Hung may be ashamed to post a link to the thing, but I'm not.
METAL DETECTOR - GOLD DETECTORS MINEORO
Oddly, they think that the gizmo might be mistaken for dowsing, something that is a concern only for LRL's. Manufacturers of non-fraudulent apparatus have no such concern.
Looking at the photo, there's an accessory which looks sort of like an L-rod, but it's not quite obvious that it comprises a handle and a swivel. Maybe it actually is a dowsing rod (or intended to look sort of like one to give the thing more legitimacy as an LRL!?) but for the sake of discussion I'll assume that it is not a dowsing rod.
* * * * * * * *
The quest for legitimacy on the part of fraud gets even funnier.
The principle of VLF long range locating dates back to the 1920's and possibly earlier. Pilots used radios to "home in" on known radio transmitters from the air. Not long after, airports started installed radionavigation beacons, and manufacturers started manufacturing VLF receivers designed specifically for radio direction finding (RDF). One of the pioneers in this was Dr. Gerhard Fisher, who noticed that the beacons got thrown off in areas where there were large steel buildings or major pipelines. He figured out what was going on, shrunk the transmitter and directional receiver down to the size of hand-held apparatus, and Fisher has been building 2-box units ever since. Fisher spun off the RDF and marine communication division I think about 1970: don't know if it is still in business and if so under what name. In any case if you want to do RDF yourself as a hobby, all it takes is a $10 AM pocket radio.
Notice that the non-fraudulent stuff has been manufactured for nearly 80 years, and if you want to prove the underlying principles to yourself by actually doing it, it'll cost you $10. The pocket radio will do the same thing regardless of who holds it or what they believe about RDF'ing. Note to Signal: doesn't matter whether or not you're an atheist, these things aren't belief-in-God detectors.
It's not widely known, but they used to make specialized 2-box units for geophysical mapping, the transmitter mounted on a tripod and the receiver carried separately and equipped with tilt and angle measurement scales. There are various modern geophysical apparrattusses operating on the same basic principle. They're real, they're not "belief detectors" and fraud is not necessary.
The FG80 is made to look like a 2-box unit, and some 2-box units come equipped with a grounding rod bend into an L-shape. I suppose one could dowse with the grounding rod, but I've never heard of anyone getting confused enough to think that's what it was for. And in any case for dowsing purposes it would be inferior to a coat hanger.
The FG80 ad continues the subterfuge by having a list of "specifications". The word "bionic" in this context is the tipoff that the thing is fraudulent, and the claim of gold only without any explanation is also a tipoff that the thing is fraudulent. And the clincher is that the whole thing looks and smells like a fraud to anyone familiar with LRL's, and the manufacturer does nothing to address the issue beyond denying that it's dowsing.
So, it looks like the manufacturer and "skeptics" know the same thing about what sort of apparat the FG80 is: it's fraudulent. (Art, don't bother to read the advertisement, it doesn't work for you.)
--Toto
Note: I'll be adding more links to this to illustrate my point.
Fisher Pipe & Cable Locator Click on "view full details" for photos, including the grounding rod. This photo illustrates physical construction out of plastic, but back in the bad old days they used to make 'em with wood frames just like the FG80.
METAL DETECTOR - GOLD DETECTORS MINEORO Check 'em out. Their products go all the way from what is apparently real (and possibly pretty good) 2-box units to what is obviously a plain vanilla dowsing rod (though not described as one), and everything in between. The funniest one is what appears to be a completely ordinary 2-box unit, except in addition to what such units normally do, they add a claim that it can detect tiny gold nuggets and diamonds, which of course is a fraudulent representation. Guys like Signal who apparently know nothing about science and electronics might be excused for believing that with a little more work on that hot top, his doodlebugger might actually point on its own; however Mineoro clearly know what a 2-box unit is and how it works, and therefore their advertising claims cannot be excused on the grounds that they're simpleminded flibberdegibbets who get hopelessly confused about anything involving science or electronics. ........ Oh, yeah, the unit which appears to be their best 2-box, I didn't notice any false or misleading claims about it, but being stuck in their mix of fraudulent and real stuff, they forgot to delete their boilerplate "NOT DOWSING"! The idea that it was dowsing apparatus would never cross anyone's mind, other than that with their other products they intentionally confuse people on the matter.
Another funny: Check out the DG2005 dowsing rod ("gold only") and its gold-and-other-stuff brother. No "NOT DOWSING" boilerplate! Even in fraud, there is "truth in advertising", as I've been trying to explain to folks for 10 years now.
http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/tech-talk/290761-interference-10-6-khz-tesoro-silver-umax.html Example of RDF'ing and utility tracing using a commercial metal detector. ...... If you want broadband and want to go a little lower in frequency, all you have to do is buy a 100 mH RF choke, wire it up to a coax cable long enough to get it the heck away from the speaker, and plug it into a Radio Shack portable amplified speaker. And for about $20, you can locate interference sources such as power lines and electric fences. I'm not the only one who knows this, so do the engineers at Mineoro, several people have dissected Mineoro "ion detectors" and published the schematics. (The Mineoro dowsing rod which apparently contains no electronics at all is also allegedly a gold iron detector, go figure.) The published circuits reveal crude VLF receivers that detect electric fences, just as Hung explains. The 100 mH + RS receiver I built, it detected that power lines are positively surrounded by gold ions, even the overhead lines, and all I had to do was grab 'em out of the air with my hand like grabbing mosquitos, and presto! I was rich! (Aside to Hung and Art: don't try this yourself, it's all in the hand maneuver and y'all ain't got the knack, that's why mosquitos love you guys.)
http://www.geotech1.com Carl Moreland's world-famous website dedicated primarily to underground locating equipment of all kinds including "LRLs". If you want to find out what makes LRL's unique among electronic locating apparatus, it's all there. There is no debate over whether VLF metal detectors, magnetometers, resistivity apparatus, etc. are fraudulent: it's real stuff and the debate is over how well they work under what conditions and for what purposes. There is no corresponding debate in the world of LRL's: the overwhelming issue surrounding the things is their fraudulent nature. And among those who won't admit to the fraud, the debate is never couched in practical terms but around pseudoscientific gibberish, chest-pounding "I could do this, if only........" posturing, or even (as you've seen in this thread) whether or not they work for "atheists" as though they're actually religion detectors misrepresented as locating apparatus. Well, at least "misrepresented as locating apparatus" would be correct.
"Another LRL forum": not posting the link since I don't know TNet's policy regarding links to forums that might be regarded as competing with this one. (As far as I'm concerned the two forums are synergistic, not competing, but TNet might not look at it that way.) It's not on the Geotech1 site any more, it has its own URL, but with a little diligence you can get there through Geotech1. .....The LRL techies hang out there, and so do "skeptics" (i.e., people with brains having more backbone than a jellyfish), you can see LRL's dissected and schematics and plans for DIY. Heck, y'never know, half a year from now my 100 mH + RS receiver may have become the new DIY LRL craze! (Actually, there's no danger of that happening unless the inductor is installed on a swivelly thingy, because if you can't dowse with it, faking it becomes almost impossible. There's a thread there devoted to people who tried to do LRL'ing with the non-dowsing Mineoros and got real disappointed inasmuch without the swivelly thingy they couldn't blame the failure on themselves, it became painfully obvious that the equipment simply did not work and was an outright fraud. It's the only LRL where I've seen people who bought the things come out of the woodwork to admit they'd been suckered. Lesson to LRL designers:
always include the swingy thingy! Otherwise how will the user allow for the possibility that maybe the thing actually works and the problem is operator error?)
http://www.mineoro.com/goldDetectors/explanations.php Mineoro explicitly states that the phenomena they claim their LRL's work on
cannot be measured. They go into detail on their pseudoscience-- by first propping up the straw man to knock him down. Like I said, even in fraud there is "truth in advertising". The dreaded "skeptics" don't have to make it up, it comes straight from the LRL promoters!
http://www.mineoro.com.br
If link doesn't work, just type it into your browser window, that should fix it. Click on "Seguranca", the link it'll take you to is real but for some reason it won't link from this post. ........ It's not as though they are mystified by the real stuff and therefore have nothing to go on but pseudoscience: lo and behold, they're a metal detector manufacturer! In addition to what you find on their security stuff site, they also advertise a regular hobby metal detector (which they describe as being like a military mine detector) that appears to be an approx. 30-40 year old design but metal detectors worked back then so this one probably does, too. ......Now since it's obvious that any metal detector manufacturer could also manufacture LRL's, the question is, "why don't they?" Well, because most beep makers don't want to contaminate their real stuff with fraudulent stuff. Does Mineoro understand this same principle? Yep, it's just as the dreaded skeptics say! The security business has its own website, and you don't have to know they're in the LRL business if you'd rather not know (although in Latin American culture there is more tolerance for fraud than in Anglo culture). Not nearly so bold as OKM who gladly mix the real with the bogus on the same home page, and as reported in another thread, when the OKM engineers are asked in person about the LRL's all of a sudden they just ain't gonna step in that pile. They know, we all know. Does Hung the Mineoro expert know? Yep! Far be it from me to say "don't read his posts", I say
do by all means read his posts! You (if you're not Art) can learn the same thing from him as you do from me, he just happens to word it differently.