There are times, and I have experienced it often over the many years in a variety of sites, where we might have a workable detector in-hand, but not the best coil for the environment ... or ... We might have a very good search coil size and type, but not a functional detector to attach it to when needed.
Then there are the times when, unfortunately, neither the detector or the search coil are going to be the best fit for the challenge that confronts us, and that is why I learned long, long ago to "Be Prepared" and that means have a detector assortment of models that complement each other. They can provide something just a bit different that will work better at a site. I like to be ready when I get to a site so I can grab what is best to tackle the conditions that confront me.
There is no 'perfect' all-purpose detector out there that can
"do-it-all" and at the same time
"do-it-well." Quite a few that can come pretty close, but I haven't found one yet that I would call the best and narrow my Detector Outfit to only one, all-time-use detector. I could come close in 1971 with what was offered back then, but by late '71 and going into '72 I had at-least a 2-Detector Outfit, and since then it has usually been 3 to 4 different models, and that was before we had the more rapid advances of visual Target ID in '83, then Tone ID, and over the past 20 years more of a move to digitally designed circuitry, along with more adjustment functions. Many more adjustments in some cases, and more-often-than-not I notice that the multiple adjustments can bring about conflicting performance behavior in many makes and models. We can't forget modern 'updates' and ???
Xdigger said:
[size=medium]I'm thinking of getting the 5x9 just because a very old park here still raises hell with the x35 9 inch, it's that much iron. Maybe a x35 1 inch?[/size]
It took me about two weeks of continuous, frequent hunting with the
ORX w/5X9½ HF coil to decide I liked this model.
Not for everything, but for some specific applications. I hunt very iron contaminated sites the bulk of the time, and since '68 I have mostly relied on smaller-than the typical stock search coils to better handle the very brushy and confined places I hunt where I might also have to work around old building rubble and go after the good targets that were hidden in amongst the closely-spaced iron debris. Smaller coils can be very handy, and good-target masking sites are really tough to hunt through. The smaller the coil, the more in your favor. It didn't take all 54½ years to learn that, either. The XP
ORX has a lot of performance potential. The 5X9½ elliptical DD coil can provide a decent level of performance. What's missing from the folks at XP is a smaller-than-stock search coil to help take on dense iron contamination and/or confined spaces.
The elliptical HF coil does work well and I've used it exclusively on my
ORX. It handles a lot of iron junk reasonably well, but when conditions get really ugly when it comes to ferrous debris, I grab something different that has proven to handle iron quite well, and also sports a smaller-size search coil. In a clean area it works fine, and in a modest amount of iron it does reasonably well, but too much? Not my better choice. I will have a 9" X35 coil by next weekend, I hope, and will put the
ORX w/9" X35 coil to work in a few challenged iron plagued sites and see if it, for some strange reason, can match or better the performance of the 5X9½ coil. I don't think it will, but I'll give it a try. That coil will let me consider some frequency performance differences.
Monte
