Beach week with the Impulse AQ

[tvr]

Did the last few hours of daylight on the day of arrival with the Excal to check the beach, got one of the .50 cal shells a .50 cal point, a quarter, dime and penny; the rest of the week was all AQ. Did pretty well identifying iron. Spent nearly the entire time in all metal mode. On the open wet sand, it is easier to identify iron by walking around it and sweeping from all directions; something that is difficult if not impossible to do in the water. There were a few pieces of iron that fooled me. They are in the one picture towards the bottom, near center. Got a new style wedding band, no markings but probably stainless with either abalone or mother of pearl; not sure which. The ring was deep. It was a five scooper and was not in the side of the hole, was at dead center of where the first scoop was. That is what I have been hoping for with the AQ; now I just need to get the right metal. Got a couple of junk earrings that are fairly well encrusted and, unfortunately, stick to a magnet. Got a junk heart ring that looks to be copper, not extremely deep, Excal or CZ would have had no problem hitting that one.

I did dig somewhere north of 100 bottle caps, did not count them all and threw them away before coming home. The one day that was "extremely deep bottle cap day" I counted 33 bottle caps.

In front of some hotels when I'm high in the wet sand, near the dry, I would get interference that changing the frequency setting did not help. ATS at 8 or a little higher helps, dropping sensitivity down to 2 with the higher ATS quiets it down. Tried tone and mute modes and they were a little worse than all metal. As I get further from the offending interference, I can take the sensitivity up again. Mostly hunting with sensitivity at 5 or 6, ATS at 5 and delay at 7.5. Interesting that near and under the pier that for years has made other detectors chirp, the AQ is quiet. Must be different kinds of interfering signals that affect the different detectors.

Now that I’ve had a chance to spend time over open wet sand areas, coil control is important to keep from sounding at swing ends, it is the up and down motion by being sloppy, not the sided to side sweep, that sounds a little on the wet sand. The ergonomics of the AQ are excellent and help in that respect, particularly when I start to get tired and coil control is not as precise as when I’m fresh. I did a bit of calf deep wave wash area (that is where the Pandora bracelet was found) and found the AQ to be pretty quite (delay 7.5, ATS 5, Sensitivity 5, all metal), The wave wash was not too bad of a drag on the big coil, although it was not fast moving waves ... the conditions were being nice to me.
Cheers,
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[Dancer]

How you managed to get what you got while hunting new sand, I know you been working. The AQ, you think it would be a big hit under normal conditions?

 

[tvr]

How you managed to get what you got while hunting new sand, I know you been working. The AQ, you think it would be a big hit under normal conditions?

I think the AQ is a winner.

That is an entire week's worth of targets getting out four to five hours a day around low tide time. I stuck to wet sand or very shallow water that week; I only packed the knee high boots. When we are back later in the year, I plan to get in the water. That should be after more depositors have been in the water. I don't like digging deep light targets like the tabs, glasses and bottle caps, but I considered it part of my ear training with the AQ. The AQ is a depth beast and I'm looking forward to hearing more narrow sounding targets when I can get to better beach conditions. The really beat up pair of glasses was over ten scoops. It was very faint to start and I was starting to think it was a can, but was not a wide signal; so I kept going until on the last scoop, there was no target in the hole.

It was a good get away for wife and I and we took time to drive around looking at neighborhoods in the area for possible places we might want to live when wife retires.

I can't compare the AQ to the Infinium since I have not used an Infinuim; but compared to HHPulse and Sand Shark, AQ is deeper. I found that I can do a big iron check by switching to mute mode and turning up the ATS and bigger pieces of iron disappear. The smaller pieces don't always do that but have the audio signature that gives them away, so, for the most part it is nearly always in all metal mode. I'm going to keep having fun with it for as long as I can survive the digging. ;-)