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**goldfinder** · 12-29-2011, 03:42 AM

Metal vs wood vs jokers

JP and Fred - you are very funny guys.

As to metal box vs wood. In my experiments with this my reasoning was that measuring the changes in the local electrostatic field was my goal at that time. So having a ground plane with the antenna pointing out from it, but not connected, gave me a way to see relative E-field differences. The wood box afforded no protection within the circuit so the local ES field was not really measurable as there was no fixed relation between ground and ES antenna charge detection.

What I really discovered in the field is ES is a poor way to look for treasure. I was able to show that ES fields are everywhere. All the bushes have ES field. So do the trees. Every step i took elicited ES response as the rubbing of grains of sand by my stepping on them generated sufficient response in the ES detector. And on and on.

Then I went to detection of ions (a new circuit). The sand thing still bothered this type of detector.

So telling me Mine Oro boxes used this type of box or that is really nonsense.

I did learn a lot about ES detection. Not sure if that was a plus.

If someone was to ask me (which is unlikely) what is the best possibility for passive LRL I'd likely answer magnetic anomalies. The reason - gold is mildly anti-magnetic. Any large concentration of gold should produce a measurable magnetic difference to the local magnetic field. If someone would like to supply me with a couple of hundred ounces of gold so I can test this theory I would be electrostatic er ecstatic.

Goldfinder

**g-sani** · 12-30-2011, 10:14 PM

Originally posted by goldfinder View Post

JP and Fred - you are very funny guys.

.................................................. ...................................
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.............If someone was to ask me (which is unlikely) what is the best possibility for passive LRL I'd likely answer magnetic anomalies. The reason - gold is mildly anti-magnetic. Any large concentration of gold should produce a measurable magnetic difference to the local magnetic field. If someone would like to supply me with a couple of hundred ounces of gold so I can test this theory I would be electrostatic er ecstatic.

Goldfinder

Yes I strongly agree that things must be different when there is large gold burried and this applies to Vlfs and PI detectors as well.
And this is the difficult part for all the electronic people experimenting whith LRLs.
May be it was many times that some of them came up whith a good LRL but they left it behind because they never did properly testing.
I believe that having a proper place for testing is much more important than trying to choose a box between metal and wood.
I am more into practising treasure hunting instead of constructing LRLs and what I have found out up to now is that some LRLs worked for me while on the right place but unluckily they didn't show any detecting abilities to their designers.

Regards
g-sani

**J_Player** · 12-31-2011, 02:15 PM

Originally posted by goldfinder View Post

JP and Fred - you are very funny guys.

As to metal box vs wood. In my experiments with this my reasoning was that measuring the changes in the local electrostatic field was my goal at that time. So having a ground plane with the antenna pointing out from it, but not connected, gave me a way to see relative E-field differences. The wood box afforded no protection within the circuit so the local ES field was not really measurable as there was no fixed relation between ground and ES antenna charge detection.

What I really discovered in the field is ES is a poor way to look for treasure. I was able to show that ES fields are everywhere. All the bushes have ES field. So do the trees. Every step i took elicited ES response as the rubbing of grains of sand by my stepping on them generated sufficient response in the ES detector. And on and on.

Then I went to detection of ions (a new circuit). The sand thing still bothered this type of detector.

So telling me Mine Oro boxes used this type of box or that is really nonsense.

I did learn a lot about ES detection. Not sure if that was a plus.

If someone was to ask me (which is unlikely) what is the best possibility for passive LRL I'd likely answer magnetic anomalies. The reason - gold is mildly anti-magnetic. Any large concentration of gold should produce a measurable magnetic difference to the local magnetic field. If someone would like to supply me with a couple of hundred ounces of gold so I can test this theory I would be electrostatic er ecstatic.

Goldfinder

Hi goldfinder,
You are correct for electrostatic anomaly detection.
The best of electrostatic field detectors always use a metal box to provide a ground near the antenna, so the antenna will not become charged to the relative field in the air around it. the metal box also acts as a shield for the front end high impedance circuits inside. The concept of ground plane is more appropriate for radio antennas, not electrostatic antennas. But there is a similar principle at work for electrostatic field detection.

In order to understand the dynamics of detecting electrostatic fields, you must first have some basic understanding about what fields exist in the natural environment where you are detecting. As you said, trees and other plants have a detectable field, as well as any animals roaming across the ground. This is because they are electrically connected to the ground, and will conduct the ground potential up through their body. Even leaves from the top of a tall tree will have 0v charge instead of 2000-3000 volts charge that you will find at that altitude where there is no tree in the air.

In addition to understanding the basic fields, you must understand that when you are holding a static field detector in your hand, you are connecting the field detector to ground potential.... so the part of the detector you are touching is grounded. If you are smart, then you will make the handle and the enclosure from conductive metal so the entire box will be grounded. You then have a good ground for the antenna to reference against the charges it will collect. The idea is to compare the charge in the air to the charge found at the ground. You should find an average of near 100-200 volts at the elevation where you are holding a charge detector. But the antenna will find only a fraction of this voltage, because the grounded box in proximity acts to hold down the voltage when the 200v air charge tries to raise the voltage of the antenna. When you are searching for anomalies of the air charge, you then probe around the air to see if you can find unusual variations. In this case "unusual variations" means a variation in the charge that you find in a place where there is no tree or bushes, or other thing in the landscape that would be expected to cause a change in the air charge that you are detecting.

That is the basic idea of a charge detector. But there are refinements which few hobbyists ever take notice of. For example, the Zahori charge detector has a special digital filter which unloads the antenna at a preset frequency which is set to be the same as the AC power frequency -- 50 or 60 Hz. The idea is to remove any interference from electrical power lines. This filter also will unload the antenna when there is no power line present, to keep the antenna circuit from becoming saturated with a strong charge that you might find from a large charged object. But the Zahori is a simple digital filter with limited capabilities.
There are other charge detectors which are much more sophisticated. Some designs have high quality notch filters to remove the AC power interference, and additional filters to remove other higher frequency electric fields. Some of the best charge detectors use a high impedance front end which is filtered to detect only extremely low frequency that might be found from slowly moving charged objects, or possibly some slowly changing geoelectric anomalies under the ground as you might find when telluric currents are in the process of transition as the sun moves and distant thunderstorms are causing fluctuations in the currents under the ground. These geoelectric anomalies do not indicate the presence of treasure, but if you are walking with a charge detector at a speed which corresponds to the filter you have installed, your relative motion could easily detect an anomaly that could be caused by buried metal under the ground. However, I would not expect any success unless you first did a good job to filter out all the much stronger interference that is found at the higher frequencies than 2-3 Hz.

A final thought about conductive boxes...
The metal box that is considered good design for static charge detectors is also considered good design for RF receivers which use dipole antennas, especially the 1/4 wave whip antennas and similar designs. In these cases, the ground plane is part of the antenna system. However, at lower RF frequencies like VLF and ELF, dipole electric field antennas are very poor for receiving a signal compared to a coil antenna wound as an air loop, or around a ferrite. When using a coil antenna, it is important to be very careful where you are placing metal parts near the antenna. Since they are receiving a magnetic wave, induced currents become important, and you can receive secondary magnetic waves from nearby parts of the enclosure. These secondary fields from the box will interfere with secondary fields that you may want to receive from metal under the ground. The effect is your receiver coil will become less sensitive to the metals located at a distance from the coil. It could have the same effect as taping a metal piece to your metal detector search coil, then adjust the ground balance to begin metal detecting. You will see your ability to detect deep metals is not working as well as when you remove the metal from the search coil.

In the case of a coil receiver for RF, if the coil is completely enclosed by a metal box, you could prevent the magnetic signal from entering the inside of the box to reach the receiver coil if the metal is a magnetic flux conductor. And if it is not a magnetic flux conductor, then it could generate secondary magnetic fields which cause interference to the reception of the receiver coils.
When I look at the Mineoro circuits, I see a an electrostatic detector combined with a VLF regenerative receiver. I see they have two loops on printed on their circuit board, with the electrostatic part having a passive loop behind it. This loop has no direct connection to the ground by any conductive path through the person who holds the box. So what we have in the Mineoro FG locator is a wooden box which is insulated from the grounded hands of the treasure hunter. This condition allows the box to take on the voltage of the air around it. Since the treasure hunter's hand is located a few inches away, the circuit board will attain only a small static voltage, as if it was held only a few inches above the ground. So we expect the negative ground on the circuit board holds a static air charge of maybe 10 volts due to its proximity to the treasure hunter. This becomes similar to being grounded, but with the added disadvantage of fluctuating as the treasure hunter moves his hands and walks in ways that can cause static voltage fluctuations of the proximity field around the electronics of the circuit.

Best wishes,
J_P

**FrancoItaly** · 12-31-2011, 03:54 PM

Hi J_P

I appreciate your explanation of E static fields, You know that I think that the lines of force are curved in south/north direction and a voltage change over the target it's detectable also 10 meter away because the lines act like a taut wire.
At present day I have not a working lrl, I can detect almost surely gold and silver targets buried a few months ago but also Sky and horizon effects and this complicates everything. I have noticed that only an high impedance E field amplifier is too sensible to every change like trees, walls and other things and practically useless. The magnetic receiver with a not shielded TR coil detects only targets and Sky and horizon effects but no trees and walls and then I think that the phenomenon it is connected not only to static fields but also another thing, perhaps the shield is like in a metal detector where it reduces the ground capacity and in our case we need some dielectric effect. My next experiment will be a partial shield or a total shield not grounded.

Best regards and happy new year

**J_Player** · 12-31-2011, 05:30 PM

Originally posted by FrancoItaly View Post

Hi J_P

I appreciate your explanation of E static fields, You know that I think that the lines of force are curved in south/north direction and a voltage change over the target it's detectable also 10 meter away because the lines act like a taut wire.
At present day I have not a working lrl, I can detect almost surely gold and silver targets buried a few months ago but also Sky and horizon effects and this complicates everything. I have noticed that only an high impedance E field amplifier is too sensible to every change like trees, walls and other things and practically useless. The magnetic receiver with a not shielded TR coil detects only targets and Sky and horizon effects but no trees and walls and then I think that the phenomenon it is connected not only to static fields but also another thing, perhaps the shield is like in a metal detector where it reduces the ground capacity and in our case we need some dielectric effect. My next experiment will be a partial shield or a total shield not grounded.

Best regards and happy new year

Hi Franco,
The electric field variations you are talking about begin as a chemical change in the soil, not magnetic. Any magnetic effects are a direct result of the electric consequences of chemical corrosion and ion exchange between metal and acids in the ground. There are also secondary effects related to the earth's natural electric and magnetic fields which may be much easier to detect than the simple electrochemical exchange of ions under the ground.

We know the earth's electric field is curved only to follow the surface contour of the earth, which includes hills and valleys and objects such as trees or man-made structures.
The electric field is the same as you would find if you built a capacitor from a sphere located inside a much larger sphere.
The electric field is is what you will find in the air space between the two spheres.
This is the same as we see between the sphere of the earth surface and the larger sphere of the ionosphere.
We know there are small distortions at the surface, but in general, we have a spherical shaped electric field gradient.
When we observe this field from standing on the surface of the earth, it appears to be a vertical field which is uniform to all horizons unless there is a tree or building to distort it.
It appears this way to an observer for the same reason that the earth appears to be flat. Unless we move our frame of reference to a higher altitude, it is difficult to observe the field and the earth are actually spherical.
But what we can observe from the surface of the earth are the small variations in the field that we can find from trees, buildings, and other things that cause an anomaly to the uniform field.

The magnetic field is a different kind of field.
It is curved to follow the lines of magnetic flux from the north pole to the south.
But the magnetic field is not as uniform and as ordered as we expect it to be from the standard formulas.
The magnetic field is generated from the central and secondary core of the earth where there are large masses of molten and plastic iron rotating to create a magnetic field. But the outer crust of the earth also has a smaller influence to distort the normal lines of flux that we expect to find traveling directly between the north and south magnetic poles.
We see that most locations on the earth, the compass does not point directly to the north pole.
The direction of the compass deviates by various amounts at every location on the earth. We call this deviation the declination, which is an "error" in the compass from the actual magnetic north.
Unusual rock formations and conductive soils which carry natural currents cause the magnetic field to shift so it is not following the expected straight line between the poles.

We also see there is a second deviation called inclination.
Inclination is a vertical deviation from horizontal. We can find the direction of the magnetic field can be anywhere between horizontal to perfectly vertical at the north or south pole.
We expect the inclination to be horizontal at the equator, and vertical at the poles. But we do not expect the inclination to deviate from horizontal at the equator....
yet it does... because of variations in the composition of the earth's crust.
The same is true for the inclination that we would expect to find at any other location on the earth.

A third error we can measure is the magnetic field strength. The strength of the earth's magnetic field deviates a lot from what we could calculate for any location on earth. We can see it will easily become double when you walk 100 meters distance.
For various location on the earth, we find the total strength of the magnetic field to be between 22,000 nT and 67,000 nT. This means we will see up to 3 times stronger magnetic field strength in some locations.

All of these errors and deviations are caused by variations in the composition of the earth's crust.
At the time when the earth was formed, some parts of the planet captured more meteors than the others, which caused some locations to have more concentrations of magnetic flux conductors than other locations. Meteors are only partially responsible for these deviations.
The rock structures under the ground have a large influence on the magnetic field shape. We see that some rocks are more or less conductive, and there are underground water channels which also conduct electricity.
The telluric currents will follow certain preferred paths through underground rock and soil strata, which ultimately influence the shape of the earth magnetic field. The end result is the composition of the earth's crust is causing most of the vector deviations of the magnetic field.

But there is also a time-dependent influence which comes from the solar wind, and changes throughout the day on a 24 hour cycle. Between the solar wind and thunderstorms, there are about 2000 amps of electricity leaking through the atmosphere.
This current also moves through the telluric currents in waves which follow the sun.
If you measure, you will see there are times when you will see stronger and weaker telluric currents, which not surprisingly seem to peak at about the same time every day.

"I have noticed that only an high impedance E field amplifier is too sensible to every change like trees, walls and other things and practically useless".
This is why I say I don't expect you will find much success unless you first filter out the higher frequencies from your electric field detector above 2-3 Hz.
But this does not solve the problem of making an electric field detector detect buried metal.
You also need to learn what signals can be found at a location where there is buried metal, and add some more circuitry that will detect these signals.
With all the misinformation we can read here about "the phenomenon" I find it highly unlikely that anyone could learn what signals are detectable unless they did their own research to find these signals.

The way this relates to the box you make for your electronic detector will depend on exactly what kind of signal you have designed to detect.
The electronics inside your box must detect a signal that the box will not inhibit or cause interference to the electronics.

Best wishes,

J_P

**FrancoItaly** · 01-01-2012, 11:14 AM

Hi J_P

I think that the magnetic field is not involved in the phenomenon, not directly, the unshielded TR coil it shows that it is involved a change in static E-field or dielectric change, perhaps the key is a perfect balance between a signal from an E-field amplifier and a signal from a RX coil drived by an unshielded TR coil, but two signals that have to do with the aerial E-field. My reflection on Mineoro sensor, If I remember well the gold sheet is very near to antenna or other similar device that is polarized with 27V and this is a sort of capacitor. The polarization acts as a filter for signals less that 27V. The gold is involved not for ions but more simply for its reliability over time (not oxide).

Best regards

**J_Player** · 01-01-2012, 06:42 PM

Originally posted by FrancoItaly View Post

Hi J_P

I think that the magnetic field is not involved in the phenomenon, not directly, the unshielded TR coil it shows that it is involved a change in static E-field or dielectric change, perhaps the key is a perfect balance between a signal from an E-field amplifier and a signal from a RX coil drived by an unshielded TR coil, but two signals that have to do with the aerial E-field. My reflection on Mineoro sensor, If I remember well the gold sheet is very near to antenna or other similar device that is polarized with 27V and this is a sort of capacitor. The polarization acts as a filter for signals less that 27V. The gold is involved not for ions but more simply for its reliability over time (not oxide).
Best regards

What you say about gold in the Mineoro circuit .. that is is reliable over time (not oxide) is true. But this is not the reason why the designer of this circuit put gold in it. According to the literature published by Mineoro, the gold chamber is a "Classifier" which identifies gold is present:
"we come out with the idea of inventing a "Substance Classifier" , that is to say, a device which has the ability to "filter" just the "ion" or "ions" we needed to produce the phenomenom of "micro crash", "nano crash"or below. After years of researching and field experiences , it was born. It was invented not just as a classifier - "filter", but as a generator of positive "ions", receiver of negative "ions" in order to the short-circuit occur , and generator of electrostatic. Through electrostatic , the "ions" walk long distances , as if along an "invisible wire".

When the negative "ion" finds its twin of opposite polarity, they love each other so intensively, that when they get together they provoke a short-circuit autodestroying themselves. As in the Romeo and Juliet movie, both of them die, but the proof of their death is a flask of poison near them; in the same way, our "passionate ions" also leave a proof of their death in "emiting a crash", which generates an electrical signal so fast as nano, pico, femto or atto seconds, detectable in sensitive electronic circuits and projected for this aim. The classifier just filters the negative 'ions", twin pairs of positivie "ions" produced by the classifier. To this phenomenom, Alonso (60) and Damásio (70) gave the name of "Substance Classifier" or just "Classifier"."

We see that the person who built this internal gold chamber did not intend to design it as a capacitor, but a substance classifier which would identify golden love ions.
The chamber has a brass rod for an antenna, and a small gap between the gold plate and a point on the antenna.
This chamber in combination with the BC548 and BC558 transistor in the first preamp stage are the components he says detect the nano, femto and atto second pulses that are emitted from gold love ions crashing at a long range.

Also, the amount of capacitance we expect from this chamber would be very low because of the relatively large separation of the conductors compared to a commercial capacitor. We also see there are several commercially made capacitors in the same part of the circuit where this gold chamber appears, which would indicate that if the designer wanted capacitance at that location, he would simply insert another capacitor. It appears that the intended purpose for this gold-lined chamber was not to serve as a capacitor.

If the gold chamber was intended to detect supposed nano-crashes from love ions, then we see evidence from many people who used mineoro LRLs that say it does not work.
We can read many reports where people are wondering why the Mineoro FG locators to not beep when they hold gold samples at the locator antenna or far away.... not even the sample gold plate that Mineoro shipped with the LRL will make beeps.
They wonder why the Mineoro locators do not respond to gold at all:

Originally posted by Alexismex

"...For the Mineoro Fg80 we make many test: east west north south , trim the control another and another and another time , waiting for warming electronic...,we have "fresh gold" to test ,from 1 inch to several feet no response , NEVER ONE TIME , sometime when you move the test card you have a beep ...
but shure when you want a beep you must lower towards to the earth, shure you have your beep...."

I now own a Mineoro FG80 - LongRangeLocators Forums

http://www.longrangelocators.com/forums/showthread.php?p=47559#post47559