Need help from other N. Alabama MDers

[BamaBill]

Need help from other N. Alabama MD'ers

Recently stumbled on an old copy of this forum where somebody professing to be from N. Alabama (where I live) stated that N. Alabama is heavily mineralized. The guy I bought my machine from said that its only the South end of the State that has that problem and that the Cibola I was buying should be fine. Who's right?

 

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[aerograd]

Re: Need help from other N. Alabama MD'ers

I live in North Alabama (Huntsville) and have an Ace 250 that has the preset ground balance. I have detected a little in my backyard and do get a number of jumpy signals, but my house is fairly new and the construction crews leave tons of trash behind at sites. There are a lot of rocks where I live and that makes digging anything more than an inch or two down difficult. Whether those rocks are "hot" rocks that can wreak havoc with your detector, I don't know. I haven't noticed anything like iron ore up here like I see down in South Alabama.

I have family in South Alabama near Enterprise & Dothan. You can see chunks of iron ore laying on top of the ground all over the trails going back between the farm fields. I found that the soil around the house was so much easier to dig though because it was largely sand...rather than clay and rock like up here. I plan to go back this fall or winter and detect on some of the back pieces of the property around some old homesites... hopefully the iron ore won't cause my Ace250 too many problems.

Don't know if this helps or not. Good luck!

 

[BamaBill]

Re: Need help from other N. Alabama MD'ers

Aerograd, appreciate the response. I'm probably not too far from you, as I live in Madison and work in Huntsville.

 

[aerograd]

Re: Need help from other N. Alabama MD'ers

How often do you detect? What kind of sites? I just got started so I am taking the low hanging fruit (parks) until I learn more about my detector and stuff. I did ok at some playgrounds in Hsv the other day, but only left with clad coins really... and a couple of bullet casings. One of which was an unfired .22 cal.

I am hoping to find some older places out by where I live to hunt on, but I haven't gotten up the nerve to ask property owners for permission yet. I need to practice my digging a bit more so I don't mess up stuff. Darn ground here is so hard though, you practically have to chip it away sometimes... nice plugs are really hard to do... at least for me.

 

[BamaBill]

Re: Need help from other N. Alabama MD'ers

I'm a relic hunter, but I don't mind doing coin shooting. I think you're going to find out that asking permission is one skill you're going to have to hone. Good news on that is there is a variety of approaches that work and after thinking about it and practicing on somebody you know you can generally come up with something you're comfortable with (important that you appear relaxed and comfortable talking to people about what you want to do and its really not as hard it might seem). Yeah, with all the dry weather the ground is pretty tough in places, but the rain we're getting right now should help. If you want to chat a bit in private my email is wlwalter77 at hotmail dot com.

Sincerely,
Bill W.

 

[Nana40]

Re: Need help from other N. Alabama MD'ers

I'm in north central Alabama and I don't usually have any problems with my md...well..unless I am around an old homeplace and find where they had kept the coal pile. :P

 

[BamaBill]

Re: Need help from other N. Alabama MD'ers

Nana, are you using a manual ground balance or is it a preset machine? I found the description of a test someone did while reviewing the Cibola that involved using the threshold and pinpointer button (all metal mode) to see how well the preset ground balance nulls out the mineralization. Well, using this test it appears that I might be losing some depth due to pockets of mineralization. Is 5-6" normal on a dime that you just buried?

 

[Nana40]

Re: Need help from other N. Alabama MD'ers

It's preset. Just a few little adjustments and I'm ready to go. It's been so long since I buried a dime, I can't answer that with any certainty. :P Sorry. I have an MXT and I don't know anything about any other brands, so I can't compare what mine will do against another. Well..I did start out with the Discovery 3300 and after a couple of months Charlie thought I needed something else. I just know that I am very happy with the results of the MXT so far.

Nana~