Went to the FMDAC Fall Convention at Panama City Beach a couple of weeks ago and am just now getting around to letting you know how the Cibola did. All of the planned hunts were in the dry sand and it did just fine there. I was able to set sensitivity to 10 and have the threshold all the way up and still have a steady machine, though it wasn't necessary with the shallow planted targets. My biggest complaint with the Cibola is not having an arm strap. That makes it quick to get in and out of it but is a problem in competition hunting when I need to change swing direction very rapidly. In these competition hunts we are moving so much faster than normal hunting that my arm tends to come out of the cuff. But machine response was great and pinpointing was no problem. And the light weight compared to my XLT was wonderful.
Between planned hunts I was able to swing the Cibola in the shallow surf. I was very pleased with how stable it was, though I couldn't run it as hot as on the dry sand. Still it found coins (one was JFK half dollar) and plenty of pull tabs (no gold or silver). None of the targets was over 6 inches but there were so few targets that I may not have had any deeper ones to swing over. This was actually my first time to detect in salt water and I found it difficult to keep the coil near the bottom because it kept trying to "fly" up. Also I had to worrying about keeping the electronics box dry. So, althought it did work in the salt water, I think I'd rather just buy a water machine for this kind of detecting.
Oh, another point about my particular Cibola that might be of interest to others who have one. I ran into another Cibola user at the hunt and we got to talking. He and I both have problems with the lower pole not sliding into the middle pole like it should. Was very hard to inser and was only able to get it to slide in to the second stop point. He had spoken with a Tesoro rep who told him they had had a bad (i.e. warped) batch of poles and that Tesoro would replace them. So when I go home I emailed them and their response was, sure, send the defective poles back and they would replace them. So I've got them packed up tonight and plan to send them off tomorrow.
Anyway, I wasn't a big winner in the convention hunts but I did enjoy it. Here is a picture of my take, including a .925 ring and a 2 peso gold piece.
Eddie(AL)
[attachment 9852 2005-10-16.jpg]
Between planned hunts I was able to swing the Cibola in the shallow surf. I was very pleased with how stable it was, though I couldn't run it as hot as on the dry sand. Still it found coins (one was JFK half dollar) and plenty of pull tabs (no gold or silver). None of the targets was over 6 inches but there were so few targets that I may not have had any deeper ones to swing over. This was actually my first time to detect in salt water and I found it difficult to keep the coil near the bottom because it kept trying to "fly" up. Also I had to worrying about keeping the electronics box dry. So, althought it did work in the salt water, I think I'd rather just buy a water machine for this kind of detecting.
Oh, another point about my particular Cibola that might be of interest to others who have one. I ran into another Cibola user at the hunt and we got to talking. He and I both have problems with the lower pole not sliding into the middle pole like it should. Was very hard to inser and was only able to get it to slide in to the second stop point. He had spoken with a Tesoro rep who told him they had had a bad (i.e. warped) batch of poles and that Tesoro would replace them. So when I go home I emailed them and their response was, sure, send the defective poles back and they would replace them. So I've got them packed up tonight and plan to send them off tomorrow.
Anyway, I wasn't a big winner in the convention hunts but I did enjoy it. Here is a picture of my take, including a .925 ring and a 2 peso gold piece.
Eddie(AL)
[attachment 9852 2005-10-16.jpg]