Hi, my name is Ingrid and I am a Dutch woman and living in the Dominican Republic. I just received my first Minelab Xterra 705 Goldpack! And still figuring out how this is working. (English is not my mother tongue and some words are too technical for me to understand right away) . Why buy a metal detector? Some 20 years ago my partner was successfully looking for gold in the Cordillera Central, Dominican Republic using a dredge a.s.o. Due to his health he cannot stay in or under cold water anymore. So since there is an enormous alluvial gold belt in those mountains we thought of panning and detecting in old riverbeds. Hope to learn a lot of you all and maybe contribute to the forum myself one day!
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New user, Dominican Republic
- Thread starter Ingrid
- Start date
Welcome to our forum Ingrid!
Don't worry about the language barrier. I'd be willing to bet that my Dutch is far worse than your English.
If you have any questions, we will be happy to try to help. And we look forward to seeing whatever you find, as we don't hear much from your part of the globe.
Don't worry about the language barrier. I'd be willing to bet that my Dutch is far worse than your English.
If you have any questions, we will be happy to try to help. And we look forward to seeing whatever you find, as we don't hear much from your part of the globe.
!
7centsworth
Well-known member
Welcome to the forum. I look forward to seeing what you find.
Thank you all! What a warm welcome! We are still "playing" with our new Minelab X Terra 705 goldpack and doing our best to figure out the numerous possibilities. That alone, my new friends, is a hell of a job. We are going to use it on heavily mineralised soil.
The area we focus on is a remote area in the Cordillera Central of the Dominican Republic. Beatifull nature with a lot of creeks and rivers. The distance is only 75 miles but it takes us about three hours to get there. We do a lot of homework with google earth. This mountain range is the result of two tectonic plates colliding.
Yesterday we went there for the second time and it seems to be a good spot. Dark red soil and quartz rocks as big as a house. Each pan we washed had a thick layer of black sand left with 3 to 8 colours. Tiny tiny but give me a bucket full of these! We noticed deserted old holes and we overheard the locals. Several 1" to 2" nuggets were found in old dryed out riverbeds. We had to believe them because the price these people got for their nuggets was in accordance with the nuggets size they were talking about.
So:
Red soil, quartz, mineralised, early findings, gold carrying river with nice meandering. The most important thing now is how to adjust the sensibility to the mineralised environment. Or am I wrong? Working on 5 it keeps on screaming but at the other hand I don' t wanna miss any nuggets or flakes. Do you have any suggestions or is it now a question of putting each time a higher number and digging everything until all rubbish is excluded?
I appreciate your comments!
The area we focus on is a remote area in the Cordillera Central of the Dominican Republic. Beatifull nature with a lot of creeks and rivers. The distance is only 75 miles but it takes us about three hours to get there. We do a lot of homework with google earth. This mountain range is the result of two tectonic plates colliding.
Yesterday we went there for the second time and it seems to be a good spot. Dark red soil and quartz rocks as big as a house. Each pan we washed had a thick layer of black sand left with 3 to 8 colours. Tiny tiny but give me a bucket full of these! We noticed deserted old holes and we overheard the locals. Several 1" to 2" nuggets were found in old dryed out riverbeds. We had to believe them because the price these people got for their nuggets was in accordance with the nuggets size they were talking about.
So:
Red soil, quartz, mineralised, early findings, gold carrying river with nice meandering. The most important thing now is how to adjust the sensibility to the mineralised environment. Or am I wrong? Working on 5 it keeps on screaming but at the other hand I don' t wanna miss any nuggets or flakes. Do you have any suggestions or is it now a question of putting each time a higher number and digging everything until all rubbish is excluded?
I appreciate your comments!
What sort of "rubbish" do you encounter? It may not be possible to discriminate it all out.
I assume that when you mention "5" you're referring to your Iron Mask setting? If so, you should know that t will not eliminate non-ferrous targets of any size, but the higher the number the more likely you are to miss flakes and tiny pickers. I would recommend that you experiment with various small gold to actually see how it will perform as you increase the Iron Mask in your soil conditions.
I assume that when you mention "5" you're referring to your Iron Mask setting? If so, you should know that t will not eliminate non-ferrous targets of any size, but the higher the number the more likely you are to miss flakes and tiny pickers. I would recommend that you experiment with various small gold to actually see how it will perform as you increase the Iron Mask in your soil conditions.
Thank you Old Longhair!
The rubbish I was talking about is garbage. We are panning way up in the mountains but with the detector there is always a possibility that someone lived upstream or had a shag over there. Locals here are used to throw their garbage over the fence or worse into the river. It is still a third world country with hardly any sence of environmental issues. So at first I was all day digging alu foil, nails etcetera. It drove me crazy. I decided to not take the detector with me into the mountains again till I got used to it and to practice some closer to my house on a more or less clean field.
I take several items with me and practice for hours each day. I find that more satisfying than reading the users guide over and over again. Even the ebook was more instructive on coin and treasure hunting than on gold prospecting. Besides that we do not have the same situation here as in Australia or Nevada.
I now know how to reset all programs and how to exclude several ferrous metals. Tomorrow I will practice with flakes, tiny pickers and nuggets and will follow your advice. When I think I recognize the sounds well enough I will take the same gold back to the mountains to use that in the very heavely mineralised soil over there.
I defenitely will not give up! And with your advice I have the best support a golddigger can whish for!
The rubbish I was talking about is garbage. We are panning way up in the mountains but with the detector there is always a possibility that someone lived upstream or had a shag over there. Locals here are used to throw their garbage over the fence or worse into the river. It is still a third world country with hardly any sence of environmental issues. So at first I was all day digging alu foil, nails etcetera. It drove me crazy. I decided to not take the detector with me into the mountains again till I got used to it and to practice some closer to my house on a more or less clean field.
I take several items with me and practice for hours each day. I find that more satisfying than reading the users guide over and over again. Even the ebook was more instructive on coin and treasure hunting than on gold prospecting. Besides that we do not have the same situation here as in Australia or Nevada.
I now know how to reset all programs and how to exclude several ferrous metals. Tomorrow I will practice with flakes, tiny pickers and nuggets and will follow your advice. When I think I recognize the sounds well enough I will take the same gold back to the mountains to use that in the very heavely mineralised soil over there.
I defenitely will not give up! And with your advice I have the best support a golddigger can whish for!
Another thing that you might want to try, is switching back to C/T Mode when you hit a non-ferrous target.
In that mode you have the benefit of multi-tones, tonal characteristics, and numerical ID that can all help differentiate good targets from bad.
In that mode you have the benefit of multi-tones, tonal characteristics, and numerical ID that can all help differentiate good targets from bad.
Ingrid, it sounds as if you know pretty well what you are doing...I wish you and your partner lots of fun and success. If you are trying to get "flakes" of gold to register on your detector, you may have to keep your detector in all metal mode. Discriminating out iron will also discriminate out very small gold (unfortunately). Keep "playing" with your detector, it is probably the best way to get to know how, and how well, it works. HH