Hot Weather Cold Weather Dry ground Wet Ground Daytime Nightime.

[woody]

Hot weather = Less Nuggets detected.
Cold Weather = More Nuggets detected.
Wet Ground = Less Nuggets detected.
Dry Ground = More Nuggets detected.
Night Time  = More Nuggets detected
Day Time   = Less Nuggets detected.

Why?   Who knows the answers?

[brogansown]

Yesterday, I pushed the envelope a bit and went to the hills here in Oregon.  The snow had melted, but it had recently rained and the ground was super-saturated with water.  Although my Minelab 4500 was stable, the relatively deep signals were very weak, even on bullets.  Small pieces of trash on the surface gave a loud signal of course.  As a result, I had a short day and no nuggets.  We had found nuggets there last fall before being driven out by winter and the ground then was very dry and hard.  Minelab wasn't as stable then, but signals were strong on deep targets.  We think from our experiences, that very wet ground effects the signals detrimentally, some moisture and very dry ground can be squirrelly, but depth isn't effected much.    These are anecdotal I know, but we have all come to the same conclusions.  Is there a water/air threshold for the radio signals or is there something else at play here.

[nikolatesla]

Ill put my bit in here ,
wet ground = less penetration and a lot more unevenness in balance so much so that deep multi oz nugget are invisible unless near the surface .

dry ground = Much smoother ground noises in some cases non existent in comparison to wet.

The problem is that the ground dries out very slowly and not evenly 

The biggest and most debilitating thing that we face is background noise ...it comes and goes WTF is it?
Over the horizion radar? generators ? it was in a 5hour cycle last time I timed it and when it is quiet ...you really can get depth ..so most of the emphasis on going back to a patch is on getting at it when the atmospherics allow our detectors to work.  more gain=more noise .
I don't go along with the night thing except that you will break your bad habits a bit if you cant see as well ..and its happens to be quiet, but that is not related to night time specifically.

If any body has away of predicting the noise I'm all ears ..and more nuggets

thanks in advance
This noise thing makes detecting a waste of time in some situations ,


I hope this forum stays on the operational aspects as there is so much non operational stuff out there

[woody]

I just finished a fully in depth article on all the noise sources that upset detecting,  Over the horizon radar is the major culprit... the article should be out in a couple of editions.

[debongos]

Hi all,

Went out with the old man on the weekend and the 4500 was working a treat in the Territory as the ground is very dry and the weather cooler than the wet/summer months. Just out for the day and didn't find any nuggets but in these conditions the modded 4500 was giving the old mans 5000 a run with the test nugget and the trash we found.

Peter

[LJ]

Very interesting questions, being a water hunter you would think I would have some answers. I was under the impression that wet sand was better than the dry for depth but it sounds that might be wrong so I will have to run some tests.
Never heard of horizon radar though? Let me know when the article is done Woody
LJ

[woody]

The article should be out in 2 months time, wet sand could give increased depth as the conductivity is the same, unlike the goldfields that cause pattern distortion and skewing to varying conductance and dielectric constants.

[Filternozzle]

Here in the UK it seems a little different.  Best response and depth is with moisture in the ground.   When its very dry 'Coin & Relic' timing can be used (and its the only time I have ever been able to use it)  but if the ground is moist or wet another timing is required.   With sodden ground there is a loss of depth but again this could be down to the need to change soil timing, depth changes according to soil timing and type/size of target.