The wife and I went to the beach this afternoon. She with one of our trusty Dual Field PI's, and I with my new Sov GT. Wow! I must say that in the beginning I was taken aback with all of the different sounds that come out of this machine. Having only used Whites PI's prior to today I wasn't prepared for that. Those familiar with the the PI's know what I'm talking about. A fraction of the tone variations that I heard with the Sov. The constant threshold changes kept throwing me initially. When it changed I'd look for the target and couldn't find it. After awhile I was able to clearly hear a target worth digging and realized that it was just reacting to the junk metal. Most of the time the threshold was kind of a low pitched crunchy buzz, which I assume was after nulling over iron. I think that I was running the sensitivity too high at around 10:00, nulling out too frequently.
The manual refers to top right switch (Track, fix & P/Point) as the ground balance switch. Indicating it's used in the all metal mode and switching to track to do so. I've read that others set the ground balance in discriminate mode adjusting the sensitivity control until the threshold starts to null, then backing it off until it holds steady, while either slowly sweeping or moving the coil up and down. I wonder why that isn't mentioned in the manual, it often is on this forum.
My main problem was figuring out where to put the hip mount bag that I purchased with the unit. I'm a lefty, with the Dual Field I was able to where the box on my left hip and swing with my left hand comfortably. This bag is too big and made that impossible. When I tried switching it to my right hip it interfered with my scoop (babbs), snagging it in the headphone cable and just plain got in the way. VERY FRUSTRATING!! The bag is too darn big. Some of you are chest mounting, I'd like to know how. I'm often out for quite awhile and shaft mounting isn't for me. I'd like to have access to the controls and have the thing NOT be in the way.
I'm excited and looking forward to learning this thing, I'll keep you posted on my progress. Any help, suggestions etc... would be much appreciated.
Today's nut for 2 hours: $2.29
No bottle caps or bobby pins
Best,
Sandhunter
Santa Monica, CA
The manual refers to top right switch (Track, fix & P/Point) as the ground balance switch. Indicating it's used in the all metal mode and switching to track to do so. I've read that others set the ground balance in discriminate mode adjusting the sensitivity control until the threshold starts to null, then backing it off until it holds steady, while either slowly sweeping or moving the coil up and down. I wonder why that isn't mentioned in the manual, it often is on this forum.
My main problem was figuring out where to put the hip mount bag that I purchased with the unit. I'm a lefty, with the Dual Field I was able to where the box on my left hip and swing with my left hand comfortably. This bag is too big and made that impossible. When I tried switching it to my right hip it interfered with my scoop (babbs), snagging it in the headphone cable and just plain got in the way. VERY FRUSTRATING!! The bag is too darn big. Some of you are chest mounting, I'd like to know how. I'm often out for quite awhile and shaft mounting isn't for me. I'd like to have access to the controls and have the thing NOT be in the way.
I'm excited and looking forward to learning this thing, I'll keep you posted on my progress. Any help, suggestions etc... would be much appreciated.
Today's nut for 2 hours: $2.29
No bottle caps or bobby pins
Best,
Sandhunter
Santa Monica, CA
We had visions of some GREAT FINDS as we know those popular LA beaches have thousands of people on them during the summer. We went to Santa Monica Pier beach and spent over 6 hours hunting there. My wife hit the north side with the GT, I started north side, then walked under the pier, and all the way down to near Venice Beach area. I had the Excal ll so I was IN the wet sand up to 3' deep at a semi low tide, and hunted around the wet to dry sand area along the coast. We found VERY LITTLE for all our efforts!
They plow the sand all over that beach, which makes it nice and clean, yet I think it must really mess with the coins. We found coins in very random area's rather than centralized, like near the waters edge. We Hit Zuma beach the next day, and found the same plowed sand, and had the same poor finds. Then we hit Broad beach road in Malibu, and were very near skunked, except for the paper dollar bill I found floating in the surf!
) Maybe we were there too late after the summer season? We only saw one other detectorist on the beach at Santa Monica, he was having the same luck we were, but it was like Tuesday when most are at work. Do you find much on those very well used beaches?