Jonathon Porter views

This is were charles sturt and his men were stranded for six months 1844, n his first officer died they carved his initials in the tree jp , james poole, its a must see if your out west n mt browne was a large gold producing area , built a cairn on a nearby hill as a monument .
An extract from sturts diary

The cairn

looking south from the cairn

http://www.outbacknsw.com.au/Depot_Glen.htm

Thanks Garry. I was just up at Mt Browne, but never got out to see this.

Hi all,

I just bought a 5000 and find it VERY stable compared to my previous 4000. In strong winds and rain/storm clouds it remained stable, not pinging off every now and again like my 4000. The only thing I'm still not sure about is now that the ground is wet ( in Victoria) I am getting very positive sounding signals and when I dig them it seems to be wet red clay that is giving these good signals. The spoils heap and the hole give the same response. It will make these positive dig me signals in small pockets here and there and I was having trouble getting rid of them and the area I am working in the Triangle is hot ground (in Enhance and or Fine Gold). I did manage to get a couple of small shallow nuggets, but I am not happy with the false ground noises. ( well at least I think they were )

My 4000 did not have this issue in this area and I was able to get about 3 1/2 ounces from this patch, It's a steep learning curve between the 4000 and the 5000. I am using the same Coiltek GOLDSTALKER 18 x 12 on both.

Is this an issue with the 5000? Not being able to handle certain hot pockets of wet red clay? or is it me not setting the detector correctly? I have pretty much left it in factory defaults to get used to it first. Is it an issue with this coil and the 5000? I am starting to doubt what the detector is telling me and I may walk away from gold...

Any advice on what settings to use in hot wet red clay areas appreciated.

After reading the manual again I found this ...

Please
note that after market coils used with a GPX
Series detector in some Soil/Timings settings
such as “Fine Gold” and “Enhanced” are likely
to either not work or produce significant levels
of spurious signals from mineralised soils.

How true is this statement? Anyone else use Coiltek Goldstalker coils and 5000 experiencing significant levels
of spurious signals from mineralised soils?

I think next time I go out I'll use the 11" Commander mono to test.

CENSORED, Having used both 4000 and 4500 id say its just the step up your experiencing, as the 5000 has more sensitivity in its enhanced modes than the 4000 doe's when used in s/smooth. This was why the 4500 outperformed the 4000.

The after market coil is fine mate and the smaller 11" coil may make your hot clay domes stand out even more.
Give yourself time to learn the new detectors language.

Hope this helps a little.

I just spoke to a guy who is selling his almost new coiltek stalker coil in favour of his nugget hunter he,s used both on his 5000 .
(an ebay auction) 14" mono

(Hi, the coils virtually brand new, has only been used for about 4 hours in total. Bought it to compare with my nugget finder coil to see which one I prefered and decided to stick with the nugget finder, just personal preference. Regards, Phil.)

CENSORED wrote:After reading the manual again I found this ...

Please
note that after market coils used with a GPX
Series detector in some Soil/Timings settings
such as “Fine Gold” and “Enhanced” are likely
to either not work or produce significant levels
of spurious signals from mineralised soils.

How true is this statement? Anyone else use Coiltek Goldstalker coils and 5000 experiencing significant levels
of spurious signals from mineralised soils?

I think next time I go out I'll use the 11" Commander mono to test.

Minelab have that note in with the detector for a reason, so I would definitely recommend you returning to the area with a Commander coil to cross check. Also keep in mind the new Fine Gold timings are a lot more sensitive than Enhance so will provide more feedback from the ground especially when the ground is wet/saturated. If you are getting a lot of ground noise in these conditions try reverting to Enhance (its improved significantly over the old Enhance of the 4500) and make sure you are not running too much Gain (for me 14 seems to be the sweet spot with the 5000 in most conditions).

In future it might help if posters with problems provided readers of this forum with a brief summary of the timings/settings used and ground conditions when they're having issues.

JP

Thank you to all who replied.

This is one hell of a machine, just hope I can understand what it's saying to me. The 4000 spoke perfect English the 5000 is talking Chinese.

I'll have to experiment with less RX Gain and Commander coils etc... to see if I can get around this. I just hope the ground dries up a bit more before I next head out.

The settings that I used are;

Search Mode:Deep
Soil Timings: Special (when using Fine Gold) otherwise it is in Enhance
Coil Rx:Mono and Double D
Ground Balance:Tracking


Volume Limit 12
GB Type GEN
Special Fine Gold
Motion Slow
RX Gain 11
Audio Normal
Audio Tone 38
Stabilizer 10
Signal 19
Target Vol 10
Response Normal
Tracking Slow then changed to Med (didn't really help with the ground noise)

You have to use a minelab coil or it could blow the detector up.

paragold wrote:You have to use a minelab coil or it could blow the detector up.

No thats not right.

This is what happened to the last person using a non standard coil....



or was it a laptop battery on recharge.... i forget...

CENSORED wrote:Thank you to all who replied.

This is one hell of a machine, just hope I can understand what it's saying to me. The 4000 spoke perfect English the 5000 is talking Chinese.

I'll have to experiment with less RX Gain and Commander coils etc... to see if I can get around this. I just hope the ground dries up a bit more before I next head out.

The settings that I used are;

Search Mode:Deep
Soil Timings: Special (when using Fine Gold) otherwise it is in Enhance
Coil Rx:Mono and Double D
Ground Balance:Tracking


Volume Limit 12
GB Type GEN
Special Fine Gold
Motion Slow
RX Gain 11
Audio Normal
Audio Tone 38
Stabilizer 10
Signal 19
Target Vol 10
Response Normal
Tracking Slow then changed to Med (didn't really help with the ground noise)

I would not recommend using Tracking mode when using either Smooth, Enhance or Fine Gold, in fact this might explain some of the problems you have been experiencing due to the Tracking feature being primed to some extend due to the quiet running nature of the timings and easily going out of balance if the coil is lifted quickly away from the ground, also I feel your Signal setting is probably a bit high relative to your Tone control being well below FP (50 from memory).

Lastly, salt or conductive ground is something that will always cause problems with the Fine Gold and Enhance timings which is heralded by a moaning of the detector with no distinct area of signal or where a response seems spread out and not defined, when the ground is saturated salt will come to the surface causing these timings to become noisy even in ground where you have had no problems with before. To test this out try the new Salt Gold timings, if it is salt that is causing the problem and not the mineralisation then Salt Gold will run pretty quiet, you can happily use tracking mode with Salt Gold.

Hope this helps,

JP

Gooday Censured
I am currently experiencing the exact wet red clay signals in inglewood with my 4500 and NF 14 elliptical.I would consider this quite normal considering the amount of water penetration lately as I havent encountered this with any significance in the past with the same setup.
Steve.

paragold wrote:You have to use a minelab coil or it could blow the detector up.

Mine is still intact.

The use of deep may also contribute to some of the noise, if its using deep in the audio as might be indicated by the Deep end cap switch.????

Gday censured,
i have came across the same problem with the 5000 and i dont think it is your settings or lifting the coil off the ground. It is either the wet ground or faulty machines. Minelab say its the wet ground and wait untill it drys out and we will see the results.
I have ran the machine over 6 or 7 very tight patches 20m by 20m in numerous configerations and dug between 40 to 60 very positive signals that alll turned out to be ground noise and not one buried target. These patches have seen 3 operaters each with 20 years experience go over and over them.Once i believd them to be finished but the 4000 and 4500 both produced more deep gold. If it is the wet ground we wont find out for a couple of months till it drys out.
I tried different coils as well as fine gold, enhance and even smoth sensitive still with very positive signals.
Anyway time will tell

Im just wondering if anyone has tried the 5000 over charcoal, because of the avoca fire of 85 a great deal of area was burnt out south of Maryborough and with the many old camp fires from the diggers i seem to dig alot of charcoal down to 12 inches or so,

I would not recommend using Tracking mode when using either Smooth, Enhance or Fine Gold, in fact this might explain some of the problems you have been experiencing due to the Tracking feature being primed to some extend due to the quiet running nature of the timings and easily going out of balance if the coil is lifted quickly away from the ground, also I feel your Signal setting is probably a bit high relative to your Tone control being well below FP (50 from memory).

Lastly, salt or conductive ground is something that will always cause problems with the Fine Gold and Enhance timings which is heralded by a moaning of the detector with no distinct area of signal or where a response seems spread out and not defined, when the ground is saturated salt will come to the surface causing these timings to become noisy even in ground where you have had no problems with before. To test this out try the new Salt Gold timings, if it is salt that is causing the problem and not the mineralisation then Salt Gold will run pretty quiet, you can happily use tracking mode with Salt Gold.

Hope this helps,

JP

Thank you for your help I'll take what you say into consideration and try again soon, what you say makes sense. I will post the results as soon as I can.

kingfish wrote:Gooday Censured
I am currently experiencing the exact wet red clay signals in inglewood with my 4500 and NF 14 elliptical.I would consider this quite normal considering the amount of water penetration lately as I havent encountered this with any significance in the past with the same setup.
Steve.

This is very reliving to hear. Thank you for taking the time to post Steve.

goldrunner wrote:Gday censured,
i have came across the same problem with the 5000 and i dont think it is your settings or lifting the coil off the ground. It is either the wet ground or faulty machines. Minelab say its the wet ground and wait untill it drys out and we will see the results.
I have ran the machine over 6 or 7 very tight patches 20m by 20m in numerous configerations and dug between 40 to 60 very positive signals that alll turned out to be ground noise and not one buried target. These patches have seen 3 operaters each with 20 years experience go over and over them.Once i believd them to be finished but the 4000 and 4500 both produced more deep gold. If it is the wet ground we wont find out for a couple of months till it drys out.
I tried different coils as well as fine gold, enhance and even smoth sensitive still with very positive signals.
Anyway time will tell

Hi goldrunner, this is very disturbing to hear, but I am relieved I wasn't imagining the targets. It means that I will be digging more phantom targets which will detract from total gold search time. Not happy, however it could also be the operator settings and I just hope i can get a balance where I will get the machine operating with less false ground noise occurances. Reminds me of the GP3000 days digging heaps of ground noises every time I went to an area that was more mineralized. I hope it is not a fault of the machine. This is my first 5000 but my 4th detector overall. I will endeavour to try and find a setting to arrest this very positive signal issue. As far as waiting for the ground to dry out, I don't want to waste months waiting to detect. If it's not raining it is good enough to be out there.

Will be interesting to see if others experience this.

What were the settings you were using?

when is the porter version of the user manual being made available as a dvd? or doovda?

paragold wrote:when is the porter version of the user manual being made available as a dvd? or doovda?

It's in the works as we speak, thanks for asking.

JP

Thats great to hear JP!! I'll look forward to it being released

JP, at least when you put out a video we can understand whats going on. It is much better than the supplied user novel.