By James B. Wright
Learning to interpret sound anomalies on your metal detector.
Noise comes to those who would use an electronic metal detector in three different basic forms:
1) Locally generated sounds (such as motors, river rapids, people talking, etc.).
2) Equipment-generated sounds (whistles, squawks, buzzes, etc., from equipment maladjustment or defects).
3) And a third noise, which is the sound of a good piece of equipment operating the way it should.
The counter-measures which must be taken against the first two types of noises should be obvious. Kill the engine, stop the talking or wear headphones which prevent outside noises from entering the ear. And, of course, adjust the equipment properly, or have it fixed, and learn to adjust it properly.
The third type of noise is the good type. It is the noise that is created when a good instrument is set up right and working most-efficiently. This noise is a “frying” sound, kind of like rain on a quiet lake, the wind through the pines, a gentle rapid on the river or a crowd at a ball game. It is a good, clean steady hiss. On a meter, it may be a steady deflection of 25-40% of full-scale.
Unfortunately, you cannot have sensitivity without this type of noise, simply because noise is built into all physical processes and all of nature.
What is “noise” as used in this context? One good example is the sound you get from your television set when it is tuned to an unused UHF channel. This is when you see snow on the TV screen. What you are seeing and hearing is the composite of a large number of random electrical impulses, all continuously being generated by the very atoms which make up the television, as well as those which make up the earth, the atmosphere, the sun and the rest of the cosmos. This is the sound of Nature doing her thing!
So, what’s the point of all this?
When you send a signal into the ground and try to detect a response from bits of gold, or from other types of deeply-buried chunks of metal, you are usually dealing with a very weak return-signal amid a sea of pre-existing natural “noise.” The detector must identify and amplify the desired signal and try to discriminate against the unwanted noise.
This is where the user becomes a part of the detection system. Because human hearing is able to pick out signals buried in noise better than any piece of electronic gear (except for certain radar equipment which is gawdawful expensive).
Why then must we not only tolerate noise but appreciate it? Because, if your equipment is so sensitive that it will sense the intrinsic “noise” of Nature, it will sense an equally-weak signal from your target. If your detector sounds-off on hot rocks or black sands, it is alive and well and doing its job.
Your job is to learn to hear and interpret the anomalies in the noise, the “whisper” that is just slightly different, the smallest change in the pitch of tone.
This is what weeds out the expert from the rest of the pack. He (or she) is like a good sonar-man, picking out the submarine while ignoring the chatter of the whales, the fish and the other noises of the sea.
First, we will cover 
Often, new miners leave a lot of gold values in the bedrock. Some highly-fractured bedrock may have values several feet below the surface. The deepest I have ever read about was a Canadian mine going down nine feet into bedrock to get all of the values.
A short time ago, my dredging partner and I were sampling in a new section of river. We were looking for 
This new section of river had slow water towards the bank. I had it figured that the pay-streak would be located out under the fast water — which is often the case. I don’t know why, but mother-nature often has a knack for hiding her natural treasures in areas which are more difficult to get into!
Having it in mind that the best gold would be further out into the current, I pushed the hole in that direction. The further I pushed, the more difficult it was. The bedrock out there showed no gold. My arms felt like spaghetti!
If the streambed material had been deeper, it is likely I would not have tested toward the inside. Why? Because I had it in my mind that the pay-streak was out under the fast water; not under the slow water. But, because the streambed was shallow, and I had seen some gold on the bedrock where I first touched down, I decided to take a quick cut off the inside of the sample hole.
There is a lesson in this!
The lesson is to never give up hope! Never say die! Sometimes, you will find that you are as close to winning as you can be, even though things have never looked worse. This is especially true in gold mining.
We manage 
In many ways, this is not dissimilar to a person’s intention to accomplish a goal. Sometimes, we will find our immediate progress slowed down or stopped altogether. But if we maintain our intention, and study the barriers to our progress, we can usually find other ways to make progress. The key is in maintaining the intention, keep pushing along, and having a little patience.
This is not only a matter of following through with a single plan. Sometimes, people are unwilling to depart from some course of action once they get started into it. Sampling requires more emotional flexibility than this. Many times, we are just guessing, or hoping, when we begin a sampling operation. Then, as we sink our sample holes, if we are paying attention, we learn more about the area and are able to adjust our sampling plan accordingly. We learn where the gold path (the highway that gold follows in the waterway) is more likely to be by finding out where it isn’t. We find out that the streambed is too deep in some sections of the river by dredging test holes in places where we can’t reach the bottom. We have to be prepared to adjust our sample plan each time we learn something new.
Stop and think about this for a moment: If we already knew where the gold was, we would not have to sample. We could just go into 
I often see people get discouraged when they fail to find a rich gold deposit in the first sample hole. We all experience this to some extent. But, this happens only because we have allowed ourselves to set unreasonably-high expectations. The 
Then, your focus will be where it belongs.
Because every project is different, relative levels of importance will change depending upon local circumstances. To give you some idea about this, I encourage you to read several articles about the challenges we have faced on different types of projects from 
In other words, you might not want to buy or lease a mineral property until you are certain for yourself that a commercial opportunity exists for you there. And you also probably will not want to invest the resources to prove-out a deposit unless you are certain you can develop a project if something valuable is found. Balancing these two needs is a challenge that must be overcome.
In some countries, dealing with the officials can be the biggest challenge to your project manager.
Any mining program will find itself interacting with government officials and people who reside in the area where the activity will take place. The politics involved with these various relationships is important to maintain, and always will depend, in large part, upon good judgment and emotional flexibility by the project manager. This is even more true when local people will be hired to help support the mining project.
It takes very specialized people to recover good samples off the bottom of a muddy river.
This is all about how you are going to do the sampling or production-part of the program. This is the mission-plan. What are you going to do? Where? For how long? Exactly how are you going to accomplish it? Who is going to participate? With the use of what gear and supplies?
How deep is the water and streambed material? This will affect the type and size of dredge you will need to accomplish the job, how much dredge-power you will need, and how long the suction hose and air lines need to be.
Sometimes, the most important part of shelter is to get off the ground.
On many of the projects that I have been involved with, we hired several helpers from the local village that were also good at hunting and fishing. This reduced the amount of food that we needed to bring along.
It is 
Being thoughtful in advance can be far less costly than the loss of key gear or equipment by theft, once you are committed to a sampling program.
This secrecy-concept also extends to the gold you recover on a mining program. Especially during production! We always set up the final processing structure well away from local traffic, and only allow those near that should or must be involved. The product is 
A lot depends upon how inaccessible the project site is. When there are villages nearby, you can sometimes find some local medical assistance for matters that are not of a serious nature.
A) Accidents: While accidents do happen, they mostly can be avoided by planning things out well in advance and having responsible people involved who are being careful. Good management and responsible people can generally stay a few steps ahead of Murphy’s Law (Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, at the worst possible time!).
Because we dredge in the water during the sampling phase, it is 
The best way to avoid continuous problems with sanitation (can be very serious), is to set up your own camp some distance away from local communities and bring in your own cook. This can be someone from the same country who lives in an environment where sanitary-measures are a normal way of life. Then, your cook 
An enthusiastic interpreter will dig for the information that you want to obtain. When communicating with local people on the river, sometimes it is necessary to ask many questions in different ways, to different people, to bring them around to the same concepts that you are trying to express. When you work with people from different cultures who have radically-different backgrounds, often you find that they just do not conceptualize things the same way that you do. A good interpreter is able to bridge this gap and help you get the information you want with some degree of accuracy. He will also help you avoid misconceptions or misunderstandings that can build up stress with locals along the river.
Longer-range radios are often used between the base camp and civilization. Although atmospheric conditions sometimes make this mode of communication unreliable.
I saved this section for last, because it is really the most important. If you study all of the material on this web site, you should realize over and over again that it is the personnel on your project that determine the final outcome. They are the key factor that makes it all happen.
Successful mining in streambeds is generally accomplished in two steps: (1) 
When hard-packed streambed is being mined, the cobbles and boulders (i.e., rocks that are too large to pass through the recovery system) are tossed back onto a pile behind the production area. As the production area moves forward, piles of boulders and cobbles are left behind in place of the original hard-packed streambed. Sometimes, sand, silt and gravel that is processed through the recovery system is dropped on top of the cobbles. Later, winter storms also wash sand, silt and gravel across the top of the cobbles. The sand, silt and light gravel then filters down and fills in most of the space between the cobbles. Therefore, tailings usually end up as loose stacks of cobbles with sand, silt or light gravel filling the spaces.
Each summer, thousands of prospectors head for the high country in search of 
These elements are Strength, Ability, Flexibility and Endurance. While everyone is born with ability, the other three elements are the things that must be worked on.
The key to finding high-grade gold is in knowing how to 
The mountains have been a home away from home for my family for 100 years. They have seen my grandfather, my dad, and myself enjoy all that they have to offer, providing us with an understanding of what it takes to be responsible and self-reliant.
To become a successful gold prospector, research must top your list of things to do. Research will provide you with a never-ending source of future prospects. Experiencing the joy of being in the field, while enjoying these exciting and rewarding activities, should be a major priority for everyone. Furthermore, repeated trips going into the field, being successful, attaining your goals, and coming home with 
