25"mono v 16"mono with enhance on 4500 - what improvement in depth

hi all, been considering getting a large mono to better "clean up" an area of 20 to 28gram nuggets down about 18" which were found with a 16"mono last year in enhance mode with the 4500.

my previous experience with a 20"mono to attempt this with a extreme and then the 4000 in smooth mode,
as a success was a total failure, didnt get a sound.

can the 4500 handle the large coil in enhance? i have heard anything over 16" gets increased interference, but i dont know if that applies to enhance as distinct to normal settings.

i expect there should be plenty of nuggets in the 10 to 20 gram range that i couldnt pick up with the 16"coil
at the obvious 18"depth gravel bed.
appreciate anybodys experience ... kev

Hi Kev
Sens smooth on the 4000 and enhance on he 4500 are not full depth timings for normal ground.At a guess sen smooth is around 60 percent on a 4000 and enhance on a 4500 is higher maybe 70 percent of what can be achieved on normal timings.So running a gpextreme with an 18'mono over the spot would have outgunned previous efforts.So it comes back to maths.To gain depth over a 16 mono coupled with 4500 in enhance you can put on a much larger coil like a 25 mono or run the 4500 on normal timings.Your right in the fact that their should be more gold there ,whether it a readable depth for its size will be the issue
Cheers Dig

thanks dig.
was being lazy last year, got to many nugs to easy, i stuck to enhance mode and kept finding good size nuggets. will have to redo the area with machine in normal timings, but my limited experience with that mode tells me the ground is too noisy, but then again i was travelling in fixed, will try running in tracking, going very slow, and dumb down the noise with the rx gain and stabliser. theory work, as i havent used the 4500 in normal timings yet, enhance is so easy to use i tend to stick to it while the nugs keep coming ... kev

Kev,
I am thinking of a spot that I pinged a few hundred nuggets up to 27 grams using the 4000 in smooth timings and a 14" x 9" NF mono coil. My mate was using a 3500, running the same coil in tracking and was having real trouble as the ground was littered with sweet sounding hotrocks. My nugget take against his was around a 6 to 1 ratio.

At around the same time out came the 4500 and we did the area with them in Enhance and the above coil and scored a hundred bits I missed with the 4000. Then on went the 16" round mono using Enhance and deeper bits surfaced up to 6 ounces in weight. Then I ran over with the 20" round NF mono and even scored some deepr down in my own dig holes that I had extracted nuggets out of, as well as between my dig holes. Then I ran the 25" round NF mono coil over this area in Enhance and scored some more. As the coil sizes went up the nugget numbers fell as all of the shallower easy ones were gone, but I scored larger, deeper bits I missed with smaller coils.

After all that I ran over with the 20" round NF mono in Normal timings and dug a lot of ground noises as I searched for the faint targets. I got some bits that I missed using Enhance timings also. I have yet to run over it with the 25" round mono. I will add that the 4500 in Normal handles this spot much more easily than the 4000 does in Normal, and is far better than the 3500 in Normal.

I stopped counting at 700 nuggets. For mine, I would try all the possibilities that you have in regards to coil sizes and timings. The bigger monos pick up more EMI especially in the "specialised timings" so logic dictates that you wait for a quieter day to use them.

There are also no hard and fast rules in relation to depth with the timings and I am constantly amazed at the sizes against their depths on some bits. A 41 grammer from a measured 24" using the round 20" mono coil in Enhance on the 4500 springs to mind here. We were laying on our bellies losening the soil in the bottom of the hole and scooping it out with our hands (thank God the digginh there is real easy) when I commented that we were going to have to open the hole up so we could swing the pick in it. My mate suggested one more try and we lay down again. As he scraped the pick around the bottom of the hole I saw it roll up from under the pick's tip. I was expecting a multi ounce piece and was a tad miffed to get a smallish 41 grams from that depth. The moral for this is that "Enhance" CAN see deeply on some targets. Cheers.

Great read Sandy. A patch like that would do every year eh? Sounds like you guys have a pretty formidable armament going there with all that gear.
Was it a Qld patch (you don't have to tell:)?
Another thing I'd add is that gridding, crossgridding and then cross gridding again at 45deg both ways (so you do the area at least four times) always seems to turn up something. A lot depends on how the individual piece lies in the ground and as you said, day to day climatic conditions vary the detectors performance. Back in the 70's/80's we used to do a lot of moonlight detecting in the hot months and there was a noticeable improvement in the detectors performance on still, clear nights.
cheers
Brett

Yes, it is actually a local patch. You are right about the directions too. When I detect a gully and find a nugget or two, I always do it in the reverse direction to get the ones missed for various reasons. The last time I got 3 nuggies on the way up a gully and 5 on the way back, one of them being 20 grams. It was that good a signal I wondered how on earth I missed it going up the gully. My mate heard it and said "Useless ba$t@%&". LOL.

thanks qld sandy,
hows that eliptical coil i sold you a few years back going? still part of your armoury?

was hopeing that my success with the enhance mode on the 4500 could be bettered by doing a more efficient job in normal timings. but i have enough experience testing that mode to know that in hot ground it is a pain in the @r:e.

also being tight and not wanting to fork out $600 for a 25"mono coil. the reluctance comes from my only experience with the 20" mono on the extreme and 4000, chaseing nugs on that same area, and getting nothing, but as i said, going back to it after six odd years with the 4500 in enhance and a 17x11"mono eliptical i scored big time, couldnt figure that one out, but not complaining.

as i only do a four week detecting trip each year, i dont really get to know my new machines that well, then out comes an upgrade, they are always better, but if they dont bring out a 5000 before this winter, going back with a big coil and renewed confidence is the next best thing.

a question - were all those hundred initial nugs you pulled off the area somewhat shallow? the area i am in has a definate gravel bed down 18 to 21 inches and in one spot 24 inches(109gram nug). but as is always the case, on the edges it gets a bit shallower until it runs out. but right through this area i have found all sizes, from tiddlers .3grams practically sunbaking, to 5 and 6 grammers down a foot, all in soil, and the bigger ones down in the gravel bed.

irony is, this spot is in the middle of macmasters at clermont, i have been hitting it for seven years, each year, it is well know by all and sundry, plenty of dig holes around each year, but with the newer machines, and hopefully this year with a bigger coil, i still make a killing. just goes to show, nobody gets them all.
...kev