The reason why it's so hard to choose between the various LRL project designs, is that none of them are of any use for locating valuables the location of which is unknown. In other words, they don't work. Uselessness is what they all have in common, they lack any merits to discuss.
Your signal generator is just fine for emitting a signal, just connect an antenna to the output. But it's not really necessary.
You can skip the step of building a receiver and just use a portable AM radio. With it you can locate AM transmitters, and can also trace noisy powerlines and often even other underground utilities. If its EMI rejection is not up to the task of working underneath cellphone towers, you can use it to locate active cellphone towers. It can even be used to locate thunderstorms.
If the lack of a swivel on the thing seems to take the fun out of using it, you can try dowsing with coat-hangers instead. Or even glue the radio to the top of a swivel handle like Ranger does with pocket calculators.
If you want to locate quasi-DC magnetic anomalies, an inexpensive lensatic compass can do that with a sensitivity of about 10 milligauss. A lot better than coat-hangers, that's why surveyors and navigators use compasses rather than coat-hangers.
If you want to locate static electric fields, that's what electrometer "static meters" are for, and they don't cost a whole lot. Of course they are useless for locating buried metal.
Petros, ya gotta get used to the fact that LRL's are a fraud. That's why they're called "LRL's" and not by a scientific name. It's why they're discussed in places like Geotech and Treasurenet where non-technical people also post. In professional geophysics and archeology where things actually have to work, there is no discussion about how to design them or the relative merits of the commercial products, because LRL's are irrelevant to doing anything useful. LRL's are frauds sold to people who are not knowledgeable enough or are too lacking in critical thinking skills to realize they're being defrauded.
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So, if you were just trying to build one for yourself, you're wasting your time. If on the other hand you were hoping to get into the LRL business yourself, grasping the fact that there is no underlying technology needing to be developed will help you get into the business a lot quicker.
--Dave J.
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