Any words of wisdom ?

[ChookFoot]

Any words of wisdom before I go ?
The Xterra has just been allowed out from under the bed after 6 months for not finding me any gold.
It's Probably a bit mean of me to blame the machine for not finding gold so I've decided to give it a chance to redeem itself and heading out to Warwick this weekend. I know I was guilty of swinging too fast and trying to run the sensitivity too high.
Last time I was there I came across some old diggings, a 50 metre run of holes up a shallow gully.
There was logs, rocks and branches everywhere on the surface and junk metal everywhere underground so I'm confident it hasn't been properly detected before. (see pic, not too clear because it was taken with my phone.)
I didn't discover the spot until the last hour before having to leave for home, so I plan on clearing the area of debris and giving it a good s-l-o-w
going over with the Xterra + DD elliptical.
My mate has a nice 1/2 ounce piece he found with his eureka-gold a couple of years ago just 150m from the spot, so the colour should be there.
Because there's heaps of nails, bits of wire and rusty metal, I plan on using discrimination mode a lot to cut down the amount of digging needed or there would be a hole every half metre.
The ground is hot also which makes it even harder in prospecting mode.
There's nothin' as bad for enthusiasm as spending your whole weekend listening to noise and digging up junk,
So, if anyone has any words of wisdom before I go, my ears are open for suggestions
Hope to have a positive report to post next week

 

[Elton]

The only words of wisdom I can think of is....Go find the right location..lay that coil to the ground..and bring home the "GOLD"

Oh yea post us some pictures....... LOL

 

[gold rat]

Chookfoot,
I believe you will have to hunt in prospecting mode
if you are in mineralised soil bolting on a HF DD coil.
Without any further imput it is compulsory for you to go to
FAQFAQ and read a collation of BT's posts!!!!
You won't go wrong.

 

[Digger]

with your comment "There's nothin' as bad for enthusiasm as spending your whole weekend listening to noise and digging up junk."

Even a bad weekend of detecting beats a good weekend of shoveling snow.

[attachment 77916 moreiceandsnow.jpg]

 

[nugget71]

Check your sensitivity from time to time to make sure your not peaking the machine. Don't be scared to turn your sensitivity setting down, even at 18 on the dial the Terra will do its job if your having extreme trouble with hot ground. Using all metal mode will help you out alot in the area you have described. -8 on the TID are hot rocks for me so switching from prospect mode to all metal will help some. Like you said yourself move slowly and take your time, if your getting a little frustrated take time out for a few minutes and pretend your a nugget, where would I hide? Sometimes the obvious can lead to good things. Enjoy your surroundings and breathe in that fresh air, get into the zone! The area in the photo looks great and the fact your friend found a big piece not far is a good sign. One more thing good luck and best wishes!
Cheers!

 

[ChookFoot]

G'Day Nugget !
Sounds like great advice, Good to know that the terra is still useful at 18 on the sens.
How do you pretend you're a nugget ? Bury yourself in the fetal position perhaps ?
I'll be shutting down the 'puter and throwing a leg over the bike in about 2 hours from now, setting up camp by 6pm.
The weather has turned good (stopped flooding) and my mate is fired up. The bugger has taken the day off, he's probably out there by now.
Wonder if he's got any colour yet ?
Hope you're still finding time to ping some gold.
Thanks Again

 

[ChookFoot]

Just a quick report for those interested.
Arrived at camp 6:00 PM Friday, my mate was already into it and had a few specs from the pan already.
Set up my tent before it got too dark, had some tucker and some port and got an early night.
Saturday morning - up at 5:30, a quick coffee and off to the diggings 250 metres away.
Fired up the XTerra70 with 10x5 Elliptical coil - Prospecting mode.
Did the noise cancel and GB thing and made a plan of attack.
I managed to run the sensitivity at 20 without too much ground warbling going on.
I let the GB track until I had a target and then turned tracking off while pinpointing etc.
When I got targets I flicked to coin mode to see where on the scale it was (if the signal was strong enough to get a TID).
I dug a few -6 and -8 targets but these were just hot rocks. Everything below +6 ended up being junk.
About 1/4 of the way up the right flank of the holes I got a quiet but clear signal not strong enough to discriminate in coin mode so I cleared away the grass and pebbles on the surface so I could get the coil down as low as possible. This time It locked on the LCD (think it was 24). About 3" down, it was an old button.
Dug some more rusty nails. 1/2 way up the left flank, just over the edge of the hole I got a beaut crisp zing, locked on easily (think it was 36) Got all excited when the target came out looking like a very dirty nugget of about 1.5 gram size. Trying to figure what it was, I broke the end off it to reveal a very silvery crystalline surface, it's not as heavy as lead and has lost it's lustre in the 2 days since I found it. Maybe silver or tin perhaps ??
Anyway, dug some more junk and that was that, I had spent nearly 4 hours doing an area of 40x7 metres.
In my very limited experience, I have found that junk targets like nails and bits of rusty metal don't lock onto TID numbers cleanly, the TID numbers jump all over the place but solid metal pieces (coins, lead sinkers, nuggets?) tend to lock easily onto a TID number.
For the rest of the weekend I did some detecting on the old mullock heaps and creek bed, did some wandering in the hills and dug some very uninteresting junk.
If it wasn't for the few specs I got in the pan I would have come home gold-less.
The property owner was telling me that there's an old bloke that goes out there regularly - like once a month and has some sort of a GP detector, perhaps I have been out-gunned ??
Anyhow, it's good to see some grass growing out there again and some water in the creek. We had some fun and a good laugh.
No doubt, we'll be back.
Thanks for your advice and Cheers to All !
Chookfoot

 

[nugget71]

Beautiful colour gold chooky! I see your getting to know the TID's on certain objects, thats good. Sounds like you had a good time, hopefully when you head back some nuggets might show up. Anyways glad you found some yellow and thanks for the pics and story. Talk soon.
Cheers!

 

[Elton]

n/t

 

[nero_design]

Gosh that River looks perfect for gold panning! Great wide areas of bedrock riffles!!
Great pics too... sorry you didn't find any nuggets. I agree that the X-Terra 70 shows jumpy numbers when the target is junk. My friend has a detector which states in the manual that jumpy target IDs are usually junk - he told me this last time we went out detecting. I noticed a similar occurance with my X-70 and can confirm a similar result from last week. Three or more TID numbers for the same target have ended up (after I dug them) being screws, nails and a horseshoe. Solid numbers tend to bounce between one or two different TIDs and they've ended up being gold or coins.

I suspect the guy with the GP detector does pretty good if he goes there once a month. Even if he find the larger bits, he's systematically cleaning out the region. He's had the time and access to work the ground; slowly and methodically. Most likely this means he's had first pick. Your 5x10" Elliptical Coil is perfect for goldfields with mineralized soils... but the 6" DD HF might be better for small nuggets missed by the GP guy as well as larger nuggets he hasn't found yet. It's a bit more sensitive than the larger Elliptical.

You're obviously in the right area or the other detectorist wouldn't be about. Keep us posted on any future trips. The nuggety gold you found and bagged looks beautiful!