Just got back from my first experience nugget hunting in Arizona at the LDMA Lost Dutchman Mine at Rich Hill. I took along my Cortes with a Troy Super 7 coil for nugget hunting. The bad news is I did not find any nuggets. There are several pieces of good news though.
First, even though I only had a couple of hours total for metal detecting I found five bullets ranging from small to large with no trouble. I found that at least where I was hunting ( the "Lucky Linda" claim) the ground was covered by hot rocks. I detected in all metal and found immediately that although the Cortes sounded whenever passing over a hot rock the VID never moved off "0". Knowing this I simply ignored any hits when the VID did not move from "0". The machine hit hard on the lead bullets even at some depth (4-5 inches). I really believe that the Cortes would have found a nugget if I passed over one of reasonable size and depth.
The second piece of good news should come as no surprise to anyone who has used the Cortes. As part of the Outing a competition treasure hunt was held. The Cortes and I won first place! The completion area was seeded with a variety of painted coins. Each coin type and color represented a particular scoring value. The hunt lasted twenty minutes and about 40-50 folks participated. As you can imagine all brands and levels of detectors were represented, some with much larger coils to cover more area quickly. The Cortes proved to be the coin magnet that I knew it was. I have never participated in a competition hunt before and have to admit that I was a little intimidated by some of the machines costing double the Cortes price that we were competing against. I experienced no cross-talk and had no difficulty with using the machine in discriminate mode in the mineralized Arizona soil.
I also found a couple of other relics such as a piece of horse shoe and very old cans. The more I use the Cortes the more I realize just how good a detector it is.
Jim
First, even though I only had a couple of hours total for metal detecting I found five bullets ranging from small to large with no trouble. I found that at least where I was hunting ( the "Lucky Linda" claim) the ground was covered by hot rocks. I detected in all metal and found immediately that although the Cortes sounded whenever passing over a hot rock the VID never moved off "0". Knowing this I simply ignored any hits when the VID did not move from "0". The machine hit hard on the lead bullets even at some depth (4-5 inches). I really believe that the Cortes would have found a nugget if I passed over one of reasonable size and depth.
The second piece of good news should come as no surprise to anyone who has used the Cortes. As part of the Outing a competition treasure hunt was held. The Cortes and I won first place! The completion area was seeded with a variety of painted coins. Each coin type and color represented a particular scoring value. The hunt lasted twenty minutes and about 40-50 folks participated. As you can imagine all brands and levels of detectors were represented, some with much larger coils to cover more area quickly. The Cortes proved to be the coin magnet that I knew it was. I have never participated in a competition hunt before and have to admit that I was a little intimidated by some of the machines costing double the Cortes price that we were competing against. I experienced no cross-talk and had no difficulty with using the machine in discriminate mode in the mineralized Arizona soil.
I also found a couple of other relics such as a piece of horse shoe and very old cans. The more I use the Cortes the more I realize just how good a detector it is.
Jim