Went to Oberon to day. New SPP is working well, but operator (me) is bit silly. I have to remember that this is PI machine and not VLF X-TERRA. The place I have selected to do testing is small creek where aluvial gold was first discovered in 1868. The aluvial flats has been worked over many times and every one who dug there left bit of metal behind. So I dug out assortment of various metal junk in first hour but no gold. There was signal every couple feet. After hour I gave up and went to the pine forest above then creek where I just could make up outlines of some old diggings. Target signals diminished a lot, but I expected that, because the ground was covered with pine needles and humus to the 5 to 10 cm. I have recovered some wonderful treasure, such as half of 3/8" chain link at 14", big horse shoe at 11", .22 bullet at 6" and assortment of spend brass cartridges. Curiously SPP ground balanced at default setting around the creek and in the forest too. The batteries were getting low, so I gave up on detecting and tried pan around the creek. In third hole I paned out longish picker and few smaller grains of gold and two very small sapphire chips. So I got three buckets of wash from that hole to pan at home.
My new detector works well. I have gain three quarters way up at times and I did not experienced any falsing. The 1.6 Volts rechargable NiZn batteries doesn't last very long, maybe two and half hours. I did learn bit about advantages and limitations of my new detector.
Karl
