Determining target size with the XP Deus

[beez0404]

Howdy!

Just got my new Deus yesterday and of course I woke up and had to get out and see how I was going to like it. Well I have to say I don't like it, I LOVE IT!

I started detecting in January and to date have found 4 silver dimes and a silver quarter as well as 4 wheat pennies.

I took my buddy with me today to a house I got permission to hunt and we had a very fun 4 hour hunt. I found 3 mercury dimes, 4 wheat pennies, $.15 cents in clad, and the usual trash. Steve found a mercury dime, 1944 war nickel, 5 wheat pennies and the usual trash. So for me personally it was the best day of detecting I've ever had which thrilled me considering it was my first time out with the Deus.

My question is this..............how do you determine the size of a target? I know when I pinpointed the coins the pinpoint area was very small. But I dug some other targets with good signals that did not have a small pinpoint area and they turned out to be trash. Look forward to hearing from the guys with more experience and also to getting back out there.

 

[CZconnoisseur]

If you set Overload to "2" instead of "1", you will be able to distinguish large targets from small a little better. Probably the best practice would be to plant a test garden and use dimes all the way up to half dollar coins (or maybe a silver dollar coin) for size comparison vs target sounds. Soda cans get me pretty often, but most of the time won't register above an "80" VDI even in 4 kHz (will register higher in higher frequencies). A 9-12" deep 12 oz soda or beer can, if it's been buried a long time, will sound like a winner, but pinpointing will give away its size most of the time.

Another method is to raise the coil while NOT in pinpointing mode and see how far you can still detect the target. A soda can will be detected up to 2 feet while a coin will struggle to make any kind of indication above one foot. If you re over a 6" deep coin, raising the coil just 3-4 inches until you can't get the signal clearly anymore is a good indicator of "DIG ME NOW!!!" On the other hand, a soda can at 6" may sound OK, but you will be able to raise the coil over a foot until the signal disappears. Move on to the next target in this case - or if the site permits and has great potential - dig out the can and rescan the area. Many times other detectorists will have passed up this area, know that there's a deep, large junk object there and will avoid the immediate area. Rescanning will sometimes produce a sharp high tone which is almost always a goodie!

 

[Ism]

Besides what CZ said.....
Target footprint varies with reactivity. The higher the reactivity, the smaller the footprint.
So you have to get used to the program reactivity you are running to reliably determine the target size.

 

[Sleepyjim]

CZ gives excellent advice!

Jim