While on the Corfe Castle 2010 Minelab Owners rally Gordon Heritage (Ironhearted Gog) and I decided to try the GPX 5000 on the top of the hill. This pasture land is highly mineralised and has been detected for a good ten years, so is a perfect place to test the new machines.
We arrived on wed afternoon, set up camp and decided to go up the hill for a dabble with the E-TRAC. I used my usual setting running the detector as hot as possible. I worked the end of the hill very slowly scraping the coil across the grass and the Romans started giving themselves up to the fresh Dorset air. I was working in all metal, so most of the signals were just a very tiny response of a low/ medium tone in-between all the chaotic iron and mineralisation noises. I had 18 bronze coins before the light faded, which is great considering the amount of times it had been detected. It had been rained in the previous weeks so conditions for detecting were excellent. The last few hours of detecting were confined to tiny area the size of around three normal cars, interspersed with some gauze bushes. I purposely did this spot last as it was where I’d planned to test the GPX 5000. I detected the area systematically from all directions to clear it of any detectable signals, doing this I found six roman bronzes at depths up to twelve inches deep. All that was left when I had done was iron, there was nothing non-ferrous left at all. I checked and double checked then checked again, I needed to be sure I had a blank canvas for the GPX… and a blank canvas it was.