Headed out this morning on a bit of a recon mission, had buckets, pans, sieves, picks and detector in the back of the ute as I wanted to check out a few spots for future reference. My journey took me through Buln Buln, Hawthorn Creek camping area then on to Russell Creek at Hill End to see what was about. I didn't get the chance to dip the pan as I came across 3 different areas where the track side embankment had fallen away exposing some little quarts veins amongst the bedrock and shaeling so I spent half of the day getting a bucket of samples at each location.
I decided to got past Russell Creek and straight to a spot where I camped a couple of years ago, the idea was to get an hour or two on the MXT Pro, I had the 6x10 DD coil on and around the main campsite it went troppo from the amount of ring pulls, bottle tops and foil so I ventured up the track a bit, used it in Prospecting mode and plenty of iron targets located, I dug everything else as it was at 10% Iron probability but the VDI varied between the bullet shells and aluminium, I had a few fluttering moments when there was a faint signal with 10% iron and VDI between 30-50, turned out to be melted Aluminium that looked nuggetty, just light weight.
It also signalled on a couple of pieces of rock, faint signal at 20% iron and VDI around 50-60 from memory, I turfed the first one as it looked like nothing but kept the second one just in case, it's in the pic and not sure if it's iron stone or hot rock?
Also got a small piece of lead that had my heart fluttering at first when it was dug from about 4", weighty but the heart sank when I washed it at the car.
So, I was happy with the MXT but wish I had more time to play with it, found plenty of bullet shells, my first coin, lead, too many bottle tops and foil as well as what looks like the broken end of a bolt handle on a rifle.
I've got 3 full 20ltr buckets with locations written on with samples to classify and crush and I'm stuffed, got blisters on my hands from the pick (bloody ring pulls & foil) it's been a big day and hanging for next weekend to come around.