New F5 Ordered

[Coyote65]

I ordered my new F5 today, I've been reading all I could on it in hopes of speeding up any learning curve I may have with it. For those users of the F5 is it picky on your sweep speed? does it prefer a fast sweep or slow sweep or does it matter? any preferred settings as far as the discrimination, threshold and gain goes. I plan on making a printout as sort of guideline/cheat sheet and laminating it for field use/reference until I completely get the hang of it. Nothing beats real world experiences when it comes compiling a such a document, I have already downloaded the PDF manual and read over it I'm looking for anything not covered in the manual that may help a newbie out.

Thanks in advance.

 

[upstatedetector]

Mike Hillis has posted a lot of great information on these forums, as well as other users of the F5. There are a lot of ways to run the machine based on the soil conditions and trash in the ground. Practice with it and enjoy, that's my best advice.

 

[autopilot42]

I just got back in from a good hunt with the F5 and can say it holds its own with a whites xlt. My friend and I compared numerous targets while relic hunting and every target we hit were picked up by both machines. Some were at pretty deep depths. When we had fringe targets both machines where quite comparable. I was using the 11 "DD and he had the stock concentric. The only good recoveries today were a rivet and a buckle but both machines hit them well. The F5 is an excellent mid range detector that you will not outgrow right away. The F5 did have alot better target separation in heavy trash at an old building site but that could be due to the DD on the F5 and the concentric on the xlt. I think you will be happy with your new machine.

Take care

Bob

 

[WisconsinMD]

well being a new user to the MD world and just coming back from Florida and using my F5 for the first time down there heres what I did.
On the beaches I ran in all metals mode with the gain cracked all the way up most of the time with a threshhold set so there was a little chatter. You will understand this once you get your F5 and go play with it. Only time I ran in disc mode was a little spot on the beach near a building where my detector was jumping all over the place for ID #'s. I disced out Fe and foil and tried it out but didnt do much for me. lol. I really like all metals mode apparently as for now I do. I got to the point where I could tell if something was close to the surface or deep by the sound of the beep. so that was good training even though I dug everything I could find and ended up with more junk than treasure I still had a great time. I'm looking forward to some warm weather here in Wisconsin so I can do some land hunting and see what the difference is between that and beaches. So maybe if tomorrow is warm I will test it out then.
Hope you enjoy your F5 as much as I love mine.

 

[Coyote65]

I've read most of Mikes' post and even checked several to follow as well as copied allot of his notes about the F5, reading his posts and reviews from others here at the find treasure forum is what persuaded me to go with the F5, good to hear from fellow F5 users as well and thanks for the tips and hints on using it. I really enjoy reading about everyone's experience with it and the useful info on the settings you all are using in different soil types and environments and look forward to contributing my own experience with it in the future.

Thanks all for being such a good resource of info and knowledge, it sure makes things easier than discovering it all on your own.

 

[pescadore]

I will be learning with you. My F5 is arriving this week. I have used a lot of different detcetors mostly Minelabs but have used some of the old model Fishers CZ5, ID Excel, and C$. I am looking forward to getting the F5 and have heard a lot of good things about it.