THE QED - PL2

Today I had the pleasure of meeting Howard ( the QED inventor ), to pick up my QED that had been prepared for me by Stinky Pete. To say that the package Pete had put together is light, is an understatement ! 2kg all up with Minelab 11 inch mono and batteries fitted.  

We did some comparisons with my ZED in Howard's back yard, and I was impressed with most aspects of the machines performance. I was a bit surprised at how well the ZED ran at a gain of 18 and no audio smoothing, considering the proximity to 240 v.

The QED was able to ground balance easily over a very noisy patch of dirt from Beggary Hill that Howard has put in his backyard, where the ZED was almost unusable !  

It became immediately clear that the QED does have at least one detection " hole ", on a 11.5 gram specimen I have, that the QED with a 14" round N/F got from about 8 inches, but the ZED was hearing at 14 inches. The QED with a Sadie 8x6 seemed to be no better than the ZED with the standard 14x13 on a tiny 0.08 gram test target, but let's not forget that the QED is a fifth of the price of the ZED !!

Overall, very impressed with what Howard has achieved without the vast resources that Minelab has.    

I will be putting the QED through it's paces over the next 10 weeks before going to WA, where it will be running a 24x12 N/F as my main raw prospecting tool.

Will give a warts and all appraisal as I go, but I can tell you confidently from what I have already seen, that the QED is currently the best value for money PI on the market.  

Cheers,
Rick

Just got back from 4 hours of testing the QED on a goldfield near Beaufort, and I can report the following :

Claims that the QED is a " SDC Killer " are probably a little exaggerated. I also don't believe it to be quite as good as a 4500 either. However, it is a damn good machine for the money !    

I can confirm that it works fine with an 11" Commander, a 17x13 Evo and a 24x12 N/F Advantage.
Testing over my little 0.25 g sphere of gold ( which is a difficult target for any machine due to the small surface area ) was impressive ( air tests only ).
3" with the 11", 2.5" with the 17x13 Evo, and 1" with the 24x12 ( good result for big coil ! )    

The machine ran well over the very variable and often noisy ground, with only the occasional tweak to the ground balance.
I was in mode 9, THS B was 47, THS A was 77, gain at 6 ( out of 10 ), pitch 25, and GB was around 110.

I found that if I swung the coil a bit too quickly, I got some ground groans, but at a nice steady pace ( similar to my ZED ) it was quiet, and seemed to get the best response over the little test target. I air tested all 3 coils with a 5 gram piece of what I believe to be a copper nugget, and all coils gave a strong dipping signal from more than 8 inches, so response on bigger bits was good also !    

No hint of EMI where I was, had a nice quiet stable threshold, and the targets jumped out over the threshold.    

Where I was today is a place I have flogged for 10 years with a 4000, 4500, 5000, SDC and ZED, with numerous coils on the GPX, and have been unable to find any more bits. The QED also found no bits ! Which leads to my next observation : if you are using a QED after multiple Minelab's have flogged the area, I believe you are wasting your time ! However, if you take the QED to somewhere that hasn't been relentlessly flogged, then you are in with a good chance.

Bang for buck, it can't be beaten !    

More testing to come in about a week ( I've got some fishing to do )

PS : I tried mode 1, 2 and 3 with the 11 commander, and I couldn't see a noticable difference on the little target ??
Maybe an 8 commander would be better for fly sh#t, however Howard had an 8x6 Sadie on his QED in his backyard, and I wasn't all that impressed for a tiny coil !!??

Cheers,
Rick

It sounds like the QED is growing up. It'd be nice to see a locally made direct competitor to Minelab.