"Coinboy007": Hi all, I’ve recently gotten some permission s on some iron infested old homesteads and I was wondering if anyone here has used the Simplex and the 11 inch DD for hunting iron patches. If I run it in park 2 it might work but I wanted to get some opinions on if it’s worth it to hunt those sites with the SP28. I can’t afford the smaller coils so that’s why I’m asking. Thanks!
A little bit of Good News: The Simplex + and the standard round 11" DD coil can work really well.
Now for a little bit of Bad News. The Simplex + & 11" DD work really well on an open beach, a plowed field, pastureland or rangeland, or an urban setting such as a wide-open park, sports field, etc., etc. I've used mine in a few low-to-modestly iron-littered places and had fair success, but the 11" DD coil is simply too large to trust in having reasonably good success in a very dense iron contaminated location. For that I will use my 2nd Simplex + w/5X9½ DD coil, or my Nokta CoRe w/4'7X5.2 DD 'OOR' coil or my Nokta Relic w/5" DD coil. If I grabbed a different brand model to use, it would also have a smaller-size search coil mounted.
Can the Simplex + and 11" DD find good targets? Yes. Can they find a good target in amongst a lot of iron debris? Yes. But the odds are against anyone using a larger-size coil on any detector, if the good-target masking is caused by a lot of closely associated iron nails or other ferrous debris. The big question, and one for which there isn't an answer unless I stood on the site you describe and visually see the challenging trash or unless you had a good descriptions of the conditions. Many people will state something like: "A lot of iron" or "Some iron infested ..." conditions, but just what is the description of those two statements?
And then you relate it to a 'homestead,' and I have hunted some that are more of a challenge, but the majority of the homesteads I have hunted, and there have been many since my first in about 1971, the discarded iron nails and other junk is only heavily concentrated in one or two small areas, if that. They don't come close to the dense iron debris associated with most of the ghost towns, mining and logging camps, military and pioneer encampments or fort sites I have hunted since 1969. Any site that has an abundance of nails or other iron trash is best hunted with a smaller-size coil so that no more than one piece of iron is under the search coil at a time.
There are many very good Coin Hunting detectors I have owned and enjoyed that can reward someone with a lot of coins, but even with their smaller-size 5" DD coil mounted they still struggle in a heavily-littered site with abundant nails and other iron. In your case, the Simplex + isn't one of those types of detectors. I have found it to hunt very well in heavy iron ... especially with the 5X9½ DD, and I really hope they will produce a good smaller-size search coil for the more challenging environments.
However, even though you do not have the better coil for such a task, you do have a very good detector and you should at least give any site a serious search. Just work the coil slowly-and-methodically in order to better handle the iron trash.
Monte