Exactly. I was out for an hour today, just for the fun of it, and to study the readings on my AT pro. I dug up 15 pieces of trash I knew were trash, even guessed most of the trash correctly. Two great "coin" signals were, in fact, coins. A 1924 10 cents Italian Kingdom and a 1921 20 cents Italian Kingdom. It sure is hard to be consistant with those 38-55 VDI signals... I only wish there was more gold in them thar fields... I started sloppy in my digging today, I hacked the two coins... After that, I was more delicate with my digging tools. Holes were all covered correctly.
In the open farm fields, I sway until I hit a good repeatative signal, then I look at the VDI as I continue to sway. I then make my judgement on what might be under there, scrape away some tall grass, sway again, get the pinpointer out and center the target, then I dig it out. On lawns, I dig the smallest plugs possible, without hacking at the ground. I must add, I use the scraping method in the fields because there's only a couple of inches of dirt on the ground and limestone under that. Digging a nice smooth plug is practically impossible, even with wet ground. I ground out at either 70 or 75, rounding out lower than what the MD does automatically. 2 to 3 notches down from max sensitivity. Discrimination will vary depending on what I feel like searching for on that day's hunt. If I'm hungry for at least a coin, I'll only search 70+. In areas I've already dug up (with my ACE 250), I'll even go to all metal mode and listen for the stronger deeper signals. Today, the ground was relatively wet, and for the first time, I dug up a few more corona caps than usual. The wet caps made the signals rebound higher than usual, and without the ferrous background...
As long as I bring home at least ONE coin, then I'm a happy detector.
