Hey Sandcrab, No need for all the “he-ing”, it’s me you are referring to - Rick Kempf - I use my right name - it’s on my signature line at the end of every post.
My PI detector experience includes the following: early Eric Foster beach PI (don’t remember for sure but I think it was Sandpiper), 2 different Whites TDI PI’s, the second one modified by Reg Sniff, Minelab SD2100, SDC2300, Garrett ATX, Whites DFPI, Vallon VMH3CS PI mine detector. I do not however claim to be an expert or particularly successful beach hunter although I did find 3 14k rings last spring in South Carolina.
I have read extensively about PI’s for more than 15 years and corresponded with Reg Sniff who was instrumental in bringing the TDI to life at Whites. I have followed Eric Foster’s PI designs ever since I had a very early beach PI of his to play with when I lived in Norway. I ‘tracked” the TDI project from it’s earliest days and made a general nusance of myself about that device in much their same way I have about the AQ.
I learned about the Manta project on the Geotech forum on June 21st 2013 when someone posted a link to one of the Manta videos.
On May 10th 2016, Alexandre Tartar, the developer, posted on Geotech a long piece about the program. It included tthis video of the Manta in action.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=425&v=nke4z9oOXww
Funny thing, Carl Moreland, the Chief Engineer at Fisher and the owner of the Geotech forum noticed it of course. Totally unbeknownst to me, that post started a dialogue which ultimately led to the acquisition of the Manta program by fisher and the hiring by them of Alexandre and his team in - I believe - the spring of 2017.
In spite of the fact that i have been corresponding with Carl Moreland since before he went to Whites as Chief Engineer and later to First Texas a Chief Engineer, I had no clue what was progressing.
Fast forward to 13 June 2017 when I posted this on another forum (name not mentioned per rules).
“Keith's post got me curious and I managed to figure out that the developer was Alexandre Tartar in France. Since then, I poked around on the web and found out some info on what he has done since then. There have been a series of developments called the Manta - or Aquamanta. Almost everything is in French, but if you use the Chrome. Browser, it will translate. The machines looked really interesting - discriminating PI detectors for the beach.
Fast forward to the end of last week. I had called someone at First Texas to ask a few questions about the AmeriTek program. The conversation got around to when FT would deliver on their much rumored new technology. Of course, I got nothing concrete - I didn't expect that.
Imagine my surprise when - as he started talking about the strength of their engineering team - he mentioned that they had recently hired Alexandre Tartar! Wow.
That tells me a lot. We have all wondered when FT would bring out PI detectors. Looks like that day just got closer.”
From that point on, I dug up every video on YouTube about the Manta. I was also fortunate enough to have some conversations with Carl about the progress of it.
Because of my ongoing interest in the project and after a lot of begging, I got to actually handle a prototype long enough to drive from Phoenix to San Diego and play with it.
I have probably made many dozens of posts about the Manta (now Fisher Impulse AQ). When LE.JAG started posting, I corresponded with him a bit.
Here’s a link to an example of my “work” on this forum.
https://metaldetectingforum.com/showthread.php?t=262335
I’m not sure what it is that bothers you about my interest and hard effort to report to the forums everything I can find about the project, but perhaps you ought to just relax and enjoy the ride.