have been more psychological, but I don't think so. Maybe people will bring more information forward on this issue, now that I have mentioned it.
One final note that I brought up in an earlier answer to Frank Hamill, and that is, the GQ or my pseudo GQ doesn't seem to be affected by power lines. I was able to operate the detector with almost no noise as the result of the overhead lines while detecting directly below them. Now, these power lines are not the huge power lines that part of a main grid, but are the more typical lines found out in the remote areas. Even these type of lines seem to give some other PI's fits.
Reg
 
this is not a PI, so some different mechanism may be at work here. However let me say that last summers drought brought very few coins from my older spots but now that the ground is satuarated I can go back and rework the same areas and pick up some more coins. I'm always amazed at this. Let's see those pics!
 
Hi Jim,
I will try to get a pic of the nuggets sent to Mr. Bill and hopefully, he will post if for me. As for me, one of the joys of nugget hunting this trip was I managed to break two bones in my left foot my last day there. I tried to jump from one large rock to another but the rock I was jumping from flipped, trapping my foot while tossing me backwards. Fortunately, a cactus and a rock broke my fall, so my ribs and hand are a mess also. My foot and the rock had a good fight, but by the looks of it, my foot got the worse end of the fight.
Naturally, this fall happened about 1/2 mile down hill from my vehicle, so the jaunt back to the 4wd was a real joy. Ah, the joys of nuggethunting and what a guy will endure in the pursuit of gold.
I can hardly wait for my next trip next November. Hopefully, by then I will lose quite a bit of weight. At least then if I fall, it won't cause a deflection on the Richter scale, which I suspected my latest fall did.
In the meantime, I will just try to hop around on one foot while the other heals. Hopefully, this minor setback won't stop my experimenting. However, this one legged thing does make some of the basics of life much more challenging.
I have one problem with my DD coils and that is I am getting the microphonic type "boing" when my coil impacts a large rock. More work has to be done in that area to improve my detector. Outside of that, I am really please with how the PI detector perfomed overall.
For me, this last trip really proved the benefits of using a PI for nuggethunting. Overall, the detector was extremely quiet in areas where many of the rocks have given my VLF's fits. When I got even the slightest of signals, I knew it was almost always a metal target. Some of the basalt in the area would give a positive response, but such indications were quite easy to determine just by checking the signal strength when the coil was very close to the rock and checking it again with the coil elevated a little.
The basalt rock signal would dramatically diminish as the coil was elevated an inch or two. Also, the rock signal was always a much smoother and broader indication than a piece of metal.
Hopefully, this info about the response from basalt will be beneficial to those of you who plan on using a PI such as the GQ in the pursuit of gold. Anyway, it is worth experimenting to learn how to quickly eliminate the basalt problem. Now, it is on to finding a solution to discriminate the small pieces of iron such as parts of the old cans left by the early prospectors. This is one of the real big problems encountered that needs to be addressed. Once this hurdle is overcome, the PI will be the perfect or at least, near perfect, gold detector.
Reg
 
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