A week behind the Zed - Easy tucker

Working in the city a long way from the goldfields and other commitments has made for a late start on the Zed. Since others have been so generous with their thoughts respecting the 7k I felt I should do likewise.
With winter knocking at the door our mountain patches are becoming too difficult and dangerous to access, so we visited a few urban lowland ones. The patches had reached the point where you really had to work hard with the GPX, or hit a bit of luck to do better than a couple of grams a day. The 7k though averaged over 4 grams a day relatively easily. I located 83 nugglets for a combined weight of 30 grams. That makes the average weight 0.36 grams. The average nugget weight with the GPX is 0.64 grams.
The Zeds average weight would of course increase if these were virgin patches, but this underscores the greater sensitivity of this machine. The GPX average is lessened by the larger pieces falling to the SDs many years ago.
This may raise a question in your mind, “why is the average so low if the 7k is meant to get the bigger ones down deeper?” which of course would hike the average way up. The answer is simple, the big deep ones have fallen to previous machines running large coils, even 18” DDs give the 14DOD a run for its money.

The Zed will hit hard on flattish nuggets sitting on edge, the largest piece I located 2.3 grams was about 7 inches deep on edge in a crevice, among a sea of previous dig holes. I’ve been over that spot numerous times with everything I have, as I’m sure has every other man and his dog before me. So the Zed is very much like a VLF in this respect and will work very well with deep narrow bedrock crevices that force the gold on edge.

Speaking of bedrock hunting, this raises another point. PLEASE MINELAB can we have a smaller semi-elliptical NEUTRAL BUOYANCY COIL with gusset holes???
The 14” is murder trying to hold down in the water and manoeuvre about in the current.

The biggest Zed failing in my mind is the gap in performance between Normal and Difficult ground types. When the ground starts moaning badly in Normal, switching to Difficult easily handles it, but with a great loss of depth. It’s a pity that there isn’t an intermediate type. Thus to really get that extra performance from the Zed I was forced to operate in Normal on old patches, this meant sweeping the coil very slowly to allow the GB to keep up and remove some of the moaning and groaning. This allowed me to get a few deep pieces, the best being a 1.4 gram bit at a measured 13 inches. The caveat being, had I not known that a number of pieces were found within metres of this spot I would never of found it as I could only hear the down beat tone. You can’t creep around like a turtle all over the goldfield searching for the deeper stuff, life’s just too short.

This raises another point. It’s so easy to see where dick-heads have found patches in the past by the mess they leave behind, overturned rocks, (wreaking endangered Geckos homes in the doing) wide open scrapings and unfilled holes, even years later the fact is blatantly obvious. I was able to get quite a few from around these spots. The canny responsible operator of course knows to leave the least amount of evidence that a dig has taken place, knowing that in a few months to a year or so it will be pristine again and he can likely return with each new machine and reap more (fact!) The point is, if you do score a seemingly lone nugget, search about it really really slowly in Normal if possible as this could be a straggler from someone’s well hidden patch, and you may just find the lower layer. I think strategies such as this will need to be adopted by new chum’s using the Zed as a first machine, not having previous patches to creep over they are perhaps destined to finding mainly bran sized pieces, and the odd bigger corn-flake bit, unless they hit a virgin patch of course.

I had one system spasm where the machine started randomly giving large signals, mainly at the end of a sweep. I rebooted the unit, but the problem persisted, I then reset the unit to factory defaults and did a quick start procedure and it was still the same. I removed the battery for 30 seconds and repeated the last procedure but it was still the same, but when I held the quick track switch in and bobbed the coil up and down (like the traditional GB procedure) within 5 seconds it began to sound different and it then came right. ???? MINELAB you’ve definitely got a nasty little bug lurking in there and I think you need to get it sorted and patched as soon as possible. I had just detected a large target and was in the process of digging it when this happened, I had not touched any settings, I was in Auto GB and had not touched the quick track switch for quite a while.

Apart from that shy software bug and the rather coarse GB options, I was very impressed with how nicely the machine operated. However I find the loss of user settings on a system reset a real pain, surely MINELAB settings such as Target Volume, Threshold, Sensitivity etc., could be stored in under a group name much like the GPX does, for easy restoration after a reset??? Seems to me the present setup is a step backwards made especially awkward by the “Spasm” GB? bug.

In the end I got so sick of detecting pellets, I ignored all weak double peaked signals, I know I left some gold behind, but it will only be bran sized at best, I want honey puffs to wheet-bix and bigger!
I’m curious to see how the larger coil does.

Cheers
Alchemist

3 hard days and 4 easy days worth all from heavily flogged ground. 1 gram shy of an ozt




The 1.4 gram nugget from actual 13 inches, not bad for a 14 inch coil.

Good on easytucker,
I am impressed by your commentary on the hack vandals putting at risk our continuing prospecting right.
I will soon be youtubing some vidz on these frustrated idiots who have been scarifying( not raking) the ground
in Vic. I am seeing alot more destuction out there in the years i have walked the goldfields and want people
to start talking more about it and make it known we will lose our access if it continues.
And it will not be valid to blame the enviromentalists.
Gold prospecting is my heritage and i will not let ****-pot bogans force it into a precarious position.
Regards gravel.

Thanks pablop, should do much better when we can get into the backblocks, less picked over. One pass with the Zed will clean up so much more than anything else could.

Too right gravel, seems the gold price hike has brought out the money grubbers, they don't give a toss about anybody but themselves and their wallet. They need to feel the disdain of decent blokes who do this for the love of it and not mammon.

Well it's been a week and I honestly had expected some feedback from others who have suffered this same GB software "Bug"?
But the silence is deafening

MINELAB I may owe you a very big apology, perhaps there isn't a bug in the GB routine at all.

In the middle of the night another possible scenario confronted me. i.e.

I start digging the target and it flys out of the ground in my gusto to retrieve it, and it flies through the air and lands right between one of the forward slots between the coil and coil scuff plate. When I sweep to the right and stop the little target ( I imagined a small shot pellet ) rolls to the right and stops with a large booming audio response. I sweep the coil to the left and stop where upon the little target rolls to the left and stops with a large booming audio response.

In futility I do the hot and cold reset, and full reset to no avail. The little B continues to roll around in the area between the coil and cover causing confusion. But when I pump the coil up and down on the spot, the little B bails out, leaving the unit running smooth as silk again.

This could be the real reason.......Sorry MINELAB, the egg could be fair and squarely on my face    
 
Cheers