At THe Saltwater Beach With The X-Terra 70 & 18.75 kHz Coil

[wpaxt]

After spending last weekend learning the X-Terra with the stock coil I decided to hook up the high frequency 18.75 kHz coil and give the machine another run at Santa Monica Beach. Since the X-Terra is a very sensitive detector I was very curious to see how it would do in finding low conductivity items (i.e. the good stuff) and what the trade-offs would be, if any, in terms of finding coins. The results of 4+ hours of field testing are as follows:

WET SAND

My buddy Frank (with his Explorer XS II/Platypus combo) and I crossed from the parking lot to find that the beach north of the pier was pretty much built up. Just a very gentle slope; not what we had hoped for but, hey, you never know what might be out there. Frank headed off south and I fell in behind him.

Initially I used the auto GB, selected the Beach GB mode and Target Stability on, then set the sensitivity to 18 and proceeded to hunt the wet sand right at the tide line. I immediately found that the sensitivity was too high; 14 settled things down. This proved to be true for the rest of the day as well. As the manual states, erratic operation is more often a sensitivity issue rather than a GB problem.

For the first hour I didn

 

[steve herschbach]

Great report Bill. Thank you!

Steve Herschbach
Steve's Mining Journal

 

[ericdj]

Hi Bill,

I spent about 5 hours Sunday at the beach and my experience tracks with yours. The differences were the stock coil and some settings. Target Stability off - probably a mistake.
Sensitivity was mid-20's in the white dry sand. Not too many falses.
Sensitivity in the 22 in the dark wet sand - too high. Lowered to around 18, better but still lots of single non-repeatable signals.
I used GB Beach Mode, and set GB auto whenever I got into different zones at the beach. Wet dark sand GB was 1 or 2. Some dark dry sand was 12-16. Clean white dry sand was around 24.
Deepest targets were a memorial the length of a Lescher, and a single hole pop-top about the same, maybe a little deeper. The rest were memorial and clads at 4" and less.
When I got into the darker sand, I didn't lower the Sensitivity enough and got quite a few single beeps and what looked like faint, deep hits. Most of these were not repeatable, or the numbers jumped up and down the scale. I dug one target that read 42, strong, deep but was a little jumpy. It turned out to be the bottom of an alum. can down about 12".
What fooled me several times, thinking I had a dime - 36-38 - were small lumps of melted aluminum can, about the size of a Hershey Kiss and smaller. Kids, whad'ya gonna' do.
OTT, I able to call the target if it locked on.
The other technique I ended up using was to switch to AM mode to check Target ID. It seemed AM had a better Target ID lock. Then go to Pinpoint, where I pretty much ignored the numbers, 'cuz they bounced around quite a bit in Pinpoint.
Next time out, I'll incorporate your information and see what happens.

I wanted to thank you for your previous advice, and thank you for this very informative post.

Ericdj

 

[wpaxt]

I'm really anxious to see how you do with the 70 & gold. I've never hunted for gold that wasn't in jewelry form, and I've got to admit that you've got me curious!

Bill