Garrett AT Gold vs. MineLabs Eureka Gold

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GOLD Billyen said:
Seeing a lot of minelabs for sale but, hardly ever see any Garrett AT Golds.

Would love to hear some tests done by AT Gold users on highly mineralised soil where the ground is infested with tiny bits of ironstone.

You know the type when you throw a magnet to the ground and the ironstone sticks to the magnet.
 
Hi wolfau

I have a garrett at gold. I use it all the time in Mt Crawford. This area is full of iron stone and handles it with ease. Would not go any other detector.
 
Darryn said:
Hi wolfau

I have a garrett at gold. I use it all the time in Mt Crawford. This area is full of iron stone and handles it with ease. Would not go any other detector.

Welcome to the forum.

Your first reply was to reply to one of my posts. I find this interesting and fascinating.

Do you have a youtube clip you care to share? Would love to see a magnet thrown on the ground first to see how large the iron stone bits are
and by sharing your settings and if your in discrimination mode through a small nugget or 2 on the ground and go over these as well.

What would really interest me is in all metal mode though.
 
Darryn said:
Hi wolfau

I have a garrett at gold. I use it all the time in Mt Crawford. This area is full of iron stone and handles it with ease. Would not go any other detector.

Have you used the ATGold at Chapel Hill or Jupiter Creek? Ironstone in those locations is much worse than Mt Crawford, enough to overload a vlf in some cases, and hot rocks aplenty - you can literally cover a rare earth magnet in seconds with hot rocks.
 
No i haven't. Would love to go up there one weekend and just spend the whole time on the back of the AT Gold.

Wolfau i responded to your post because i have used the AT Gold in what i thought was in high iron stone area.

Sorry no Youtube clips at the moment.
 
Darryn said:
No i haven't. Would love to go up there one weekend and just spend the whole time on the back of the AT Gold.

Wolfau i responded to your post because i have used the AT Gold in what i thought was in high iron stone area.

Sorry no Youtube clips at the moment.

No problem at all. Enjoy the forum. Its a great place to hang out and share experiences and ideas.
 
Goldpick said:
Darryn said:
Hi wolfau

I have a garrett at gold. I use it all the time in Mt Crawford. This area is full of iron stone and handles it with ease. Would not go any other detector.

Have you used the ATGold at Chapel Hill or Jupiter Creek? Ironstone in those locations is much worse than Mt Crawford, enough to overload a vlf in some cases, and hot rocks aplenty - you can literally cover a rare earth magnet in seconds with hot rocks.
I am going to spend a few days at Jupiter Creek next time I'm home (couple of weeks). Give the X-Terra a good work out and see what I can find.
Never been into Chapel Hill, so may have a good look there also.

Cliff
 
Cliff, try and work the white pipe clay around the shafts, those areas are probably your best bet. Some other members have taken their 705's to the above mentioned areas with a lot of frustration, mainly due to the prolific hot rocks. Jupiter creek is a lot cleaner than Chapel Hill, chapel hill is littered with all sorts of junk, including bits of brass plate that some ***** cut up and threw all over the place - very frustrating. Chapel Hill is also littered with deep and dangerous shafts, some hard up against tree trunks and covered with sticks and leaf litter, so very hard to see, and not a place to walk backwards.

The main workings at Chapel Hill are Christmas Rush, which are located on your left as you walk in on the main track, you will see a gate and will have to climb over it to get into that area. The other known spot for small nuggets in pipe clay are right up the back of the fossicking area, known as New Rush. To access this area, there is a gate just under the high voltage powerlines, park here and walk to the very end of the track, and on your right you will find all the shafts surrounded by white pipe clay. People have been raking down the spoil piles in the past, which is evident from the white clay spread all over the place, if you find an intact shaft with the spoil unraked, it most likely has not been touched. Most of the other areas have abundant ironstone that will drive your 705 nuts, or are very overgrown shallow workings. Keep an eye out for large ******* biting ants, they will latch onto you when you least expect it.

For Jupiter Creek, from most reports, best area in the past has been over to the far west in White Gully. The further north you head (downhill towards Long Gully and the Sluice Dam), the worse the ironstone and hot rocks get, literally hopeless using a vlf there.

Also don't rule out looking for relic buttons and pre-decs, they have been found in both areas as you know from your threepence. I have have found some old buttons on both sites, and plenty of bullets and lead shot.

I still think Mt Crawford offers the best opportunity to find gold, simply due to the size of the fossicking area, more vlf friendly ground mineralisation, and the fact that most people go to the same spot time and time again (Watts Gully), there are plenty of others areas to look, some requiring a bit of a walk to get to.

I might head Jupiter way soon with the Infinium, just for something different -it's prett close to my place. :)
 
Good wrap up Goldpick.

In my experience, Chapel Hill is generally very mild. Jupiter Creek gets hot the closer you get to the bottom fence.
Mt. Crawford has a bit of both. Avenue, Snake and Watts are fairly mild. Spring, Speck and around Kolloches are extremely mineralised!
 
Here's a recent Chapel Hill nugget

1402689871_chapel.jpg
 
Thanks Goldpick,

I have only been to Watts gully once and noticed there had been 1 or 2 through the area before and so have never bothered going back. I tend to go around the north east end, but have never found anything.

This next break I will be just heading to Jupter creek and I will have a go around Chapel Hill. Saving some cash for a trip to Tibooburra later in the year.

Nice find Nenad. The 705 may stay a "Gold Virgin" but I'll give it a run and you never know, perhaps pick up another predecimal or 2.

Sorry for hijacking your thread GB :)

Cliff
 
PhaseTech said:
Good wrap up Goldpick.

In my experience, Chapel Hill is generally very mild. Jupiter Creek gets hot the closer you get to the bottom fence.
Mt. Crawford has a bit of both. Avenue, Snake and Watts are fairly mild. Spring, Speck and around Kolloches are extremely mineralised!

I have found mainly the area off to the right hand side of the powerline track, about halfway up to be littered with abundant ironstone, not many PI detectors seem to go in there due to EMI from the powerlines (Chapel Hill). Most of the regularly detected gold always seems to be sub gram tiddlers, with the odd gram piece from pipe clay, mainly found with a Goldbug 2 or GMT. People with PI detectors tend to be pretty coy about showing their finds from those two areas for some reason, maybe due to SA regs on gold ownership, selling, amount of gold allowable per day etc, who knows.

I also used to remember years ago people entering some of the shallower shafts near the main road at Chapel Hill, and bringing material to the surface to detect. You would have buckleys chance of getting me down any shafts to do that, especially after seeing a few brown snakes trapped down there ;)

I also had a try around Kolloches, ended up walking away due to the nasty mineralisation there. After the initial nugget discovery there, I don't think it was very successful anyway.

Bottom line is a PI detector is probably the best chance of finding gold in the these well frequented areas vs 705, ATGold, and other mid frequency detectors, as most gold suiting those detectors would have already been picked up. Ultimately the mineralisation in many spots really limits their depth capabilities. On the other side of the coin, the high frequency detectors still continually manage to pull out the near surface smaller stuff. All depends on what sort of gold you are targeting, and the areas you want to detect in that will dictate the detector choice.

If anyone has managed some good gold from these SA spots from their VLF detectors,, I would love to hear some of their stories. It would be nice to know if these detectors still have a place on our local goldfields, and that they are still relevant. :)
 

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