Hi Folks,
After an enjoyable day out with Tathradj and Jamie, I thought it was time to go and look at a new area. I had been covering a lot of territory over the past three weeks trying to find some ground that would produce a few specks. Unfortunately there was no result for the effort put in over that time. It got to the point where I started questioning everything that I was doing. Are the settings right? Is the machine broken? Am I moving too quickly? Has the gold run out? You guys know what Im talking about. The times that you have where for some reason, your luck or lack of skill or what ever it may be, prevents you from turning up some gold. Spending time with Doug and Jamie allowed all of us to compare notes, fine tune settings for our machines and coils and compare signals from buried targets. It confirmed that we were basically in the zone with our settings and with a bit of tweaking all we needed to do was pass our coils over the shiny stuff.
This morning I went to an area that was very close to where we met up on the weekend. It was a bit of a dry gully that I had not worked before. Decided that Id wear headphones as the signal is much clearer and sharper than what a speaker would produce. Made the mistake of not adjusting my settings to compensate for the change. (How lazy was that) The signal from this first piece required a change in underwear. I wasnt ready for the response. It was loud and sharp. I thought it was a bullet for sure until I picked up a solid bit of clay that contained the piece. This is what popped out:
Just under a gram. Was ready to go home after that. It really made my day. Perseverance had payed off. It was only a couple of inches deep and the machine went silly. I should have switched back to the speaker to compare the sounds but didnt. The headphones gave a much sharper signal that what I was used to hearing.
The second signal was also loud. It sounded like a bullet casing. When I dug down to bedrock and grey clay, I changed my mind about what was going to be dragged out of the hole. I was lucky that the old timers didnt bother to break up the decomposing shale as this nice 4.8g piece went straight into the finds container:
The final signal came from a piece that was on the edge of a small puddle of water. The machine sang loud and clear (again just like a bullet Casing) Had to dig slightly into the bank and down about 8 into some clay to reveal this 13.3g slug:
After finding the last piece, I packed up and went home. Why be greedy? Ill come back another day and see if the tally can be increased. Not bad for two hours work.
So to anyone whos getting frustrated at not finding anything, hang in there and keep turning up. Your turn will come.
Cheers
Les