Looking at F5 specs

[robert roy]

Was at Mr.Bills post looking at the F5 specs. Says its good
for casual gold prospecting. Now would someone explain just what
"casual gold prospecting" means? I suspect it might refer
to the size gugget this machine will target. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Robert R

 

[Mike Hillis]

If you are going to spend much of your time coin or relic or beach hunting and maybe once in a great while get to go do a little prospecting, then Fisher is saying that this machine will meet your need.

You can detect gold nuggets the same size as the smallest metal item your detector report on. The only concern is how deep the ground mineral signal will allow you to go for a certain size item.

Mike

 

[alaskaseeker]

The F5 will do OK. One of my first nugget hunting detectors those many years ago was a Big Bud Pro that I used with the Tk mk1 7.25" coil. I did ok with this detector even tho the GB contol was less then a turn. The Freqs are close with the 5 being a little higher but the options the 5 have put it on a different level. Would I use one, sure I would, theres a lot of places you will do well, will it pick up pieces as small as some of the dedicated units will probably not and I'm not going to buy one to find out because I use a GPX 4000 to hunt with. Having said all of that I do have a 75 that I took to the UK last fall and did well with it and it goes with me where ever and I have a hunch I will find a piece of gold with it this summer as I am going to put it to the test in a place or two. I think the 5 would give the MXT a run for its money at Ganes but the ground minerals are not that severe there and you would do well with a lot of VLF's, in fact I did find some nice gold in the next valley over from Ganes with a beatup Tesoro Bandido Micromax. I can think of a couple of places where I would not even attempt to use a VLF as I did years ago, the matrix is so bad it was disastrous...In the 80's we used what we had to, but now the situation is very different . As always researching the mining in an area you are interested in willd etermine how you want to hunt for the metal some places a detector will do nothing for you. When reading the reports for an area you are looking for buzz words such as nuggets, nuggety, coarse, shot, heavy, there are probably more but these come to mind now and they are descriptions of gold that is very detectable by electronic means.......Good Hunting Geo

 

[Cal_Cobra]

I'm thinking the F70 could be a decent VLF nugget shooter with it's higher frequency, to hit the smaller stuff the F5 wouldn't get. The way I see it the F70 is going to be a MXT killer, which is the market I suspect their targeting.

It's too bad they can't come up with a machine that had a switch to set it at say 3Khz, 15Khz or 70Khz, or even let it cycle between them all, but I guess you'd have a Minelab Explorer if you went that route.

 

[robert roy]

Where would you NOT use it?
Robert R

 

[alaskaseeker]

Petersville area, some places on Moore creek are very hot a VLF has no chance .Middle Fork area of the Chistochina.........Geo

 

[robert roy]

Well...yes. I understand that. I just mean it sounded so obvious to me that I thought they might have had something else in mind they were trying to convey.
Robert R

 

[vlad]

The word casual can be interpreted many ways-I suspect they were trying to convey a general all purpose detector. If it has a small DD loop it should give satisfactory performance, IF the ground balance is wide ranging enough. As to frequency there is a trade-off: while higher frequencies respond better to the low conductors, the harsh ground minerals kills the penetration.
When Whites came out with the Coin Master-5 at 3VF it opened up whole new areas that the high frequency TR/BFOs could not hunt-including prospecting.

 

[robert roy]

Thats makes sense to me.
There are some days EVERYthings makes sense.


Regards
RR