GROUND PENETRATING RADAR

[johnnyblaze]

Hey whats up has anyone heard anything good about the new GPR detectors??
If so can you tell me what is the best unit out there....Price as well as performance..
John

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[Kentucky Kache]

New GPR detectors? Do you have a link?

[johnnyblaze]

http://www.kellycodetectors.com/nokta/nokta_buy.htm

[Kentucky Kache]

http://www.kellycodetectors.com/nokta/nokta_buy.htm

I hadn't seen that. Thanks.

[johnnyblaze]

I have seen them starting at $15,000.00.
6 grand is alot of money and im sure you will have to buy extras...
It would be interesting to own..
John

[Kentucky Kache]

I have seen them starting at $15,000.00.
6 grand is alot of money and im sure you will have to buy extras...
It would be interesting to own..
John

It would be interesting indeed. I wonder how long it would take to learn how to use it.

[Tom_in_CA]

The problem is that the pixel sizes are too small to do any good for our hobby. The absolute smallest resolution is the pixel sizes can be is like something like one inch across. Thus... all coins, foil wads, tabs, rings, nails, etc... will all be.... ONE PIXEL!! Doh!

Even something like a horseshoe is not going to be a magical horseshoe shape. It will just be a messy blotch of pixels.

[Roland58]

I think you should get one and give us a detailed review!

[U.K. Brian]

There's been two or three of this model on E-Bay(British) this year. UK price is around £5000, when a few months old they resell for £1000 to £2000.

Doesn't mean they dont work but they are not that much use being pressed into general coin/ring hunting a task they are not really suited to. Bit like using a cannon to shoot birds.

For four or five times the price you can get better performance for both depth and target resolution. A 10 to 2000 MHz range means you can use the low frequency for extreem depth or the highest frequency to provide good resolution near surface.

[johnnyblaze]

So do you think this would be good for cache hunting?
Like a jar of coins etc.
On the site it shows imaging of rings..Do you think it is a bogus advertisement?
Thanks

[Tom_in_CA]

Johnny, it would be no better for caches, than any standard detector, or two-box detector, etc... ANY detector can tell you "there's a large object here" (jar, box, etc...) simply by giving you a large beep. Right? So why does a "mess of pixels" tell you anything different? You seem to think there's going to be this magical picture of a mason jar, or box with a pad-lock on it, etc.... It's not gonna work like that. A chunk of cast iron cr*p, a hubcap, an aluminum can, etc.... are all gonna be a mess of pixels. How is that any more helpful than a detector which beeps, and tells you the same thing: "there's metal here". Simply get a 2-box unit, and you won't pick up anything smaller than a soda can, to begin with, if you're thinking there's a cache somewhere.

As for the rings in their ad, I'll tell ya what: You go buy one of those machines, take it out to the nearest urban blighted inner city park, and go see how many gold rings you can effortlessly dig up, while leaving tabs, foil wads, etc... in the ground. I think you're in for a rude awakening. And sure, of course they'll show pix of gold rings in their ads. We've seen this for decades now, in every single advertising ad for regular detectors too. You know the drill: Whites, Garret, Fisher, etc... will all have pix and testimonials, of their poster boys standing their holding their latest gold ring, or a jar of coins, etc.... Heck, an XLT even has an icon-pix of a ring on their screen too, when you wave a gold ring in front of it. And a little "quarter" pix when you wave a quarter, etc..... I have serious doubts that what you see in that ad (the glowing ring shaped image) is going to be what you're seeing in the field. For example, what image would a tab make? a foil wad? A singular coin? etc.... Notice their ad doesn't show any of that, as it's probably all the same thing.

[johnnyblaze]

I must say you made me laugh at the magical box....
It also says it tells you its gold...But i totally see what you are saying.
It would be nice to have my company buy it for a specific project and have it to play with at my leisure....

[Tom_in_CA]

Where did the ad say " It also says it tells you its gold..."? The most any metal detector, of any sort, will tell you, is conductivity. It can not tell aluminum apart from gold, as they are both low conductors, given relative sized objects.

If there is a machine that can tell you "this is gold", then hurry and buy it! Please tell me where the ad says that, because I didn't see that in there. If it did say something like that, then it's probably akin to something like the XLT scale, where it to might have "gold" written in one of the zones of their TID scale. Well sure ....... of course..... and so too are pull tabs and large foil wads in the same zone. So I think you're mis-understanding the "tells you it's gold".

If it, in fact, did say that, please point out where it says that. If it really says that, with no clarification of any kind, then this is false advertising. No such technology exists. And if it did, we'd all get rich digging gold rings, while effortlessly leaving foil and tabs in the ground.

[johnnyblaze]

Go back to the ad and read the screen on the monitor..
Let me know what you think..
John

[Frankn]

First let me state I have no personal experience with a GPR unit. Now I have been following the technical literature on these units. First I think the Kellyco unit is made by that German mfg. I do not think it is a true GPR. I think it is more like a cross between a magnetometer and a PI. If the target is ferrous [iron] the mag will pick it up, if not they know it is not iron. The PI portion is much enhanced from your regular detector and will go deeper. I have been looking at accurate locator units. They operate on a similar principal as the German units. The readout on these units are basically showing density of the targets. Red is usually metal, Green is compact usually undisturbed soil, yellows are refilled soil, blue can be a void or a plastic material, etc.

The US gov. has several GPS units in Sat's. The older La Cross Sat's Picked up trenches that were filled in at Gettysburg for the park service among other things. They found tunnels under the Mex. border. I think the old La Cross Sat's are dead now.

I do cach hunting mostly and I now have 2 2Box units that can reach down as far as I want.They don't pick up objects smaller than a softball so I am not bothered by junk. They will however pick up that softball size metal target at app 8'. Considering the vast price difference and my required dept, I would take the 2Box any day.

[Roland58]

I have to agree with you, johnny.......the ad even states that the unit will tell you that one ring is better gold than the other when they are sitting side by side in the ground. Must be quite a machine!! Now, if it could tell the difference between a pull tab and a nickel, or, a zincoln and a dime.......I might have to buy one!!!

[U.K. Brian]

Always amazes me how those who have never found a silver bar, gold hoard, cannon etc are experts on things they have never tried.

Get to the fine print and most of these radar detectors say "for locating things bobbin (or cotton reel) size and above". You have to allow for advertising hype but its really no different than that for standard VDI machines that suggests a meter can tell you what your going to find before you dig it.The key with the radar machines (which are not P.I.) is the fact that the manufacturer will say somewhere in his literature that you get a 3D "representation" ie the software makes a guess.

They work really well for what they were intended for which is not coinshooting. Thousands of contractors use them all over the world. You can hire them by the day or a reputable agent will provide a free demonstration. Why not do that and write a report ?

As for two box machines of the three I've tested on the same target the Discovery TF 900 gave the greatest depth followed by the Whites 808 and C-Scope versions. On a coke can sized target the Discovery could manage 3 feet 5 inches and the other two just over 3 feet. A Fisher Gemini gave no reponse. The Discovery is the most expensive and the C-Scope the cheapest. The advantage with the Discovery was the auto ground balance though this might be on the Whites now as Discovery always seem to lead and a few years on Whites follow.

[Tom_in_CA]

Johnny, you say:

"Go back to the ad and read the screen on the monitor..
Let me know what you think.. "

ok, I've gone back and looked at the kellyco ad again. Are you referring to the part where it's pointing at an image of what is purported to be the gold rings (shown in the photo to the side), and the text (which apparently comes up on the monitor when they swung over gold rings?) that says:

"cavity gold and alloy metal siganl gold and alloy metal in the cavity side by side / alloy is more ...."

If so, I still don't believe the machine ....... ANY MACHINE .... can tell gold from other metals. If such a machine exists, (which you seem intent on believing does exist), then I suggest you rush out and buy it now. There are thousands upon thousands of parks and junky urban lots across the USA, which people have either cherry picked out the high conductors, or just avoid because they are too junky with aluminum foil, can slaw, tabs, etc...... All you need to do is take that machine, waltz through junkyards, and presto: it will tell you the difference between aluminum and gold, right? Heck, doesn't Whites make that claim already?? ("shows you what's in the ground before you dig!" )

Go ahead. Invest in it. Take it out to the nearest blighted urban ghetto park, and see if you can find gold amongst the sea of aluminum trash. Let us know how you do.

[Tom_in_CA]

By the way: I stand corrected: There is technology that does exist, that ..... for example ...... the military uses to aid in determining composition for explosives, pollutants, etc.... At least I saw the write-up back in the mid-1990s, in a periodical for Westinghouse Co. defense division dept. It would indeed scan a test block (a block the size of a refrigerator anyhow) and tell the users the percentages of various components or something. I talked to one of the engineers, and explained our hobby of metal detecting, and how we were handi-capped in the current TID based-on-conductivity technology, because of the old aluminum vs gold problem. The engineer told me that ...... "yes, if you had a gold ring, and an aluminum tab, that had the exact same conductivity (read the same on a metal detector TID scale), that yes, their machine would be able to tell you one was gold, while the other was aluminum.

Their machine was strictly built for military/industrial applications (for pollutants, explosives, contaminants, or whatever). But none-the-less, after talking about how it *might* relate to our hobby (as he had no knowledge of metal detecting, and how it relates to commonly recurring junk items, prior to our conversation), he agreed that their machine would indeed solve this problem.

The problem is, the machine costs multiple millions, is mounted on a Bobcat tractor, and they had to wear radioactive lead suits to use it, and had to have multiple barriers of bureaucratic hurdles to even emit the type stuff they had to bombard the test materials with.

Now I grant you, that was about 15 yrs. ago, that I had this conversation with that Westinghouse engineer. But I gaurantee you, this is NOT what Kellyco. is advertising. Just wanted to clarify though, when I said that "no such technology exists", that perhaps it is theoretically possible.

[Kentucky Kache]

Now I grant you, that was about 15 yrs. ago, that I had this conversation with that Westinghouse engineer. But I gaurantee you, this is NOT what Kellyco. is advertising. Just wanted to clarify though, when I said that "no such technology exists", that perhaps it is theoretically possible.

How can you say it's theoretically possible, and then guarantee this is not what Kellyco is advertising? Is it not possible they could have found a way around the hurdles? That's what usually happens with technology. They say the first computer pretty much filled an entire room. Now we have computers that will fit in one hand, and out perform the earlier ones by a million miles. I just can't understand how you can be so positive against something, and still admit that's it's possible. You were equally positive that the theory was bad before remembering the conversation with the engineer.