Shame to see Andy is not going to be updating his metal detecting blog any more for the foreseeable future. Good luck with your other projects.
I emailed Stephanie my FLO today for a contact for my local Archaeology Group as it would be nice to at least go out on some of their digs / field walking surveys to get at least a very basic idea of what they do. I think some / a lot of people get a metal detector because they look at Archaeology and think 'urg boring' I want to find treasure like Indy. Perhaps being a responsible detectorist is partly about try to show the historical not monetary value of finds. If the PAS don't have time to be proactive in spreading the word maybe it's about spreading the word for them. Hopefully their volunteer project will make this easier (haven't had a response to my email yet).
I was reading Heritage Action's post on deep seeking metal detectors especially the Minelab 5000 GPX and the comments between Andy Baines and Paul Barford yesterday and it raises some interesting points.
From reading Gary's Detecting review of it the machine appears to be a Pulse Indicating (PI) Machine with limited ability to discriminate out iron. PI's tend to go a lot deeper than Very Low Frequency (VLF) machines but unlike VLF's they aren't very good at indicating what sort of metal they have picked up.
This means if you use a PI machine on land you are going to be digging a lot of iron. I personally don't know anyone who uses a normal price range (up to about £2000) PI machine on land, ie non beach which I appreciate is still technically land :)
Metal detectorists generally don't like digging iron as it's not considered very interesting / valuable and there is a lot of it (that's probably another post in itself). A PI machine with its ability to go deeper than a VLF machine that could also discriminate out all Iron is probably the Holy Grail to many detectorists. I say many as I think it would have been for me to when I first started. However the more I consider the effects of digging below the ploughline. which such a 'perfect' machine would make commonplace, the less tempting buying such a machine if it ever comes to exist is. That's not to say it isn't tempting and this is where I have to fight my desire to find 'treasure' at any costs with the realisation that by doing so I might well be acting rather irresponsibly.
Anyway this PI machine seems to have some ability to discriminate iron and as such Gary seems to have pointed to how he might use it
'I use my GPX when I know there is a chance of finding something deep, quite
often in area's known to have produced finds such as hoards or productive
patches that have been worked with VLF machines, I always try to follow my own
GPX rule in order to maximise my finds rate.'
Perhaps therefore this machine has its uses as part of an archaeological dig but I have to say when I first read Gary's statement it did rather seem like it might be favoured by nighthawkers who are more likely to target 'productive patches' or where hoards have been found. Obviously not saying Gary is one just that it might not be the most responsible of machines to use in most circumstances.
Oh yes my book turned up to.
Oh yeah finally people use PI's on beaches as they are generally easier to dig and also many beaches are quite heavily 'mineralised' which in detecting speak means that VLF machines don't work very well as they think the 'mineralised' sand / clay is metal and thus go beep beep beep a lot at everything. The PI's aren't fussed about this sort of 'mineralised' stuff.*
I think this is correct please correct me if wrong!
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