Sven
Well-known member
First Hunt with the Vista X 5.7” Search Coil Sept 8, 2019
A few days after getting the coil and doing some bench testing, it was time for some actual hunting. Really the only way to see the coils potential. Decided to give a gruelling torture test. Not only will this test the coil but test my resilience to the noise and sheer amount of trash that will have to be listened to.
Got up at 6:30am, packed up the car and headed to a schoolyard I have hunted once before. Really dreaded going back to this place, this must be the sister school I nick named Canslaw City. Made it over there by 7:30am, geared up and headed over to the field, ready to do battle.
One reason for going back to this schoolyard is a few years ago, it gave up a gold ring.
Turned on the Vista X and did the usual ground balancing act, put the coil to the ground and swing, swing off I went. Listened to the trash, dug the trash and any high tones. It was tough starting out, seemed a bit harder to distinguish trash with the 5.7” than it is with the stock 9x11 coil. Got fooled so many times, even tho a number of coins were dug up. Had to re-ground balance a few times due to the mineralization changing. And the ground hardness changed as well, to a harder compacted soil. Wasn’t too much fun digging that area.
Oh, yeah. There were some underground power lines and pipes running thru the property. Once their locations were figured out, you could work around them. Then out in the middle of the field, the detector started emitting some weird target responses. You got a good solid tone crossing the coil over the target, the tone just did not stop for about 8” past. The tone that followed the coil was an echo of the target. Really did have an echo sound through the headphones. Turned off the detector and turned it back on, normal for about a minute, then the echo over targets started again. Thinking at this point, the batteries must be low. Consider that the batteries being used are the Alkalines that came with the X. Just guessing they had about 20 hours on them. Walked back to the car and popped in a new set of batteries. Headed back out to the same spot I was getting echos, turned on the X and started hunting.
No more echos, the X worked as it should. Will have wait and to see, when these batteries wear down again, if the echos come back. If so, this will be the warning indicator that its time for athe batteries to be changed.
A few more hours went by, with the ground mineralization changing a number of times. Kept on hunting and digging up targets. Was glad to more over to some softer soil, much easier to dig. My digging hand liked that, becoming a bit sore from the hard packed soil. By the 4th hour of detecting and digging, figuring out what was trash and possibly a good target was starting to click in my head. Finding Canadian clad is easy with the 5.7” coil once you clue in on what it sounds like. The dimes give off a strange good sound with a fast ger-plunk at the end. You have to listen for it. The Canadian nickels and quarters, once you get the target response. The coil needs to be swung over them slow to pinpoint. A bit hard to explain.
Eventually settled in on some settings that were relaxing, which also let the high tones pop thru over the low tones.
Threshold ---45
Iron Volume---25.5
Alt Disc ---30
Main Disc---30.6
Gain---30
By toggling from main Disc and Alt Disc, it was possible to classify a good high tone target, blended target, to a low tone trash target. And switching now nad then to All Metal mode which is a single tone, would help in pinpointing those odd blended sounding targets.
The Vista X with this small coil, really picks up the tiny targets. Reminds me of the Fisher Gold Bug Pro and the DeepTech Vista Gold. Thank goodness there was a pinpointer stuffed in my pouch. Sure came in handy. Take a look at the pictures to see some of the tiny stuff it picked up.
After 5 hours of up and downs, digging countless holes and targets, grumbling stomach, thirsty feeling……..it was a good time to pack it in. My pouch was full.
Overall thoughts regarding the 5.7” coil are favorable. Super sensitivity to small targets with good audio report. Stable operation, capable of using full Gain. No problem finding in this location to about 5-6”. Pulltabs and canslaw even deeper. Pop cans down at 8-9”. And deeper targets I stopped digging for. Target separation is excellent. Makes a good coil to use in trashy areas or for prospecting. Only drawback to this coil is the fact you can’t cover a large area in a short period of time. Takes a bit more self control to overlap your sweeps and slow down.
One last thing, owning the Vista X with the larger 9x11” coil and the 5.7” coil makes for a great combination. But, the 7” concentric coil in development, or even an 7.7” would be a perfect middle size, general purpose search coil. The Vista X would now be able to do battle in most hunting situations that I and others would encounter.
Highlight of the day was a 1968 partial silver quarter.
A few days after getting the coil and doing some bench testing, it was time for some actual hunting. Really the only way to see the coils potential. Decided to give a gruelling torture test. Not only will this test the coil but test my resilience to the noise and sheer amount of trash that will have to be listened to.
Got up at 6:30am, packed up the car and headed to a schoolyard I have hunted once before. Really dreaded going back to this place, this must be the sister school I nick named Canslaw City. Made it over there by 7:30am, geared up and headed over to the field, ready to do battle.
One reason for going back to this schoolyard is a few years ago, it gave up a gold ring.
Turned on the Vista X and did the usual ground balancing act, put the coil to the ground and swing, swing off I went. Listened to the trash, dug the trash and any high tones. It was tough starting out, seemed a bit harder to distinguish trash with the 5.7” than it is with the stock 9x11 coil. Got fooled so many times, even tho a number of coins were dug up. Had to re-ground balance a few times due to the mineralization changing. And the ground hardness changed as well, to a harder compacted soil. Wasn’t too much fun digging that area.
Oh, yeah. There were some underground power lines and pipes running thru the property. Once their locations were figured out, you could work around them. Then out in the middle of the field, the detector started emitting some weird target responses. You got a good solid tone crossing the coil over the target, the tone just did not stop for about 8” past. The tone that followed the coil was an echo of the target. Really did have an echo sound through the headphones. Turned off the detector and turned it back on, normal for about a minute, then the echo over targets started again. Thinking at this point, the batteries must be low. Consider that the batteries being used are the Alkalines that came with the X. Just guessing they had about 20 hours on them. Walked back to the car and popped in a new set of batteries. Headed back out to the same spot I was getting echos, turned on the X and started hunting.
No more echos, the X worked as it should. Will have wait and to see, when these batteries wear down again, if the echos come back. If so, this will be the warning indicator that its time for athe batteries to be changed.
A few more hours went by, with the ground mineralization changing a number of times. Kept on hunting and digging up targets. Was glad to more over to some softer soil, much easier to dig. My digging hand liked that, becoming a bit sore from the hard packed soil. By the 4th hour of detecting and digging, figuring out what was trash and possibly a good target was starting to click in my head. Finding Canadian clad is easy with the 5.7” coil once you clue in on what it sounds like. The dimes give off a strange good sound with a fast ger-plunk at the end. You have to listen for it. The Canadian nickels and quarters, once you get the target response. The coil needs to be swung over them slow to pinpoint. A bit hard to explain.
Eventually settled in on some settings that were relaxing, which also let the high tones pop thru over the low tones.
Threshold ---45
Iron Volume---25.5
Alt Disc ---30
Main Disc---30.6
Gain---30
By toggling from main Disc and Alt Disc, it was possible to classify a good high tone target, blended target, to a low tone trash target. And switching now nad then to All Metal mode which is a single tone, would help in pinpointing those odd blended sounding targets.
The Vista X with this small coil, really picks up the tiny targets. Reminds me of the Fisher Gold Bug Pro and the DeepTech Vista Gold. Thank goodness there was a pinpointer stuffed in my pouch. Sure came in handy. Take a look at the pictures to see some of the tiny stuff it picked up.
After 5 hours of up and downs, digging countless holes and targets, grumbling stomach, thirsty feeling……..it was a good time to pack it in. My pouch was full.
Overall thoughts regarding the 5.7” coil are favorable. Super sensitivity to small targets with good audio report. Stable operation, capable of using full Gain. No problem finding in this location to about 5-6”. Pulltabs and canslaw even deeper. Pop cans down at 8-9”. And deeper targets I stopped digging for. Target separation is excellent. Makes a good coil to use in trashy areas or for prospecting. Only drawback to this coil is the fact you can’t cover a large area in a short period of time. Takes a bit more self control to overlap your sweeps and slow down.
One last thing, owning the Vista X with the larger 9x11” coil and the 5.7” coil makes for a great combination. But, the 7” concentric coil in development, or even an 7.7” would be a perfect middle size, general purpose search coil. The Vista X would now be able to do battle in most hunting situations that I and others would encounter.
Highlight of the day was a 1968 partial silver quarter.
