meteorite hunting wt x terra

[jerry123]

Just wondering if anyone hunts for meteorites with the x terra? What coil do U use as some meteorites are very low in iron/nickel content.


Thanks Jerry

 

[Steve in Idaho]

I have found meteorites with my X-70 and you have to hunt in the prospect mode with no iron mask. We have found a strewn patch on some remote hard rock claims that we have. They are irons and show a small amount of nickle in the assay. We found them when looking for float gold from quartz out croupings. The strewn field is 110' X 800'. We got snowed out last fall and will continue hunting this spring when the snow melts. I use the large DD coil for this type of hunting.

 

[David]

I have found meteorites before but not with my X-Terra 70. Some of them have high iron/nickle and some less as you said. Iron and Nickle are both low conductive(and so is gold), so therefore a high frequency coil and/or metal detector is best, the same as used for gold prospecting and jewellery. The very best X-Terra coil would be a round 10.5" HF(18.75 kHz) DD. The 5x10" HF DD is not necessary because a person is not looking for small sub-gram sized meteorites. The 10.5" is deeper on about 1/2" sized and bigger, but the 5x10" is lighter-weight to swing all day and is fine to use for shallower meteorites. I see someone using the (about 17 kHz) Tesoro Lobo with the 5x10" for meteorites in New Mexico on a video. Someone else uses the (48 kHz) Whites GMT for meteorites.

Designed like the light-weight 5x10", I wish there was a lighter-weight elliptical about 11x17" to 11x22" HF DD size available for the X-Terra's for meteorites, gold nuggets, and also gold jewellery at beaches for faster and more ground coverage. Also available in MF for relic hunters, and LF for clad & silver hunters on large sized farmers fields-homesteads.

 

[TURNMASTER]

Steve in Idaho
Which coil freq the HF? I heard that is your coil of choice.

Jeff

 

[Steve in Idaho]

I use the med freq coil, 10" DD.

 

[Steve in Idaho]

I would love to see Minelab come out with a bigger coil for the X-Terras.

 

[TURNMASTER]

Steve is that the coil you shoot nuggets with also? I got that coil last week. Got out with it once for a few hours.

EDIT; I think maybe I was thinking about somebody else

Jeff

 

[Steve in Idaho]

Yes. That is my nugget hunting coil and I also use the 5" HF DD coil for small nuggets.

 

[BarnacleBill]

If you can find the time to write something up it would be greatly appreciated as it is a niche part of the hobby that few venture into.

HH
BarnacleBill

 

[TURNMASTER]

Thanks Steve, I will go back through some of your posts and see what more I can learn about the 705 and nugget hunting.

jerry123 Sorry for the hijack

Jeff

 

[Steve in Idaho]

I have found about 70 pieces of what I think are meteorite irons. I had an assay run on it and it shows a low % of nickle. I also sent a piece to the Arizona State University for a more in depth test to determine if they are meteorites. I have found about 1200 grams of stony meteorites with a Fisher BG II but never hunted stone's with the X-Terra. The X-Terra will pick them up in the prospect mode in an air test but this may not work in highly mineralized ground. I plan to try the X-Terra in Arizona later this year to hunt stonys. The irons that I found with the X-70, I was hunting float gold around quartz veins in a remote area where our hard rock gold claims are located. I started finding these rusty metal fragments about 4 inches down in the top soil under the decayed tree limbs and needles.They are in a strewn field 110' wide by 800' long. I was snowed out last fall and could not continue the search until the snow melts this spring. We used a GPS unit to survey each piece on to a topo map. I am sure that the pieces are iron meteorites. I hunt with the X-70 using both the 10 1/2" MF DD coil and my HF 5" DD coil. I hunt in the prospect mode with no iron mask, sensitivity max, and normal ground balance. The strewn field aligns up with an other meteorite fall that fell in 1908, 12 miles away. There has never been any military activity in or near this remote location that we have researched. The closes road is about a mile away. The largest piece is 7cm long X 5 cm wide X 1.5 cm thick in size and the smallest is 1cm X 1cm about the thickness of a tin can. I will not get the results back from ASU before August 2010. Some of the pieces have a fusion crust and all are highly attracted to a super magnet. When sliced they take on a high chrome like polish. I had a 40 element spectrograph run and they show a lot of elements that are found in meteorites.