Mick in Dubbo
New member
I've been forced to take a couple of weeks off work due to a lack of livestock, so I've been able to get out on a few hunts mid week. I've walked down to the river bank at the end of my street which has some terracing on it from the early days of the town. I know that on the other side of the river, where the main part of town is, there used to be a similar terracing where the towns folk used to go swimming, be for the pool was built. Due to flood waters removing all the terracing on the other side of the river due to flood waters back in the 30's, a public pool was built. I figure that this side might produce a few pre-decimal coins, so I've hunted it for the last few days. It's about an acre in size, but after about 4.5 hours of hunting, I've still only covered just under half of it the first day was with the GTI, the second day was with the Ace armed with the large coil, and the third day, I went back with the Ace armed with the standard coil, as I find that I get a bit more target information out of it compared to the larger coil. over the 3 hunts, I've recovered around $16 and broke my ring drought, scoring a junk and my first silver in quite some time! The third ring, the enormous one in the picture, actually sounded like a screw cap, but I decided to check it out anyway and got a pleasant surprise when it came out. I think that due to it's large size, giving a similar sound in pinpoint, that it had me thinking that it was a screw cap.
I also got to go on my first gold hunt a couple of days back with a mate. I was armed with the Ace and the GTI 1500 and he was armed with his GPX 400 an X-Terra 70 and a Quattro. I borrowed his X-Terra, as well as use both my machines. I had an even amount of time on each. we spent about 6 hours on the gold fields, which turned out to be a very pleasant day. At one point, I got a good signal with the Ace and recovered a very heavy rock! (the one in the picture.) I thought that I got lucky, but after showing my mate, and a quick blow of his pick, it was most definitely only a solid piece of cast iron.
Eventually, I also recovered a few small bullets and a metal thimble. The ground there was amazing. It looked like a WWI battlefield in the Somme. There was a tonne of shafts (all filled in) and every couple of metres below them, were test holes, that the old timers had clearly been back tracking from the creek beds to find the gold reefs that the gold had come from. There were plenty of indicators of past habitation due to the number of non native plant life that was present. It would have been interesting to have observed the goings on here in it's hay day.
Anyway, we called it quits here and headed back home (a 100kms away) stopping off at an old racecourse close to home that we'd both had our eye on previously. As it was just before sundown when we arrived we got straight into it. I tried out my mates X-Terra 70, but to be honest, I don't think that for all it's bells and whistles, I don't think that it's any better than the X-Terra 30, of which I've swung for some time. My mate pulled out his trusty Quattro and did all right with it. (I've got to say, that I played with it for a bit as well and was very impressed with it. A lot of folks (including those that use Minelab's as well) really bag this unit as a slow detector, but to be frank I found that to be complete bunkum! It would be Minelabs real sleeper unit. It's audio recovery is faster than most units I've used and can separate coins only an inch apart! (with the standard coil on) It's visual display is a bit slow, but still faster than My XS. It's audio responses is a bit slower than the XS, but not buy much. I'd love to get my hands on it again and test it on how the audio responds to various junk targets. If it is the same as the Explorer's, then it will be a seriously underrated machine.)
After the X-Terra, I pulled out the GTI but quickly went back to the Ace. Even though the GTI has a back light on it, I preferred to use the Ace, even though as it got dark, I could not see the screen anymore. I didn't recover any coins till it got dark, but recovery $3 in the last 15mins. My mate got $5. We lucked out on pre-decimals as the ground had been top dressed too much and we couldn't pick them up.
Mick Evans.
[attachment 97198 RIMG1373.JPG]
I also got to go on my first gold hunt a couple of days back with a mate. I was armed with the Ace and the GTI 1500 and he was armed with his GPX 400 an X-Terra 70 and a Quattro. I borrowed his X-Terra, as well as use both my machines. I had an even amount of time on each. we spent about 6 hours on the gold fields, which turned out to be a very pleasant day. At one point, I got a good signal with the Ace and recovered a very heavy rock! (the one in the picture.) I thought that I got lucky, but after showing my mate, and a quick blow of his pick, it was most definitely only a solid piece of cast iron.
Eventually, I also recovered a few small bullets and a metal thimble. The ground there was amazing. It looked like a WWI battlefield in the Somme. There was a tonne of shafts (all filled in) and every couple of metres below them, were test holes, that the old timers had clearly been back tracking from the creek beds to find the gold reefs that the gold had come from. There were plenty of indicators of past habitation due to the number of non native plant life that was present. It would have been interesting to have observed the goings on here in it's hay day.Anyway, we called it quits here and headed back home (a 100kms away) stopping off at an old racecourse close to home that we'd both had our eye on previously. As it was just before sundown when we arrived we got straight into it. I tried out my mates X-Terra 70, but to be honest, I don't think that for all it's bells and whistles, I don't think that it's any better than the X-Terra 30, of which I've swung for some time. My mate pulled out his trusty Quattro and did all right with it. (I've got to say, that I played with it for a bit as well and was very impressed with it. A lot of folks (including those that use Minelab's as well) really bag this unit as a slow detector, but to be frank I found that to be complete bunkum! It would be Minelabs real sleeper unit. It's audio recovery is faster than most units I've used and can separate coins only an inch apart! (with the standard coil on) It's visual display is a bit slow, but still faster than My XS. It's audio responses is a bit slower than the XS, but not buy much. I'd love to get my hands on it again and test it on how the audio responds to various junk targets. If it is the same as the Explorer's, then it will be a seriously underrated machine.)
After the X-Terra, I pulled out the GTI but quickly went back to the Ace. Even though the GTI has a back light on it, I preferred to use the Ace, even though as it got dark, I could not see the screen anymore. I didn't recover any coins till it got dark, but recovery $3 in the last 15mins. My mate got $5. We lucked out on pre-decimals as the ground had been top dressed too much and we couldn't pick them up.
Mick Evans.
[attachment 97198 RIMG1373.JPG]
