How hard is the ground balance mod to do?
Great stuff. I love mods.
Looks like you’ve gone all out.
@CosmoCoinage not difficult if you’re used to waving a soldering iron around.
You basically just have to lift a small trimpot off the circuit board and replace it (via two wires) with a 20k variable resistor.
Most technically challenging bit would be removing the trimpot
I also measured the resistance on the trimpot and marked the corresponding dial location on the new variable so I can run at factory default if I want to.
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Thanks for that, something to look in to.
stop playing with your pots you will go blind.
Apparently the police use metal detectors in helicopters to find rural pot.
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Hmmm! Reminds me of a Barry Crump yarn called “ARTY and the FOX” about two charactors turning their road surveying van into a gold detector. Or something along those lines.
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Beach trial for the Ace 250 GT this afternoon.
The GB mod worked well, extremely well!. Still very sensitive to the salt changes. The steep beach had a variable water table under it with seeps coming out of the slope and this transition line was very difficult to ‘lock on’ to. Higher up was great, and lower down in the constant wet sand was very usable. I think a lot of the complaints are because people expect absolute silence until a target is hit. The Ace was twittering away to itself constantly (thank God for the volume hack!) but sang out loud and clear on the targets.
Pulled a 925 ring and a wee silver locket from the trash at the free water zone at the edge of the waves so was very happy with that. The tones are very rudimentary, and quickly learnt to dig anything that gave the same response in both directions.
Armed with this experience I headed to a nearby beach that is very flat and with no slope, as I predicted once the machine was tuned to this consistent water/matrix composition it was humming! I think I only had to rebalance twice as I moved from shell bank to silty mush and back.
Sucked up a few old decimals from 6 - 8", an IPhone, few leads and another two rings (925 and Junker),
Most impressive for a couple of hundred bucks. Looking forward to its first serious dirt hunt now.
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English is a very confusing language - Take pot for example - You can put your pot under the bed so that if you want a Number 1 or number 2 during the night you just do it in the pot - of course in the morning you might feel like a bit of pot so you light it up and smoke it…of course those who smoke pot too much can get a little potty and then if you want that number 1 or number 2 again you can use the potty. Of course if you smoke pot too much you can become a pot head but then if you go insane and put the potty on your head then your a pot head as well. If someone tells on you because your a pot head then they can pot you to the police but thats got nothing to do with the pot under the bed or a pot on the head. Of course you also cook your veges in a pot but thats got nothing to do with the pot that people smoke and if you do a number 1 or number 2 in the cooking pot you might get potted again but this time across the head - which has nothing to do with being a pot head…or does it?
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Haha, total classic.
.
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Nice iphone - in a life case no less!
I found my first knife yesterday in whangarei. Not much else to report, was slow going 
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The phone itself (iPhone 5s) is in surprisingly good nick (albeit a spirit level) despite the lifeproof case having weed and barnacles growing on it! Wonder if I can claim a new one? 
Just heading back out there with the proper salt machine. With the silvers yesterday, I smell gold not far off.
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So was the phone dry? Could just have a dead battery.
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@GoldPandemic Nah, she’s kaput. I pulled the sim to dry the insides and got maybe a half teaspoon of deathwater out of it.
However, me being me, as soon as I get hold of a pentalobe driver I’m in there to flush it out with DI water under vacuum to see if I can stir some life into it - Even if I get a screen flicker in its final death throes I’ll be happy.
This afternoons hunt back at Butt Flat got me my gold, I KNEW I could smell it 
- A Chinese ring with some good luck characters I presume cast on the inside… Looks and feels like 22Ct, hallmarks in Chinese though! Working on that this evening, lateral thinking being helped by a glass of Senor Cuervos finest. Update: Chuk Kam (Cantonese) (足金) means pure gold. 99.0% gold minimum - Boom!
Here’s some of the casting inside -
Also scored another old, old silver ring and two junkers (kiddy-bling and a Stainless - A yellow tint got me going for a second or two!)
One and a quarter reed plates from the same harmonica, found about a metre apart, but that was all there was of it.
I’ve found many thin lead rings here, I assumed they were gaskets although today lifted one in a concretion that showed something like a thread imprinted in the blob. So…They’re off some sort of container - What though? The ‘thread’ is too fine to be glass, and isn’t a helical screw thread so these may have been cast or swaged onto whatever it was? Any ideas?
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That Gold ring is great. Goes to show your put in the hours to get the rewards.
With the lead ring thing. I’m wondering if they are some kind of wine bottle or toxic chemical container top. A Ceramic (or simular material) moulded cap with a lead based bonding ring, to hold the pressurised contents in.
Maybe the ring was heated then slipped over and cooled to shrink down, like the old wagon wheel process?
Possibly a box of them were lost in the area so you are finding them.
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what a great score 22ct is scarce anywhere,maybe china is worth a trip…i have a few stories of a pilot in brisbane who had a regular run to singapore,but thats one for the pub over a pint you will need to sit down…
never seen a 24ct ring the colour must be amazing
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Congrats on great score there MW. Love the Chinese ring. Time and effort pays off.
HH
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Yeah, it’s a really rich yellow. The closeup pic is pretty close to actual colour.
Can only imagine what the beaches over there hold!
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