REVIER
Well-known member
So I got the F5 a few weeks ago as an experiment.
My dirt is...difficult, mineralized red clay soil and an insane amount of extra iron from tiny to huge including so many rusty nails and screws from minimum rust to extremely rusty.
Depth is pitiful but most targets usually aren't that deep, the clay stops them from sinking very far and 4-7" has a nice layer of existing targets. ..a few I have found at 8" but not many.
Masking is our greatest challenge, if it wasn't that nice layer of good targets wouldn't exist.
My Nox works well, unmasked like a dream but not thrilled with the compressed target range.
My F70 does too but with some very jumpy behavior.
I hoped the F5 would work better here, be more stable than my F70 and accurate at the depths I need to hit plus unmask with superior skill as the Nox can do without the compressed range.
Sounds like I am going backward, if I was still in Kansas everything would be different but here in the south my devil dirt is the great equalizer...a whole new playing field as it were so with the F5 at $299 I decided to experiment.
It was now cheap enough to give it a try, got it primarily to hunt for jewelry but it shocked me at how good it was at coinshooting...in this strange dirt I am forced to hunt in.
As far as coils two great ones came with the F5, a concentric sniper, not super deep but I have hundreds of hours using on the F2 successfully in both Kansas and this dirt and the 10" elliptical concentric that I know well after so many hours using it in my F70 again in both kinds of dirt .
At that low price I had room to purchase on extra accessory so I thought it prudent to also buy a Nel Sharpshooter coil for the F5 as I have one for the F70 and it works shockingly well in all areas important to me in both good and bad dirt.
Especially my bad dirt.
I wanted the F5 frequency for that coil, I need optimum performance if I really wanted the best shot at success...here.
I also have the F70 11" DD, the 5" round Fisher DD sniper that will fit on the F5 but at 13.5 kHz neither is close enough to the 7.8 kHz F5 for my comfort.
I also have a 13.5 kHz larger Cors Cannon coil but that has not been tried as of yet, I hid it somewhere but it will get its turn, eventually.
I mounted the Nel at first, had several hunts to realize that if the F5 was a good choice to use in my dirt the Sharpshooter might have been even better.
On this tool hunting in my kinds of sites and conditions.
In the last couple of weeks all the coils listed above have had their turn in a couple of different sites except that Cannon coil, and I think I have enough data to determine which coil I will be using going forward for my best chance of and in most of the sites I hunt.
A big DD Nel or Cors might be in my future with the matching frequency, someday, but for right now I think I am good.
I know this is a discontinued model and not exactly at the forefront nowadays with all the older and newer very capable tools available to us but several still use the F5 so at the very least I thought my experiences could be of interest to them, maybe others, also.
I have a running log on another forum where I am posting all my experiences with the F5 but you can't link to it from here so I copied this post from that forum about these coils.
Here are my thoughts on this tool and this subject hunting a few different park sites plus one neighbors lawn I am currently in the process of cleaning out.
So the last few hunts I tried the big 11" F75 DD and yesterday I threw on the F75 round 5" DD coil.
One worked just ok, the other much better.
The big DD I had hoped for good results, great depth, good coverage, good sensitivity and decent stability and normal behavior compared to it mounted on my F70.
I got some of that but not all of it.
Can't say I was shocked at that, mismatching frequencies can be a crapshoot, at best.
I took it to another park close to me that I have hunted for years, found some coins, the coverage was great but overall not a super fun experience.
Stability was ok, I could turn it up some but even at lower settings not as quiet as the Nel coil or the two concentrics the F5 came with.
Neither of those concentrics were quite as quiet as the Nel, either, but they were better than this one.
Pinpointing was ok but I was off a little on a few targets, not a lot but some, not sure why.
The depth was, meh...could be I just never scanned anything decently deep but I checked depth all over the place on targets and I wasn't impressed.
I came home and hit that lawn across the street for a tiny bit, found a couple of coins I missed but that silver locket came in solid and nice although not real deep.
The wiggle pull back method over crown caps watching for a drop to iron on this coil worked sometimes but sometimes it didn't which seemed weird to me.
On the F70 It always works with all coils and the F5 with the Nel I could count on this everytime.
Maybe I will buy a bigger DD that matches the frequency sometime for extra depth which I assume will work better but this 13.5 frequency DD coil will probably not be mounted on the F5 again.
Now on the 5" F75 DD round coil was a whole different story.
It worked pretty darn good all day at a different park and I found several coins there and even more at that lawn when I returned home, found another wheat in that lawn, a few dimes I missed before, a few zincolns and one or two copper cents.
Also that gold looking earring in the pic below.
That was in a hole with a high tone coin, a mixed signal and a little choppy but enough of it for me to go after it.
The obvious signals are getting scarce in this lawn, time to start going after the not so obvious ones but we need more rain before I hit this lawn again.
I got the coin out with the round Fisher F75 sniper, rescanned and got a real solid 25-25 on that earring and it came up clean.
Just below nickel, a perfect signal for an open gold target like this.
Couldn't wait to test it, hoped for gold, but at 10k the scratch stayed for a short time but eventually got eaten up.
At the most this thing is plated but I am sure we will find solid gold together, eventually.
Hopefully sooner than later.
Overall the round sniper coil was pretty good, not super deep on this one either, not like on the F70 but it was easy to pinpoint accurately because of the small size.
The wiggle and pull back thing over caps worked most of the time but one thing I didn't like was it seemed unusually solid over tabs, both sta-tabs and beaver tails.
Don't recall the Nel being as stable over these things, could be mistaken or it just could be the tabs in this part of the park in that dirt just do that...need to bring the Nel there and see what happens.
All the targets in the pic below to me says I had a good hunt considering I hit the areas I hunted many times before.
Will this be a coil I use in the future, probably not because the Nel seems to do it all a little better and deeper but nice to know I have another option to try at sites where it dries up with the Nel.
So where am I with all the coils I have tried so far?
Still need to try the bigger Cors Cannon coil but I hid that somewhere and need to look for it.
The sniper concentric was ok, not the same experience I remember having on the F2 but it found targets.
Not remarkably deep but it might come in handy in some heavy iron, trash or sites infested with a million crown caps.
I can deal with all that with the Nel, however, and that coil seems to get much deeper on the F5 without trying hard.
The elliptical concentric was nice, pretty decent tones in multi-tones...not exactly the same super sweet ones I hear on the F70 but they are two different detectors, after all.
Depth I am pretty sure would be more than adequate in real nice dirt but here in my dirt not spectacular.
Deep enough for the 5" level, maybe 6"-7" and that is where tons of my targets hide but I never saw anything that knocked my socks off in depth where that Nel, again, did better.
The 11" DD at 13.5 kHz was a good try but nothing I feel the need to explore a lot more.
The 13.5 kHz round Fisher DD was better, if I didn't have the Nel Sharpshooter it would probably be my coil of choice for most situations but I have the Nel which in depth and maybe a few other areas seems a bit better so redundant for my use going forward.
The Nel Sharpshooter...so glad I got this coil.
It works great on the F70 but maybe even better on the F5.
Keeps it very quiet and stable, even at very high settings, seems to find all targets with no problems, deals with iron and crown caps with very familiar and normal behavior I am used to in my dirt and the depth it gets here does shock me.
I assume other, smaller Fisher DD coils in the correct frequency might work pretty darn good here too but the Sharpshooter seems to fill all my needs.
For jewelry hunting, anyway, most normal depths on older coins also, and the important thing here is unmasking and it seems pretty great at that in my dirt, too.
As I mentioned one day I might consider a bigger DD coil in the matching frequency just to see how deep I can get, probably in the Nel or Cors lines since I had such good experiences with them, but super depth isn't all that important here and the smaller Nel seems to get me where I need to go and more.
For now the Sharpshooter will be my go-to coil for most sites going after most targets...I guess.
Done very well for me so far with limited use, found me a ton of masked coins including a Barber dime and I think I lucked out getting the F5 to hunt in my dirt, and it has done well, and I was just as lucky choosing the Nel sharpshooter as an optional coil out of so many others I could have bought.
Love it when a plan comes together.
------------------------------------------------------------------
My original first impressions with the Nel coil.
www.findmall.com
My dirt is...difficult, mineralized red clay soil and an insane amount of extra iron from tiny to huge including so many rusty nails and screws from minimum rust to extremely rusty.
Depth is pitiful but most targets usually aren't that deep, the clay stops them from sinking very far and 4-7" has a nice layer of existing targets. ..a few I have found at 8" but not many.
Masking is our greatest challenge, if it wasn't that nice layer of good targets wouldn't exist.
My Nox works well, unmasked like a dream but not thrilled with the compressed target range.
My F70 does too but with some very jumpy behavior.
I hoped the F5 would work better here, be more stable than my F70 and accurate at the depths I need to hit plus unmask with superior skill as the Nox can do without the compressed range.
Sounds like I am going backward, if I was still in Kansas everything would be different but here in the south my devil dirt is the great equalizer...a whole new playing field as it were so with the F5 at $299 I decided to experiment.
It was now cheap enough to give it a try, got it primarily to hunt for jewelry but it shocked me at how good it was at coinshooting...in this strange dirt I am forced to hunt in.
As far as coils two great ones came with the F5, a concentric sniper, not super deep but I have hundreds of hours using on the F2 successfully in both Kansas and this dirt and the 10" elliptical concentric that I know well after so many hours using it in my F70 again in both kinds of dirt .
At that low price I had room to purchase on extra accessory so I thought it prudent to also buy a Nel Sharpshooter coil for the F5 as I have one for the F70 and it works shockingly well in all areas important to me in both good and bad dirt.
Especially my bad dirt.
I wanted the F5 frequency for that coil, I need optimum performance if I really wanted the best shot at success...here.
I also have the F70 11" DD, the 5" round Fisher DD sniper that will fit on the F5 but at 13.5 kHz neither is close enough to the 7.8 kHz F5 for my comfort.
I also have a 13.5 kHz larger Cors Cannon coil but that has not been tried as of yet, I hid it somewhere but it will get its turn, eventually.
I mounted the Nel at first, had several hunts to realize that if the F5 was a good choice to use in my dirt the Sharpshooter might have been even better.
On this tool hunting in my kinds of sites and conditions.
In the last couple of weeks all the coils listed above have had their turn in a couple of different sites except that Cannon coil, and I think I have enough data to determine which coil I will be using going forward for my best chance of and in most of the sites I hunt.
A big DD Nel or Cors might be in my future with the matching frequency, someday, but for right now I think I am good.
I know this is a discontinued model and not exactly at the forefront nowadays with all the older and newer very capable tools available to us but several still use the F5 so at the very least I thought my experiences could be of interest to them, maybe others, also.
I have a running log on another forum where I am posting all my experiences with the F5 but you can't link to it from here so I copied this post from that forum about these coils.
Here are my thoughts on this tool and this subject hunting a few different park sites plus one neighbors lawn I am currently in the process of cleaning out.
So the last few hunts I tried the big 11" F75 DD and yesterday I threw on the F75 round 5" DD coil.
One worked just ok, the other much better.
The big DD I had hoped for good results, great depth, good coverage, good sensitivity and decent stability and normal behavior compared to it mounted on my F70.
I got some of that but not all of it.
Can't say I was shocked at that, mismatching frequencies can be a crapshoot, at best.
I took it to another park close to me that I have hunted for years, found some coins, the coverage was great but overall not a super fun experience.
Stability was ok, I could turn it up some but even at lower settings not as quiet as the Nel coil or the two concentrics the F5 came with.
Neither of those concentrics were quite as quiet as the Nel, either, but they were better than this one.
Pinpointing was ok but I was off a little on a few targets, not a lot but some, not sure why.
The depth was, meh...could be I just never scanned anything decently deep but I checked depth all over the place on targets and I wasn't impressed.
I came home and hit that lawn across the street for a tiny bit, found a couple of coins I missed but that silver locket came in solid and nice although not real deep.
The wiggle pull back method over crown caps watching for a drop to iron on this coil worked sometimes but sometimes it didn't which seemed weird to me.
On the F70 It always works with all coils and the F5 with the Nel I could count on this everytime.
Maybe I will buy a bigger DD that matches the frequency sometime for extra depth which I assume will work better but this 13.5 frequency DD coil will probably not be mounted on the F5 again.
Now on the 5" F75 DD round coil was a whole different story.
It worked pretty darn good all day at a different park and I found several coins there and even more at that lawn when I returned home, found another wheat in that lawn, a few dimes I missed before, a few zincolns and one or two copper cents.
Also that gold looking earring in the pic below.
That was in a hole with a high tone coin, a mixed signal and a little choppy but enough of it for me to go after it.
The obvious signals are getting scarce in this lawn, time to start going after the not so obvious ones but we need more rain before I hit this lawn again.
I got the coin out with the round Fisher F75 sniper, rescanned and got a real solid 25-25 on that earring and it came up clean.
Just below nickel, a perfect signal for an open gold target like this.
Couldn't wait to test it, hoped for gold, but at 10k the scratch stayed for a short time but eventually got eaten up.
At the most this thing is plated but I am sure we will find solid gold together, eventually.
Hopefully sooner than later.
Overall the round sniper coil was pretty good, not super deep on this one either, not like on the F70 but it was easy to pinpoint accurately because of the small size.
The wiggle and pull back thing over caps worked most of the time but one thing I didn't like was it seemed unusually solid over tabs, both sta-tabs and beaver tails.
Don't recall the Nel being as stable over these things, could be mistaken or it just could be the tabs in this part of the park in that dirt just do that...need to bring the Nel there and see what happens.
All the targets in the pic below to me says I had a good hunt considering I hit the areas I hunted many times before.
Will this be a coil I use in the future, probably not because the Nel seems to do it all a little better and deeper but nice to know I have another option to try at sites where it dries up with the Nel.
So where am I with all the coils I have tried so far?
Still need to try the bigger Cors Cannon coil but I hid that somewhere and need to look for it.
The sniper concentric was ok, not the same experience I remember having on the F2 but it found targets.
Not remarkably deep but it might come in handy in some heavy iron, trash or sites infested with a million crown caps.
I can deal with all that with the Nel, however, and that coil seems to get much deeper on the F5 without trying hard.
The elliptical concentric was nice, pretty decent tones in multi-tones...not exactly the same super sweet ones I hear on the F70 but they are two different detectors, after all.
Depth I am pretty sure would be more than adequate in real nice dirt but here in my dirt not spectacular.
Deep enough for the 5" level, maybe 6"-7" and that is where tons of my targets hide but I never saw anything that knocked my socks off in depth where that Nel, again, did better.
The 11" DD at 13.5 kHz was a good try but nothing I feel the need to explore a lot more.
The 13.5 kHz round Fisher DD was better, if I didn't have the Nel Sharpshooter it would probably be my coil of choice for most situations but I have the Nel which in depth and maybe a few other areas seems a bit better so redundant for my use going forward.
The Nel Sharpshooter...so glad I got this coil.
It works great on the F70 but maybe even better on the F5.
Keeps it very quiet and stable, even at very high settings, seems to find all targets with no problems, deals with iron and crown caps with very familiar and normal behavior I am used to in my dirt and the depth it gets here does shock me.
I assume other, smaller Fisher DD coils in the correct frequency might work pretty darn good here too but the Sharpshooter seems to fill all my needs.
For jewelry hunting, anyway, most normal depths on older coins also, and the important thing here is unmasking and it seems pretty great at that in my dirt, too.
As I mentioned one day I might consider a bigger DD coil in the matching frequency just to see how deep I can get, probably in the Nel or Cors lines since I had such good experiences with them, but super depth isn't all that important here and the smaller Nel seems to get me where I need to go and more.
For now the Sharpshooter will be my go-to coil for most sites going after most targets...I guess.
Done very well for me so far with limited use, found me a ton of masked coins including a Barber dime and I think I lucked out getting the F5 to hunt in my dirt, and it has done well, and I was just as lucky choosing the Nel sharpshooter as an optional coil out of so many others I could have bought.
Love it when a plan comes together.
------------------------------------------------------------------
My original first impressions with the Nel coil.
First hunt and review with the F5, pretty amazing....
First hunt with the F5. I know this thing is discontinued, has the old school big head design and uses two 9 volts but I am going to review it anyway because the company I got it from tells me they still have tons more in stock and it comes with two coils for not $500 like it used to or $450 or...
www.findmall.com
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