AT Pro and mineralized ground????

[DollarDigger]

I hear all the talk about ground variations in the US but can someone tell me how to find out if my ground is mineralized? Let's say my ATP balances at 90 or 80....Is this bad, moderate or light? thanks DDigger

 

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[Adrian SS]

For the AT Pro 90 is hot ground that would kill most standard motion and non motion VLf detectors.

 

[Keppy]

I hear all the talk about ground variations in the US but can someone tell me how to find out if my ground is mineralized? Let's say my ATP balances at 90 or 80....Is this bad, moderate or light? thanks DDigger

I would say that your AT Pro balanceing out at 90 will work just fine in that hot soil.......... That is what mine balances out at.................... And i have no problem with the AT..Or the GTI 1500 Or any detector i ever used in the soil i have here........... I have good depth and no chatter..............

 

[allgold]

I live in Western North Carolina and the ground is hot (around 85-90). My AT Pro works great with the ground being hot. I don't have any other detectors so I can only speak for the AT Pro. Remember to ground balance every so often, as the ground can change here and there. Good luck 8)

 

[Keppy]

I hear all the talk about ground variations in the US but can someone tell me how to find out if my ground is mineralized? Let's say my ATP balances at 90 or 80....Is this bad, moderate or light? thanks DDigger

90 or 80......... that is not bad 20 or 50 is not bad it is all good as long as you ground balance........... To me none of it is bad...........

 

[Adrian SS]

Well I guess that is true, If ya can't GB then it's hot ground.
Here in Australia my Infinium will work in ground that I cannot get my Scorpion, Soveriegn, BHID, 6000DI Pro SL within 6 inches of the ground before they overload. That to me is hot ground. If your vlfs will work ok in the ground that you guys have been talking about, then I guess it is not very hot ground... Weeeelll, not we Aussies call Hot Ground

 

[Keppy]

Well I guess that is true, If ya can't GB then it's hot ground.
Here in Australia my Infinium will work in ground that I cannot get my Scorpion, Soveriegn, BHID, 6000DI Pro SL within 6 inches of the ground before they overload. That to me is hot ground. If your vlfs will work ok in the ground that you guys have been talking about, then I guess it is not very hot ground... Weeeelll, not we Aussies call Hot Ground

Yep ... That is hot ground i never run into ground that hot............ Thank goodness....... I read here on tnet somewere there is some ground in Pa. coal country that the minelabs will not work in........

 

[Adrian SS]

There is some ground here where the Minelab PIs are noisy but they still get good depth and seem to be able to sniff out very small nuggets in any ground once you learn what all the noise is about. and get the detector settings right. The infinium tends to be quiet where the MLs are noisy and it never ceases to amaze me just how nasty the ground can be before the Infinium starts to kick up a bit of a fuss.

I donot know enough about the AT Pro to be able to make an informed comment.
They sell well here so I guess that says something.

 

[DollarDigger]

Okay.... So if the AT PRO balances at let's say 70-80..This is considered good soil that is not mineralized? Thanks DDigger

 

[Adrian SS]

If the GB range on the Pro is zero to 100 and it balances at 70 to 80 then I would call that mild to moderate ground mineralisation, with 100 being very high but not extreme by Aussie standards.... Yes it is mineralised ground and by that I mean Iron mineralised. I would imagine that the readings you would get over salt would be higher.
If after ground balancing in the All metal mode, raising and lowering the coil to the ground does not cause any tone changes then the machine is handling that ground well; If it chirps or blanks out or overloads as the coil touches the ground then the ground is significantly iron mineralised.
All ground has iron mineralisation to a certain degree and will balance out at some level of Ground balance. If on a detector that has a single turn GB control marked 0 to 10, and the detector GBs at a setting of 5 to 7, then that for me is average Ground mineralisation; Maybe that would equate to a GB reading of 70 or 80 on the AT Pro, but as I said I have not used an AT Pro so I do not know where average ground would read. Neutral or quiet ground is ground that has almost no iron mineralisation and a standard VLF All Metal Gb machine could have the coil placed on the ground and it would work fine no matter where you had the GB control set... The ground would not be effecting the detector at all. Even an old TR detector (no GB) will work in neutral ground

 

[gleaner1]

I hear all the talk about ground variations in the US but can someone tell me how to find out if my ground is mineralized? Let's say my ATP balances at 90 or 80....Is this bad, moderate or light? thanks DDigger

Generally speaking most ground has some mineralization if not a lot. As long as the machine is ground balanced it does not matter what stupid meaningless number the box throws at you.

 

[Adrian SS]

I hear all the talk about ground variations in the US but can someone tell me how to find out if my ground is mineralized? Let's say my ATP balances at 90 or 80....Is this bad, moderate or light? thanks DDigger

Generally speaking most ground has some mineralization if not a lot. As long as the machine is ground balanced it does not matter what stupid meaningless number the box throws at you.

Well I donot actually agree with that statement because the higher the iron mineralisation the more likely you are to be getting into gold country or magnetic black sand areas . Gold does tend to be where there is black sand and iron, not always mind, but very very often. That's why detectors such as the MXT and GMZ have means of displaying the magnetic black sand levels and the degree of iron mineralisation.

 

[DollarDigger]

Okay.....Now I'm getting confused... From what I have understood up until now, is the GB as well as DD coils help in mineralized soil to maintain depth (detectability). However to increasing degrees of mineralized ground, a loss of performance in the machine will occur in spite of proper GB and the use of DD Coils.... Am I understanding correctly that youre saying as long as the machine is capable of ground balance and its not reacting with chatter and such that the machine will function without a loss of performance? My purpose for asking all this was not because I was concerned about a GB number but I understood that the higher the ground balance means the higher the mineralization, which has a direct reduction in the performance of the single freq. machine More specific....I've heard numbers like a loss of 50%-70% detections depth on a coin sized target when in high mineralized ground even with proper GB?

 

[Adrian SS]

So long as the ground balance is good the detection depth will be fine.
You can sometimes have problems if the top 6 or 8 inches of ground is lower mineralisation than the ground below that level; The detector will gb to the top layer but will not be ground balanced to the deeper ground and then you can loose some depth on targets that are in the deeper ground or not detect them at all.

The beach is a good example of this where you can be ground balanced to the dry sand but if the sand is wet say a foot down then you will be unlikely to find targets in that level because of the wet salt in the sand. If you find a target in the dry sand and dig down a bit, the detector will begin to detect the wet sand making you think that the target is still in the hole when you may have tossed it out of the hole already.

If the ground is so mineralised that the detector ground balance is at its limit of range then you can loose a bit of depth because the transmitted magnetic field begins to squash out a bit at the deeper levels instead of penetrating to full depth and this can result in weaker signals from some targets.

When the detector is at or approching its GB limit you will find that the machine will need you to keep the coil at a more constant hight above the ground while scanning and this is because the detector GB system is beginning to only GB the upper few inches of ground and the transmitted field is becoming quite compresed or concentrated in these upper few inches of ground and as you raise and lower the coil the machine will begin to sound sound off or blank out more and more like an old VLF TR and this is when you will begin to loose depth due to the increased mineralisation. and is the loss of depth that you refered to at the start of your post.

 

[Matt (CA)]

There is an outstanding post on the gold forum by Mr. Jim Hemmingway that thoroughly explains the use of VLF detectors over varying ground mineralizations. He is undoubtedly the foremost authority on this subject in the prospecting fraternity today. Here's the link.

http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php/topic,400568.0.html

 

[gleaner1]

The ground balance features of the AT Pro allow ground balancing.