First, thanks to MarkG. for his prior post and video on setting up his F75 for the salt water beach. Gave me starting points and confidence.
I ran BP, Disc 0, 3H tones most of the time, sensitivity ran from 40 to 60 to keep it reasonably quiet. Ground balance ranged from 2 clicks below 1 where it was wet enough for the sides of the hole to collapse, about 11 where the sand was wet but the holes did not collapse, about 16 where the sand looked dry but was still damp. In the dry sand GB ran from low 60's to low 70's. I found I needed to check ground balance pretty often. I could pretty much tell when I had moved to an area where I needed to adjust because things got more chatty.
Targets were few and far between on this trip, even with the Sand Shark looking for bobbie pins. The backhoes were out every morning clearing sand away from the storm water pipes ... and that isn't a great sign. Oh well.
The good: The LTD does pretty well. Found foil and different coins at good depth. When I was hunting where the holes did not collapse, I dug out a little at a time to get a sense for depth. One dime was at about 7 inches and it hit very hard. ID bounced a bit from about 65 to 73 so I wasn't sure if I was looking at a zinc penny, copper penny or dime. Because there weren't a lot of targets, I can't say this thing is real deep in the wet sand, but I was real happy with that dime depth and how good it sounded.
The bad: Bottle caps sure sound good. And, at the beaches in this general vicinity, there are a lot of little pieces of iron that look old that this F75 LTD hits and ID's around 80. My Tejon hits on these too and they don't discriminate out. The CZ's grunt low tone on these even with a fairly quick sweep, and surprisingly, the Sand Sharp doesn't see them (must think they are black sand). The LTD does give them away since the tone kind of echos on them and the ID will bounce as I walk around them and change sweep speed.
The first picture has the first hunt, couple of hours over wet sand. The little rectangular blob to the right of the pennies ID'd at 32 / 33. It is heavy and when I handed it to my wife, she saw the color on the edges and says it's gold. I will reserve judgment until I can get it tested or get a tester and test it.
Second picture is from a couple of hours of mixed dry and wet sand hunting. It shows a couple of the little iron pieces in the upper left part of the picture.
Not shown; there was a lot of foil. Very small pieces of foil too.
Cheers,
tvr
I ran BP, Disc 0, 3H tones most of the time, sensitivity ran from 40 to 60 to keep it reasonably quiet. Ground balance ranged from 2 clicks below 1 where it was wet enough for the sides of the hole to collapse, about 11 where the sand was wet but the holes did not collapse, about 16 where the sand looked dry but was still damp. In the dry sand GB ran from low 60's to low 70's. I found I needed to check ground balance pretty often. I could pretty much tell when I had moved to an area where I needed to adjust because things got more chatty.
Targets were few and far between on this trip, even with the Sand Shark looking for bobbie pins. The backhoes were out every morning clearing sand away from the storm water pipes ... and that isn't a great sign. Oh well.
The good: The LTD does pretty well. Found foil and different coins at good depth. When I was hunting where the holes did not collapse, I dug out a little at a time to get a sense for depth. One dime was at about 7 inches and it hit very hard. ID bounced a bit from about 65 to 73 so I wasn't sure if I was looking at a zinc penny, copper penny or dime. Because there weren't a lot of targets, I can't say this thing is real deep in the wet sand, but I was real happy with that dime depth and how good it sounded.
The bad: Bottle caps sure sound good. And, at the beaches in this general vicinity, there are a lot of little pieces of iron that look old that this F75 LTD hits and ID's around 80. My Tejon hits on these too and they don't discriminate out. The CZ's grunt low tone on these even with a fairly quick sweep, and surprisingly, the Sand Sharp doesn't see them (must think they are black sand). The LTD does give them away since the tone kind of echos on them and the ID will bounce as I walk around them and change sweep speed.
The first picture has the first hunt, couple of hours over wet sand. The little rectangular blob to the right of the pennies ID'd at 32 / 33. It is heavy and when I handed it to my wife, she saw the color on the edges and says it's gold. I will reserve judgment until I can get it tested or get a tester and test it.
Second picture is from a couple of hours of mixed dry and wet sand hunting. It shows a couple of the little iron pieces in the upper left part of the picture.
Not shown; there was a lot of foil. Very small pieces of foil too.
Cheers,
tvr