Black sand beach

[SeaScene]

Just on the learning curve with the AM. I live on Vancouver Island and tried the local beach (salt water, nice looking sand but streaked with black sands). I selected beach mode but the machine would not quiet down. I am guessing black sands were not in the equation for Notka in setting up this mode. Comments very much appreciated because there are lots of black sands on this island.

... thanks

 

[nenadgbeepin]

Try ground balance in Beach then flick to Gen mode. You maybe need to increase iSat and/or lower Sensitivity accordingly.

 

[cladcanada]

I am looking at the AM and was wondering about the beaches in Vancouver BC , any luck getting it to settle down?

 

[buckeeeee]

I had the same complaints, I had the Racer 2 and the Multi-Kruzer, constant falsing both VDI and audio. It didn't get better with all the advice to turn down the sensitivity, ground balance, or different settings, nothing worked. The single frequency machines are useless in the Black sand or in the saltwater or the wet sand. They work very well in the dry sand, but black sand in the saltwater or wet sand forget about it. I found the only fix, in my opinion, to detect in the black sand is the Equinox by Minelab, I bought the 600 and for the last year that's all I use at the beach.

 

[Jack Barlow]

<<The single frequency machines are useless in the Black sand or in the saltwater or the wet sand.>>

I'm sorry, but that "blanket statement" could NOT be further from the truth! I have lived on the Mid-Florida East Coast here in Sebastian, Florida for the last 30 years. I moved my family here from Wisconsin, just to be at the home of the 1715 Spanish Plate Fleet. In those 30 years, early on... we had nothing like todays modern machines. ALL the machines could in --some way-- be tuned to be used on the beaches here... And we have plenty of patches of black sand that is interspersed, making it even harder to keep a tune.

Now correct me if I'm wrong...and your ENTIRE beach is black sand. Then you might have a valid point. And I have found everything here from gold crosses on the wet salt beach sand, to "Pieces of Eight" (Spanish Eight Reales) and much smaller, very small variations of this famous coin of pirate lore.

Sometimes there are fairly complex procedures (like 7 steps in setting up the machine) in using the Garrett AT Max on the beach for an example. But it works...just ask my wife. She carries the directions for beach tuning right with the machine. But when I took my AMFIBIO MULTI to the beach, it tuned up very nicely and PERFECTLY SMOOTH AND QUIET...with the very large KR-40 coil...15 1/2 x 14". So quiet and pleasing that I made a post of my beach trip with the big coil on! Maybe that played a part by dispersing and averaging out the signal over a large area? I know I left the beach very pleased. You should see the tuning procedure in salt water for my ML GPZ 7000, you better have patience. But that one works too, as does my own ML Equinox 800, or my ML CTX 3030, or even my old loaner White's Coinmaster Pro that I bought a NEL "Big" coil for to compete more fairly for just a $400 machine.

The black sand patches are actually sought out by the beach hunters here. They know from experience...that black sand HOLDS COINS! So nobody here is running from the black sand I assure you! But if I have to go off on expedition like I will next month with my wife to hunt Civil War up in Tennessee, and was forced to take only ONE MACHINE...IT WOULD UNDOUBTEDLY BE THE ANFIBIO MULTI with the 7" & 9" Concentric coils, and the large KR-40 for hunting field artillery shells. Thank you.

 

[lytle78]

Black sand reduces depth to a very great degree on all VLF IB machines - In order to ground balance the machine, the required setting causes the depth reduction. Mu Nox hit a nickel lying on top of San Diego black sand wet beach at a normal “depth” of 10” (air test”. Buried in the same sand with the same Beach 2 settings, it got barely 7”.

Pulse Induction detectors can do much better since they are not using phase shift adjustment to ground balance, in fact they pretty much ignore black sand in all cases.