MIRAGE P,I A REAL GOLD GETTER

[kaolinwasher]

Just amazes me how this machine can ignore such a significant pice of foil and also not hear that Iron pin at 5" but really homes in on the gold ring, Costom built by sven stau can't wait to get it out on some foil infested sidelines and look for gold rings [video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzCITnWNKCk&list=UUfFZXjVZpEw1JYpyToWP_fQ[/video]

 

[mudpuppy]

thats incredible! I knew Sven had a grip on this sport and the reason he makes the mods he does..just didnt know how tightly....that was certainly an eye opener, thanks Gunnar! Thats a game changer in field in the areas you mentioned..really a cool vid on the possibilities!...wonder how he did that?.
Mud.

 

[Mega]

Gunner,that Mirage seems to work very well,Sven does seem to have some knowlege on Pulse machines,wonder if he is working on any new projects,i guess it will be a bolt out the blue his next project,that could be the name for his next project 'The Crossbow'

 

[Grilled Scallops]

I'm gonna give my honest thoughts. All that really appears to be is PI with a high pulse delay. Now I know he showed that the delay was set as low as it will go, but it looks like that's still pretty high. The only way a PI can ignore a small piece of foil is if it simply waits for the signal from the foil to decay completely. If you have a PI with a pulse delay (TDI series, infinium, ATX, sandshark, the "discrimination" on the ATX and infinium is the pulse delay), you too can completely ignore a small piece of foil like that by turning the delay/ "discrimination" all the way up. Try it. The detector gave the signature double tone on the iron pin, which any PI would do, so I don't see why that was so special. The fact that the signal from the pin disappears almost completely by 7 inches also leads me to believe he's got the delay set very high. He can still hear the gold ring at 7 inches because, well, it's a much better target and even with a high delay, the signal hasn't completely disappeared at 7 inches. In summary, I feel any PI with the pulse delay set very high would be able to replicate the results of this video. However, I am not the designer of the detector, so of course I don't know for sure, this is just speculation. I'd love to see some raw depth tests of this detector going against an ATX, TDI or Infinium and see how it stacks up.

 

[icurabeachguy]

it really is a neat little machine...versatile too! I could be wrong, but I believe the difference is the 8μ pulse width Sven uses for the Mirage vs. the 30μ - 50μ of more traditional PIs.

I believe he's currently working on a revised version of the Minipulse at the moment; it's one of Eric Foster's simpler designs without ground balance circuit. Check it out on the Geotech forums under the minipulse project page.

 

[Sven]

LOL, Grilled, you need to do a bit of reading about PI's.......................educate yourself about PI's.
This is a gold machine set up for small gold gold, not your general purpose PI.
It runs a pulse delay of 10us lowest, with a pulse with of 12us.
Most general purpose PI's only go as low as 15us and have pulse withs of 50-100us.
Most water PI for saltwater will not need to run lower in the salt water as it will start to false.
In deeper salt water again you need to turn the pulse delay up to 20us to get stable operation.
That puts most PI's that are used for water hunting on even grounds.
Pulse width of 50 and on up are not sensitive to very small gold but you get great depth on silver, copper, brass and iron.
The lower you drop the pulse width you lose depth and sensitivity to those other metals but, puts you in the gold zone.
Always a trade off. Pulse delay of less than 15us towards 10us is great for those tiny pcs of gold you would normally miss.
And the way the PI is calibrated, yes you can eliminate most tiny foil and find the tiny gold jewelry that you would not if you were using a VLF
disc'ing out foil.

Once again, this is not a depth machine, its designed for hunting small gold in mineralized ground with a 7" coil. Gets excellent on silver, brass, copper coins comparable to many VLFs using a 10" coil.
Not a miracle machine. Just another tool for the job intended, a niche machine. It's not built for the masses, occasionally I will build one for some one. Or when I have a built up unit and building another,
will part with one to keep funding my building. It's a fun hobby for me.

Specifications:

Pulse Frequency....1000Hz
Pulse Delay............10 to 90us
Pulse Width............12 and 38us
Threshold...............Silent to audible
Audio......................VCO
SAT.........................1/2 to 10 seconds
Gain........................5 to 1
Frequency Adjust....10%
Search Coil.............300us
Operation Power.....12 volts

Search Coil Sizes ...5", 7", 9.5", 10.5"


Hey Don and Rick,
Always a project, building a new version Mirage for the water with a switchable pulse width. Probably the 12th version now. In between Mirage builds I grabbed a couple of the MiniPulse Plus PCB's from Silverdog,
George Overton's redesigned version of Erics Fosters PI. Not in any big hurry to get this project done. Good thing it can use Mirage search coils.The CrossBow still haunts me, it the PI from the other side of the rainbow, so to speak. Depth demon. Going to take another stab at it, had a bunch of PCB's made that 5 of us are going to try and complete a strong build.

Oh yeah, Grilled,
The Mirage and the CrossBow are a completely redesign of Carl Moreland's Hammerhead PI posted on Geotech. Carl and George are Geotech forum owners. Carl worked at White's and is now at Fisher.
The Hammerhead was Carl's way of giving those who want to build a highly efficient PI base platform to build and learn from. As he said, it has plenty of potential. They are not rinky dink design machines.
Learn about the CrossBow, google Crossbow Classic PI.

If you ever get around Gunnars area, I am sure he'll be happy to show you how his Mirage works.

You can read more at my website http://www.treasurelinx.com/projects.html or PM me your email me and I'll send you some more info.
You'll get the history behind the Mirage. Hammerhead and the CrossBow.

And if you have further PI questions you can ask our resident expert REG on the Technology forum here, as well as Mr. Bill. Eric Foster occasionally drops in.

Happy hunting