Doing my homework.

Well, ive done some homework and out i went to check out a mine in the local forestry just for a look. I was swinging the detector along a ridge in the rough area and as usuall i was getting close, i know this because i was finding bl--dy horse shoe nails( sick of finding them), then in the gully i found the shafts, hidden by the pines. The first signal was a mild one, digging away, out poped a silver coin! yahoo, WTF, a 2006 10 cent coin, grumbling, well the search still goes on, i think finding gold is going to need a bit more patience.

Look on the bright side ... maybe it's 6 years since anyone's been there???

G'day JeffH while your finding the usual bits and pieces... You just got to keep at it because the next one could be the one... Good luck and keep trying...

Cheers.

Mike.

I dont have much patience, which is the problem, as it starts to warm up, the pans will be coming out.

Gday Jeff,
When I first started detecting the Sofala-Hill End regions 10 years ago I went 190 odd hrs before my first find. If you work that out at 6hrs per day,12 hrs a weekend,thats alot of weekends swinging for SFA. I was using an SD2000 and ended up finding a few nice bits,but I was being left behind by my mates on the gold tally. Even when I bought a S/H SD 2200d it didnt improve much as most of the gold in these areas is fairly small.
It wasnt until I traded that in on a GP Extreme that I caught up. As I progressed I learnt alot about reading the ground and finding virgin dirt next to the diggings. Thats where most of my gold has come from over the years.
You have to remember that stacks of good opperators have been over that ground before you,so you need the best technology you can afford. No one gets all the gold so your looking for the bits that they missed.
Good luck mate and remember persistance normally pays off in the long run.

Reminds me of 3 years ago when we went out with a friend from kalgoolie looking for new ground a long way northeast of menzies in what we thought was ground where nobody had ever been, and we detected a 5 cent piece on the side of a slope in very rough stony ground.
what is the chances of somebody loosing that and someoeone else coming along and finding it.
somebody has always been there first.

If i cant find gold with the SD2200, i'll give up as ive spent a lot on it, i think ive got set up pretty well, ive got a Detacc audio and power boosters, 11in mono and DD coils, Nugget Finder 16 in DD XP and 17 x 11 mono, and recently brought a 10 x 5 Coiltec, carbon shafts and bits and pieces, yep, spent enough, time to pay for itself.

Still one thing to go JeffH, the voltage regulator. Although not super important, and some people say you can do without, I believe it keeps your machine working at the same voltage (therefore same performance) from the start of the day until the end. Standard batteries loose voltage throughout the day, so it is possible that they loose performance to some degree, as the day goes on. Nevertheless, I use a 2200d & it's a damn fine machine! Keep it low (scrubbing the ground if you have to) and keep it slow (real slow - I usually forget this and get carried away) and if it's there and bigger than 1/2gm, you WILL find it.
Good luck.

I thought the DEtacc booster would have a regulator built in, ive made a digital volt meter i run in line that reads at 7.1 v all day long, so at a quick glance i can tell if the batt's going flat as well as the booster has a led that flashes when the batt gets low, with the 3 boxes i have attached to the machine i dont know if i can fit any more.

JeffH wrote:Well, ive done some homework and out i went to check out a mine in the local forestry just for a look. I was swinging the detector along a ridge in the rough area and as usuall i was getting close, i know this because i was finding bl--dy horse shoe nails( sick of finding them), then in the gully i found the shafts, hidden by the pines. The first signal was a mild one, digging away, out poped a silver coin! yahoo, WTF, a 2006 10 cent coin, grumbling, well the search still goes on, i think finding gold is going to need a bit more patience.

The current currency coin
May have been dropped
As some one was havin a crap
You don't know how close you were to finding
Your first nugget

Ps I found 2 nuggets the other day
After finding a 20 cent piece
But they weren't brown

Keep at it and one will turn up
And then they come quicker

???? Not sure if we are talking about the same thing here JeffH. What I have is my 2200d connected via a short lead to the Super Sound DETacc (Model SE01) which then connects to my battery, which then connects to my speakers. I was using an inline voltmeter combo ampmeter that I had built, but found that I was getting intermitent EMI from the setup and only use it now for testing and problem-solving. In my setup, the DETacc does not have a regulator, it is simply a booster for the sound amp as the audio out of the 2200d is really only meant for headphones and quite pityfall when speakers are needed to be used. This DETacc does not regulate the voltage at all, and in fact uses a very small amount of battery voltage for it's own needs. Also mine does not have an LED so maybe we are talking about different things. I do have a DETacc inline volt/amp meter that once again I only use for problem solving, but I'm pretty sure (although not certain) that it also doesn't have a regulator inbuilt.
Also maybe I've missed something, because how do you get 7.1v reading from using a 6v battery? Are you using a 12v to 7.1v regulator maybe and using a SLA 12v battery?
Cheers

How do you get 7.1v out 6v,? very carefully, ill post some photos when i get home of the setup, im running a Detacc sound amp as well as a Detacc power booster.

Gday Jeff,
When I was detecting with an SD2200d,I had a coiltek voltage regulator that converted 12vlts to 7.6vlts. Thats the 2200`s max voltage,and it ran at that all day. If yours is running at 7.1 that would have to be a better result than the 6vlt dome tops.
The SD 2200d is a good detector but you will miss nuggets below 0.5 gram,unless they are very shallow. No doubt there are still bigger nuggets about on the NSW gold fields,but the majority are between 0.1-0.5 grms.
I understand your frustration mate as Ive been down that road before. Even blokes that have been detecting for 20 years have dry spells.
I guess thats why this hobby is such a challenge.
Good luck mate.

So far I have spent hours and hours swinging and found nothing but junk. When I start to get down about it or frustrated I simply put it away and go back 100 years in technology! Get out the pan. It always brings a smile to my face when I see that yellow stuff again. The old boys found heaps of gold without a detector. Sometimes when I'm at a new site I leave the detector in the car and have a walk without it. I try to imagine what the old timers would have done and how they came to dig where they did. What made a man dig a hole without knowing for sure if there was gold there? Get the pans out and do some sampling, return to the roots of mining and then get ya detector out and kick some but!

Im going to do both this wkend if the weather clears up.