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Today I got hold of a Minelab Go-Find 40.
First impressions - it's very plasticy, and doesn't look like it will have a long lifespan. I've already heard that the handle can be broken quite easily, and I'm not surprised. Also, the stem wobbles around a lot.
On the plus side - it folds down small enough to fit in a rucksack, so it's also easy to tuck away in the car when you go on holiday. it's really simple to use, and with respectable depth. It can get a Victorian penny at 13" in an air test on maximum sensitivity. I did a quick test in my test garden, and it was able to find 2 of the 5 coins buried there. To be fair, no detector ever tested there has been able to find all 5. In general, only 2 coins are ever detected. However, the 3rd coin is sometimes detectable, but only because I know it's there. In practise, it's not a signal you would decide to dig. With one of my homemade detectors I can just about detect the 4th coin with a 4" coil. The problem with the test garden is the huge amount of ferrous trash. Some really cheap detectors can only find the 1st coin, and one detector failed to find any at all. That was a Viking 5.
One thing that interests me about this Go-Find detector is the coil. It looks like a mono, but it reacts like a concentric. According the technical specifications, the detector runs at 7.7kHz, and Gary Schafer (Vice President of Minelab Americas) stated that the Go-Find uses their VFLEX technology, which is single-frequency VLF (same as the X-TERRA). He also stated that the coils operate from a pinpointing perspective similar to how a concentric coil would, but they are actually mono loop coils. So my question is: Does this mean the coil is being used as mono coil all the time? This is supposed to be a VLF machine and includes ferrous/non-ferrous discrimination ... so a mono coil doesn't make sense.
Anyone care to speculate?
First impressions - it's very plasticy, and doesn't look like it will have a long lifespan. I've already heard that the handle can be broken quite easily, and I'm not surprised. Also, the stem wobbles around a lot.
On the plus side - it folds down small enough to fit in a rucksack, so it's also easy to tuck away in the car when you go on holiday. it's really simple to use, and with respectable depth. It can get a Victorian penny at 13" in an air test on maximum sensitivity. I did a quick test in my test garden, and it was able to find 2 of the 5 coins buried there. To be fair, no detector ever tested there has been able to find all 5. In general, only 2 coins are ever detected. However, the 3rd coin is sometimes detectable, but only because I know it's there. In practise, it's not a signal you would decide to dig. With one of my homemade detectors I can just about detect the 4th coin with a 4" coil. The problem with the test garden is the huge amount of ferrous trash. Some really cheap detectors can only find the 1st coin, and one detector failed to find any at all. That was a Viking 5.
One thing that interests me about this Go-Find detector is the coil. It looks like a mono, but it reacts like a concentric. According the technical specifications, the detector runs at 7.7kHz, and Gary Schafer (Vice President of Minelab Americas) stated that the Go-Find uses their VFLEX technology, which is single-frequency VLF (same as the X-TERRA). He also stated that the coils operate from a pinpointing perspective similar to how a concentric coil would, but they are actually mono loop coils. So my question is: Does this mean the coil is being used as mono coil all the time? This is supposed to be a VLF machine and includes ferrous/non-ferrous discrimination ... so a mono coil doesn't make sense.
Anyone care to speculate?
. By the way , if you have this Go-Find device in your hands , you can make some experiments to find out the coil construction . Just use a little probe coil connected to the scope and explore the field lines concentration across the main coil . If the lines are stronger on the outer edge of the coil - it means that the TX winding is located there , with less diameter RX . But if the field is uniform outside and inside of the coil - it will definitely show the mono-coil construction ...
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