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Date Posted: 16:07:50 06/06/02 Thu
Author: Steve Herschbach
Subject: Latest Goldmaster Small Coil Prototype

Hi Everyone,

OK, I got the go ahead from White's to talk! This one was under pretty tight wraps.

I spent part of last Saturday testing another prototype 6'' elliptical coil for the White's Goldmaster series. This is a DD coil, so a departure for most small coils, which are usually a concentric design. This means this coil gets better tip-to-tip sensitivity than most small coils.

The coil is also a departure from the previous coils I tested in that it looks like a factory produced unit, rather than a converted version of another coil, as was the case with the other two coils. The coil is almost the same dimensions as the Gold Bug 6.5'' coil, but a bit thicker. It is not epoxy filled, but feels more solid than the average White's coil.

I called Steve Houston and told him this coil is a winner. ''Build it'' I say! I took the coil to Crow Creek near Anchorage and gave it a good workout. Scrubbed it in the dirt and knocked rocks around with it. The coil was steady and produced no false signals from scrubbing and knocking around, as long as the coil cable is kept tightly wrapped.

A note on the coil cable... it is attached to the coil next to the rod mount, so the coil can be freely flipped back and forth. A problem with some other small coils is thet connect the cable directly in line with the rod mount.

The last 6'' elliptical prototype I tried overloaded when the gain was run above 7. I was able to run this coil at full gain with no problem. It's tuned perfectly to match the Goldmasters. My happiest discovery was that I dug some tiny slivers of steel, which were accurately identified as steel targets. The target id works on amazingly small items.

Crow Creek has low mineralization. I ran the gain full out, V/SAT set a minimum, and manually ground balanced for that extra edge. The coil worked great set like this. You would probably want to set the V/SAT at 3 or higher in ground that varies more, and reduce gain in more extreme mineralization. I would recommend manual ground balance for all but the most extreme situations when running the small coil, as the automatic ground balance tends to rapidly reduce the signal on those tiniest nuggets.

I am curious how this coil would work in bad ground and with more serious hot rocks. It's DD design may help it in these areas. I did hit a few weak hot rocks, but all in all someone will need to give this coil a good test in this regard. I'm betting it will do as well as can be hoped under difficult conditions.

I eventually hit a few pieces of gold. Two small elongated nuggets weighing .6 grains each both gave good solid signals. I then found a 4.2 grain nugget that sounded like it weighed an ounce. The machine really screamed on it, and gave a unique higher pitched sound I had not heard from my GMT before. Real zippy and distinctly different than the small steel targets. All the gold targets gave a single bar ''it's gold'' reading on the LCD readout.

Finally, I bench-tested the coil against my Gold Bug 2 small coil on a piece of quartz with some tiny gold in it. Both machines were jacked up to the max, and both gave a nearly identical weak signal on the sample. This little coil is the first I've ever seen that gives the Gold Bug 2 with small coil a run for the money.

This coil is a winner, and I'm throwing all my support into this version being produced. It's the perfect Goldmaster coil for the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska. I had a blast using it. The little thing is just plain fun to use in brush and around larger rocks.

If you have not done so already, email Steve Houston at shouston@whiteselectonics.com and tell White's to build this coil. It's a winner! And when it becomes available... buy it!!

Steve Herschbach

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