I got out on Friday as planned. The weather was sunny, fairly low humidity and warm. The site I choose was one I hadn't been to yet, so I wasn't aware of the best places to hunt. I started at one location with the 9" coil, and hunted there for about an hour or so before this nice looking young woman came over and asked my politely if I wouldn't mind moving my car as they were getting ready to have an event for the new 2017 Nissan GTR. I told her "no problem", and I went ahead and finished digging another rusted bottle cap, and headed back to the car so I could move to another location in the park.
I moved over by a pavilion to try my luck there, and switched to the 11" coil. For both hunts I used program 3 "Deus Fast" in the stock configuration. The quantity of signals was somewhat hard to believe as the detector was reporting almost a constant barrage of targets. This was probably not the most ideal place to begin my learning curve on a new detector, but it's the one I chose as I've been wanting to go there. Now I know why others told me the place was loaded with trash. They weren't kidding.
I really struggled with the rusted caps that have not been an issue with other machines I've used in the past. They sounded so good, and the ids were right there in the low 90's. I remembered about the coil wiggle, and pull back, method for helping to identify them. I started calling them before I dug them when the nice high tone dropped off at the edge of the coil. I did have a couple of targets that remained with a high tone that still turned out to be trash, but I don't remember exactly which ones now. I know it's only been a little over 24 hours, but my memory isn't what it used to be. I wasn't finding any good targets with the 11" coil at this particular location so I decided to change a couple of settings from the stock #3 program. One thing I did was to reduce the disc from 6.8 to 1. I left it at 1 as I thought I remembered something about not being able to hear the iron at 0, That may not be correct, but I thought I read that somewhere, and I was ready to try something. I really don't remember what else I did other than try different frequencies along with the disc change. Whatever I did seemed to help as the next target I dug was a clad dime. That was the first coin dug with the 11" coil. It was also after making the changes that I began finding the smaller denomination coins that I wasn't either finding, or I wasn't able to identify them for what they were.
I hunted for approximately 4 hours total. I was quite satisfied with the weight of the Deus, and the fact that there were no wires to contend with. I only found 8 coins for a face value of $1.22, but I wasn't expecting too much for the first time out with a new machine that I still haven't finished reading the user's manual, much less Andy's book. I would love to have been able to tell you about all the wonderful type coins I found, and how deep I had to dig for them. I guess that will have to wait for another episode. None of the coins I dug today were more than about 4" deep. I found the Deus to be quite challenging, and find myself eager to learn more about it, and how to be able to understand what it's telling me, and how to modify the settings for sites I will be hunting in the future. I had previously asked about coil size, and which one to get between the 9" and 11". The answers I received were about 50 - 50, but I'm thinking I may prefer the 9". Especially after the shear number of targets I ran across with each sweep of the coil. I'm sure there is a massive amount of masking going on at this location I hunted yesterday. The site became an official city park in 1929 so it's not that old, but it's not new either. I'm sure there are good targets there hidden beneath all the modern junk. I'm still positive that the Deus can be the detector I'm expecting it to be. I just need to apply myself to the task of learning it's secrets.
Thanks for all the encouragement, and thanks for looking...
