Hi All,
somewhat of a newb here. Did a lot of gold hunting about 15 years ago with the Fisher Gold Bug. Not too many features on that machine. But then we were up in the mountains far away from trash and pop tops.
Now I am using my Fisher ID Edge to search old home sites. I have found a nice combination. I use historical aerial and topo maps from the 1930's to 1950's to locate old homes. And hopefully a new building has not been built over the home site. I am in the metro Atlanta area so that is very often the case. But you can look at presently known empty areas on current satellite maps and check the old topos to find the black squares indicating an old home. The white squares I think are out buildings.
So I take the lat/long from the historical topo. you can get this by setting a map place marker and it gives you the decimal lat/long. The decimal lat/long is nice because iPhone Siri almost always translated the number correctly. The commander compass accepts all type of lat/long formats.
So when you go hunting, you use commander compass to lead you directly to your destination.
I have permission to search on private property that has six known old home sites and I have their lat/long cords using the above method.
I plan on searching these sites very carefully.
I would appreciate any suggestions on exactly how to search these sites carefully. I know a few things like.
go all metal
dig everything
search carefully in a grid
re-scan all holes after finding and removing a target.
and of course filling in all holes.
I am unclear on how to scan bottle dumps since I have found three of them so far. It seems that some metal caps will always come up.
I guess I just keep removing bottles and scanning the dump. Maybe delect out all the iron? Or iron and foil? Would one expect to find any rings in a bottle dump?
That is it for the moment.
john
historical aerial and topo maps: NETR Online ? Historic Aerials
commander compass for iphone user manual: Happymagenta ? Augmented Reality, GPS Navigation, Network Utility Apps and Games for iPhone and iPad
They also have a compare function that allows you to slide over or fade in different maps. So you can bring up an old aerial photo say from 1945 and overlay a 2013 aerial photo and see where old buildings are located today. This is good for finding out if an old home site in now under a newer warehouse or maybe just in the grass between warehouses. You can do the same with current maps and topo maps.
This has allowed me to find lots of old 1940's & 1950's home sites in the suburban area of north Atlanta that is mostly neighborhoods and office parks and county parks. I have searched on the weekend the old home sites near warehouse in areas not under steel and concrete. It is a great tool to find the locations of the old roads. It seems that a lot of old roads from the 30's & 40's were much more curvy to avoid hills and rocks. Modern roads are straight with gentle curves.
For the past few years I was dormant in my metal detecting hobby due to a lack of places to search. That has totally ended, for now I have more than I have time for.
I am still learning about my Fisher ID Edge. If anyone has experience with this detector and have some hints on settings, etc I would be happy to hear from you. Also does anyone know if you can put a smaller coil on the ID Edge. It came with an 8" coil.
somewhat of a newb here. Did a lot of gold hunting about 15 years ago with the Fisher Gold Bug. Not too many features on that machine. But then we were up in the mountains far away from trash and pop tops.
Now I am using my Fisher ID Edge to search old home sites. I have found a nice combination. I use historical aerial and topo maps from the 1930's to 1950's to locate old homes. And hopefully a new building has not been built over the home site. I am in the metro Atlanta area so that is very often the case. But you can look at presently known empty areas on current satellite maps and check the old topos to find the black squares indicating an old home. The white squares I think are out buildings.
So I take the lat/long from the historical topo. you can get this by setting a map place marker and it gives you the decimal lat/long. The decimal lat/long is nice because iPhone Siri almost always translated the number correctly. The commander compass accepts all type of lat/long formats.
So when you go hunting, you use commander compass to lead you directly to your destination.
I have permission to search on private property that has six known old home sites and I have their lat/long cords using the above method.
I plan on searching these sites very carefully.
I would appreciate any suggestions on exactly how to search these sites carefully. I know a few things like.
go all metal
dig everything
search carefully in a grid
re-scan all holes after finding and removing a target.
and of course filling in all holes.
I am unclear on how to scan bottle dumps since I have found three of them so far. It seems that some metal caps will always come up.
I guess I just keep removing bottles and scanning the dump. Maybe delect out all the iron? Or iron and foil? Would one expect to find any rings in a bottle dump?
That is it for the moment.
john
historical aerial and topo maps: NETR Online ? Historic Aerials
commander compass for iphone user manual: Happymagenta ? Augmented Reality, GPS Navigation, Network Utility Apps and Games for iPhone and iPad
They also have a compare function that allows you to slide over or fade in different maps. So you can bring up an old aerial photo say from 1945 and overlay a 2013 aerial photo and see where old buildings are located today. This is good for finding out if an old home site in now under a newer warehouse or maybe just in the grass between warehouses. You can do the same with current maps and topo maps.
This has allowed me to find lots of old 1940's & 1950's home sites in the suburban area of north Atlanta that is mostly neighborhoods and office parks and county parks. I have searched on the weekend the old home sites near warehouse in areas not under steel and concrete. It is a great tool to find the locations of the old roads. It seems that a lot of old roads from the 30's & 40's were much more curvy to avoid hills and rocks. Modern roads are straight with gentle curves.
For the past few years I was dormant in my metal detecting hobby due to a lack of places to search. That has totally ended, for now I have more than I have time for.
I am still learning about my Fisher ID Edge. If anyone has experience with this detector and have some hints on settings, etc I would be happy to hear from you. Also does anyone know if you can put a smaller coil on the ID Edge. It came with an 8" coil.
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