Re: discussion on the various possible theories that may be applicable to LrL's
woof! said:
Oroblanco, since you're new to this, here's another summary mostly in response to J_P:
For a long time now, LRL's have been dissected, inspected, and rejected by people who are knowledgeable in electronics, which of course is the key element which distinguishes LRL's from regular dowsing rods. A second opinion might have been warranted had the field performance claims been distinguishable from those we're already familiar with relating to dowsing, but sorry, that's not how it is. LRL's are just another kind of dowsing rod until someone comes up with ones that aren't. And that's actually happened with so-called gold ion detectors that can't even be dowsed with unless you're more creative than anyone here has been so far.
Looking at photos and schematics of LRL's may be entertaining, ten times so if you understand what you're looking at, which is my point. The LRL learning fast track is to simply decide who around here you can trust on the electronics stuff, and take a ride on that trust rather than invest in an electrical engineering education. If you don't trust me on that score, heck, trust EE whom I disagree with on huge bunches of stuff. His essay on why LRL's are fraudulent is excellent. He'd probably be happy to point you to the post/thread if you PM him, or maybe he'll even handle it right here.
--Dave J.
Hi Woof,
It's interesting that you would make a post like this.
When I read through the posts in this forum, I would tend to agree that the people who claim their LRLs are working are incorrect. But I wouldn't take an EE's word for it. I would think that there exists a possibility that the LRL user has found a way to make his LRL really work, and let him show some evidence to convince me it is so. Yet I haven't seen anyone in this forum do that. What I do see is a lot of claims and photos that cannot be verified or repeated by anyone except the people who took the photos. I also don't think the commercially sold LRLs that people are claiming to work are actually working. If I saw a blind person demonstrating these LRLs to actually work, I would consider it worth further investigation. And I still wouldn't blindly trust some EE to do my investigation for me. I would want to see the performance myself to satisfy myself that an LRL performs or fails to perform, with the idea that there may be some little-known principle which causes it to work. I would consider an EE's comments about a particular circuit to be helpful evidence in this investigation, but not infallible, as I have noticed a number of EEs make errors in their statements about not only circuitry, but in other sciences that could be important to long range locating.
Having said that, I have not seen any commercially sold LRL that I think will help a treasure hunter to find treasure. Nor do I think the circuitry in most commercially sold LRLs is capable of doing anything useful in locating treasure. But it would not bother me to learn that I am wrong about this if I saw first-hand evidence to convince me my idea is wrong. I can honestly say I have never seen any evidence of this nature. But I have seen evidence which shows that commercially sold LRLs perform about the same as a dowsing rod does when tested with ordinary volunteers off the street. The results I saw were about the same as guessing which direction the treasure is located.
However, I directed Oroblanco to the Geotech forum where some different observations were reported. That is a forum which is focused more on the technical side of remote sensing. The LRLs shown there are not simply commercial rip-off scams. There are a number of home-brew LRLs which work on different principles than the junk LRL. Some of these have gained popularity with hobbyists and experimenters who believe they are helping them find treasure in some way. Again, I would want to see it with my own eyes before I would believe any of them works, but at least these experimenters are not saying they are finding success because they want to sell products for a huge fee. In most cases, they are hobbyist and recreational treasure hunters who want some better treasure hunting tools. The few who are acting as shills for manufacturers are easy to spot and remove from the pool of plausible information.
But how are the experimental LRLs I read about at Geotech different than what I read about here?
To start with, there are several kinds.
There are electric charge detectors which measure the electric charge in the air. These consist of a FET gate or similar connected to an antenna positioned in front of a metal plate or dish that is grounded or charged to attract either positive or negative charges. I observed reports that these are good for detecting static charges and things that have substantial voltage on them. Some of these have special signal processing circuitry added. Can they help locate treasure? There is some debate about that, but I have not seen any convincing evidence they can yet. I watch ongoing experiments to see what people come up with on these experiments because it's kind of interesting.
A second kind of experimenter's LRL is similar to a kind that is sold commercially, and that we also read about here. The MFD kind is simply a 5v adjustable signal generator that you connect to brass rods that you stick in the ground, or you connect to a dowsing rod. I can't imagine this to help anyone find treasure, but if anyone wanted to experiment with it, this is a cheap thing to build. Maybe $10 of parts could give you hours of fun to see if it works or not. Some experimenters are using variants that operate in the megahertz range and send the signal to a whip antenna directed at the field where they are treasure hunting. This variant does not seem to follow the classical pseudoscience theory of resonant audio frequency coupling.
A third kind of experimenter's LRL I have seen circuits for at Geotech is the VLF locator. The variants I saw seem similar to the VLF loops that geologists use to map the ground under them for variations in soil and rock strata. Can a geologist find buried things under the ground using a VLF receiver coil? Of course they can. They map out large sections of ground, and are able to find buried objects besides rocks in some circumstances. I would think it is plausible to modify the standard VLF equipment used to measure what's under the ground to work better for identifying smaller objects. And this is what some people are reporting they can sometimes do with their experimental VLF LRL projects. I have even seen a video of one of these modified VLF circuits beeping at a gold medal about 2 meters distance. (at least I was told that this is what I was seeing in a video - the medal was buried under a rockpile so I couldn't see it). But I would rather see it actually work hands-on than to take the producers of the video's word that it detected a medal at 2 meters, or an EE's word for it that it cannot possibly work. After all, I have seen a lot of geologist reports showing things they found deeper in the ground than this group of hobbyists claim.
The reason I directed Oroblanco to Geotech remote sensing forum is because it shows the kind of circuits he says he is interested in seeing. I suppose anyone might want to read about them if they are interested in the technical aspects of LRLs that were actually being reported as working in some field conditions. In my opinion, I don't think any of these would help me to find treasure. But then, if I was interested in experimenting to see if my opinions are correct, this is the place I would start. Instead of reading an endless trail of useless forum posts arguing about who is a liar and who is right and wrong, they have some actual circuits and experimental details included that you can try for yourself. Even Carl, who runs that forum encourages people to not take his word for it. He is an EE who urges people to try it and see for themselves. I did as he said, and found he was correct for the things I tried. But then I showed how he was wrong about some of the things he said. Just as he showed how I was wrong in some of my statements. In the end, the evidence determined what was considered right and wrong, not someone's opinion.
Best wishes,
J_P
