AC drilling is better suited to unconsolidated sands. I never...

AC drilling is better suited to unconsolidated sands. I never used an RC rig during my min sands exploration days, which is always drilling through unconsolidated sands, clays and often high-water tables. Less action at the drill bit tends to reduce blowouts and contamination, even in wet samples imo. AC drilling is much cheaper if you are only drilling through soft transported cover and weathered basement, which is absolutely how first-pass carbonatite exploration should be conducted (eg similar to chasing wide supergene gold blankets to tag small primary gold lodes). Lastly and importantly, if the surface is soft and sandy you want a light 4x4 drill rig to not get bogged, not a heavy RC rig and support vehicles... Whether its's water, swelling clays or whatever preventing the RC getting deep into the transported cover, the AC rig makes a lot of sense imo...

Diamond rig may be to both guarantee making it to basement, but also for structural information. Those last western fences across Crean were drilled dipping to the north and to the south, and I'm not sure they know what way is best. The Last section results drilled to the south have two thick, continuous Nb intersection and one almost nothing, where the western most assay section drilled to the north was patchy Hg to LG Nb on all three good holes... maybe there are primary Nb-rich structures in the carb dipping south?

"As @2ic commented initially Hurley is at best borderline with depth and low grades suggesting it is low priority."... don;t want to be mis-quoted after WA1 expanded Luni's HG-Nb deposit beyond my early predictions. It is pinch and swell, and not wide in the Hg zone, but grade is king as they say. High enough grade and it doesn;t take a lot of tonnes to sustain a long and profitable LOM for niobium... it is only a 1-2Mtpa proposition after all. Some people perhaps miss that big vs really big vs huge is no that relevant when dealing with small tonnage operations. Anyway, my point on Crean-Hosche-Hurley trend is that it needs top tick three boxes...

1. thickness and grade of Nb in the primary carb
2. development of a supergene oxide blanket as ENR are targeting with the AC rig
3. preservation of that supergene blanket, not weathered away to fresh carbonatite via erosion (probably on the edge of a valley-incised faulted scarp, Nth side down)

The weathering seems to be steepening to the west, though variable, and the preservation of carb saprolite is also quite variable east to west, right across to EAL001. The drill plan they have in mind for the gap west may continue a ~100m wide mineralised carb, but will it have a preserved supergene blanket with high Nb grades??