Vehicle Mounted Coils?

[Delta Hunter]

Has anyone ever built or seen plans for a large vehicle mounted system, By vehicle I mean ATV or the like. Do any company's make something like this? I have been google-ing for hours with no results..... It seems to me years back I read a tale of an old desert rat who did this and mounted a unit on his truck.. after a few years he found one of the biggest natural gold formations in the US ever found.... I would love to be able to cover so much ground.... Thanks all


Delta

 

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[willie d]

Delta, I remember that story, I saw it on a TV show about treasure. If I remember correctly, it was mounted to an old jeep. I believe he used a long pvc pipe to extend out in front of the vehicle and mounted the control box on the dash. I hope this helps.

 

[Delta Hunter]

Thanks willie, at least I know I wasn't dreaming all this up... Now how do I get ahold of or build one of these Anybody

 

[Carl-NC]

One of the old treasure mags had a cover pic, and a story, of a fellow who had a rectangular PI coil mounted on the front of his truck. It turns out this was built by Eric Foster, who specializes in PI detectors. You could build such a beast without too much trouble.

- Carl

 

[Carl-NC]

Treasure Search, April 1982. It's called the Agritec MK3.

 

[paratrooper]

Here ya go .

 

[ringding]

A handyman could easily mount one on the front of a bicycle. I thought about doing it.

 

[U.K. Brian]

Thats a baby in the picture. Eric's P.I. ( Long Tom I think it was called ) was either six or eight feet wide. I have a picture somewhere. Not originally vehicle mounted, you had a person at each end one of which had the control box.On detecting the signal he would flick over to a small coil and scan the centre of the large to find the target.
Everyone I know who has tried vehicle mounting gave up in the end due to the large amount of signals being picked up so you would have to stop every few minutes.

 

[Slingshot]

BUILDING METAL LOCATORS A TREASURE HUNTERS PROJECT BOOK by Charles D. Rakes, published by TAB Books Inc. in 1986, ISBN # 0-8306-2706-5. Complete instructions on building a Four-Coil Balanced Bridge Locator for use on an automobile on pages 48-55. Looks interesting to me, and I have wondered how well it would work in a desert environment such as in the Australian Western Desert searching for large gold nuggets. Remoteness and fuel availability nixed this idea, but I had never thought of mounting it on a bicycle - that might work.

 

[CaptJohn]

Yep, should be able to make a big coil. Note the Gemi-3 will spread out 35 feet , handled by two people. Also make a pvc SLED and pull or push it with a 4 wheeler. Several of the PI units use sleds for their 40" coils.

 

[khouse]

If a person has the cash couldn't you buy about 10 detectors with programable frequencys, 10 bigfoot coils, mount them in 2 rows far enough apart but overlapping, and connect each detector to a relay that sprayed paint on the ground at each coil when you got a good hit. It may be better that one huge coil. more accurate too.

 

[mws53]

Just saw program on TV this week of a guy in Kansas that built a 4 foot by 8 foot coil on a PVC frame that had non-metalic lawnmower wheels attached that he pulls behind an atv. He searches in large fields in Kansas looking for meteors and then digs them up with a backhoe.

 

[99thpercentile]

Vehicle mounted metal detectors are used all the time in unexploded ordnance detection and discrimination surveys. One example is MTADS which is run by Blackhawk which is an array of either magnetometers or Geonics EM61-MK2 units pulled by a non-ferrous dune buggy. The EM61 data is logged by a modified version of Geometrics MagLog software concurrently with the GPS data. All the data is processed later using Geosoft's Oasis Montaj software.

 

[Redsumit]

DAMN now these guys aint messin around

 

[Hoss KGC]

Here is the guy in Kansas hunting meteorites with a pi detector while pulling a large coil behind him. Look for the show "Cash and Treasures" on the travel channel. They had an episode featuring this guy and it was very entertaining.
Good luck,
Boattow
http://www.worldrecordmeteorite.com/index.htm

 

[gollum]

First:

Slingshot,

I think you had better think the "mounting a drag coil on a bicycle idea" through a little further. Just riding a bike through soft sand and brush is tough, now factor in dragging a coil behind it. Not fun! A Motocross Bike would be another story, but you still have to contend with keeping balanced while worrying about signals and dragging a coil (could be a recipe for disaster).

KHOUSE,

The multi-coil idea would not work because anyone who has ever been metal detecting, who has wandered too near another detectorist, will tell you that each coil would pick up the signal from the other coils, and cause a lot of crazy signals.

Best bet is to mount a drag coil behind an ATV. It would be easy enough to buy about a 48" x 48" coil, go to a Home Depot type store and buy a heavy piece of rubber (like a rubber doorway mat), a length of 3"-4" white PVC Pipe, and some wood screws. Screw the mat to the pipe, mount the coil on top of the mat. run a length of rope from the ATV, back through the pipe, and back to the ATV, fastening the coil wire to the rope, running it to the MD Box mounted on say the rear tray.

There ya go.

Best-Mike

 

[99thpercentile]

On the issue of instrument interference, the multiple EM61-MK2 units on the MTADS array can be phase locked with a trigger cable. You could also try a GEM-5 from Geophex (www.geophex.com) which has a large Tx coil and five pairs of gradiometer Rx coils.

 

[SgtSki in MI]

We got 'em over here in Iraq

We have a vehicle that the Combat Engineers use. It's called the Meerkat and it's used for route clearance missions along roads. The upgraded version of it is called the Husky. They're built in South Africa. I'm not gonna go into specifics on it (security and all) but in the pics the part that looks like a grader blade is actually the searchcoil. The front and rear of the vehicle is desigend so that if it gets damaged in an explosion it can be unhooked, a new assembly put on, and continue working.

HH,
SgtSki

 

[Ant]

Re: We got 'em over here in Iraq

We have a vehicle that the Combat Engineers use. It's called the Meerkat and it's used for route clearance missions along roads. The upgraded version of it is called the Husky. They're built in South Africa. I'm not gonna go into specifics on it (security and all) but in the pics the part that looks like a grader blade is actually the searchcoil. The front and rear of the vehicle is desigend so that if it gets damaged in an explosion it can be unhooked, a new assembly put on, and continue working.

HH,
SgtSki

Last week I got an operator and maintenance Certification on the Husky , 40 hours training. Just think, it can be fitted with an adapter so that I can mount my Gold Bug 2 or any hand held metal detector. The adapter cost over $100.000. The coils on the huskies we have cost about $17,000.00 to replace.

 

[Urban Prospector]

I wonder what effect a large coil would have on battery life. It seems it would use more power for the bigger field. Any thoughts or knowledge on this one?