Thanks!
I cannot express the joy that swinging the Fishers give me, not to mention my Tesoro's also, just in a different way.
Anything I can do or share to help other owners get over that learning curve a bit faster and help find that next great thing a little easier and quicker is a privilege and a duty I embrace.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About 2 years ago I wrote this to help new F2 owners get by some initial confusing issues that a few have encountered.
Hoosierdirt, let your wife read it and she should have a good time with it right out of the gate.
Do not be surprised on any hunts you have together what she will eventually be able to do.
Many of my MD club members bought an F2 after seeing what I could do and find with it, and a few buddies I hunted with back in Alabama with E Trac's and other high end units learned quickly what it was capable of.
A couple laughed at me the first time I showed up at a site with mine but never laughed at me again after one hunt.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, I can see all kinds of new people coming on board with all kinds of new detectors and I just want to say welcome, your life and the way you look at any patch of ground from now on will never be the same.
This post is directed to the new people that have decided their first detector is going to be the great F2...and I guess some F4 users can gleam some info from this, too.
I bought mine about one and a half years ago as a back-up/guest/ take on vacation unit only, but it turned out to be so much fun, so productive and easy to use, that I ended up using it way more than I ever thought I would, and it is still being used in heavy rotation today depending on the type of sites I am hunting and how I feel that day.
I am still learning about the F2 and adding every and all new insights, still posting when I find something great with it, and still thankful to anyone and everyone that would like to do the same.
I also want to thank the many, many members that have PM'd me about this one, asked for my advice before purchasing, and thanked me after ordering one and using it themselves.
I sometimes wish I had a piece of the action since I suspect because of several of my posts on a few forums many more F2's have been sold to some very happy and satisfied users than would ever have been sold if those threads and the info they contain were not in existence.
Be that as it may, the fact that so many more new people now own this one, and are having great fun with it and finding some fantastic stuff with it is plenty of thanks in my mind, believe me.
Since I got mine I have tried to notice every post I see about new people with the F2 and I have also noticed a trend.
Several new owners, which by the way for the most part are not only brand new to the F2 but brand new to the entire hobby, have put it together, got out and started finding great stuff right away with no problems at all.
Others have started out differently, with much concern and confusion.
99.9% of the time, this confusion goes away as they get out and use and understand the F2 more and more.
All detectors will have a learning curve, and there are basics in this hobby that a brand new newbie does not, and is not expected to know, but given a short time with it they discover and come to understand and figure these things out and all becomes well.
TIPS FOR NEW OWNERS...
These tips for a new users are posted somewhere all over the net...but it has been suggested to me that putting most of the real world tips for assembling and using the F2 right out of the box could be of some use to the many new F2 owners in our ranks, so I will attempt to do that here.
[size=medium]Assembly[/size]
1...Tighten the cam locks on the rods.
When I first put mine together, I was not thrilled with the slight wobble I had on the coil.
Tighten up those cam locks, (which I neglected to do), and that will go away.
2...Correct battery installation.
This is a big one, and also something that I screwed up myself when I first put mine together before reading the directions in the manual.
(Directions?...I don't need no stinking directions!)
The 2 batteries that come with the unit, or any future batteries you install, have to be put in one way and one way only or this thing will just act wonky, won't work correctly at all, and probably won't even turn off when you hit that power button.
While looking at the screen, the batteries should be installed from the rear WITH THE + SIGN ON THE SIDE OF BOTH BATTERIES FACING TO THE RIGHT!
3...Battery clips
As long as we are talking about batteries, those clips that hold the batteries in are a very bad design, in my opinion, and awful tight on a brand new unit, and the chances of breaking these off can be high if you are not careful.
If you do, you are going to have problems because the cover is so flimsy that I don't think you have a chance of keeping the batteries connected and positioned correctly even if you stuff something in between the batteries and the cover.
The good thing is that over time I have found that these clips do seem to finally start to give a little, and battery replacement will go much easier for you in the future.
However...
Not all battery jackets are the same size, this would be regular alkaline or rechargeable's, and no matter what you do there are some brands that will never fit into these slots no matter how hard you try.
I have found Duracells, Energizers, Walgreens and CVS brand batteries are fine, along with many others.
Just the other day, though, I did purchase an off brand set of batteries from a department store that did not fit no matter what, so if it is real hard to get them in just stop trying because it will be just as hard if not harder to get them out without a problem.
My first set I put in, the quality ones that came with the F2, were very tight, and I managed to bend open the end of one edge of the battery jacket on one, which then caught on one of those clips and so getting it out was not much fun at all...so be careful.
[size=large]First time powering up[/size]
Ok, you got it together and the batteries in correctly so lets hit that power button, shall we?
What? Is this thing crazy?
All kinds of noise and numbers and jumping around!
I GOT A BAD ONE!!!
I have seen these comments stated in one form or another from a whole bunch of new users and I will address this problem here.
Lets just go talk about something called...
[size=medium]SENSITIVITY[/size]
The F series detectors are a very sensitive bunch, all of them, and this sensitivity can be both good and bad to veteran hunters, and mostly bad to brand new users.
When you power up, this thing isn't even at full power, more like 75%, and that extremely high sensitivity, even at this level, this can cause some great distress to owners that don't understand why their detectors seem to be loco and unusable.
Here is the deal.
If you turn this thing on inside your house, all kinds of things can affect it.
EMI, or electromagnetic interference is all around us indoors and out, and since your detector picks up these EM waves pretty easily, is it any wonder the thing seems to be a little crazy?
Inside the home, fluorescent lights, televisions, electric appliances of all kinds and especially WIFI can and will be picked up by this machine.
As a matter of fact, most detectors on the market will be affected EMI, and not only in how the signals are picked up but how it works and performs, too.
I have read owners air testing all kinds of brands indoors for depth, and then moving the unit outdoors they sometimes can get completely different and much better results.
Ok so now you get this, so lets just go outside the house and try it in the yard.
What?
Still seems to be going nuts!
Great, we finally got outdoors with it so you think it should be perfect but it is not.
Why?
Think about it...
That same WIFI hub you have in the center of the house that makes it so easy to get on the net with your laptop all over the home is not stopped by those walls in your dwelling.
Not the indoors walls and not even the outside ones.
Look around...do you happen to see some electric lines running overhead behind your house?
If not, good for you, you live in a more modern subdivision with out of sight underground lines.
Doesn't matter...that EMI is still all around you, and maybe even some other things that can cause interference are lurking about, too.
Got a cell-phone or radio tower within a block or two of your location?
Maybe you don't have WIFI but a close neighbor does.
Even your own cell phone that you carry can cause you some problems, among many other things, so don't just automatically think you have a bad detector.
You could have, it happens, but this is actually very rare.
So, what to do?
[size=medium]Most detectors have to be turned up all the way to work correctly and find you some great targets![/size]
I think this is something a lot of new users believe but in reality is not true.
In the thousands of posts I have read on this and all kinds of brands of detectors, it is a rare thing indeed that any hunter is able to set their units at full power without problems or noise which we call "chatter".
MXT's, the Tejon, and even the very popular E-trac, to name just a few, can also be virtually unusable and not much fun to swing with all kinds of noise on the highest power level which is usually controlled by your sensitivity settings.
Read a few of the more technical posts on tips for suggested settings of most detectors and the owners usually mention something about sensitivity levels on their detectors...and notice it usually is not at the highest levels they can achieve.
If you go outside your house for the first time, or to the local park, or anywhere for that matter, if your F2 is just too noisy and jumpy, for goodness sake, just turn it down till it is at a more manageable noise level!
It is true that you will lose a little depth with every power bar you take away, but in reality it is not all that much, and if you are brand new you don't need to be dealing with all kinds of false tones and other things while you are so shiny new and just learning the ropes.
I have not done any scientific tests, but I used to suspect that for every bar you take away on the F2, you will lose about 1/4" in depth.
Now I believe it is way less than that.
If you have the 8" coil mounted, and you are hunting in pretty good soil, that coil should reach about 7-8" on a dime.
Do the math and you will see that even on one bar you should still be well within range of a huge percentage of the targets we seek, which many have the opinion that overall for the most part, are 6" in depth or less.
Just the other day I was at a site and I was fooling around with the sense levels trying to use a technique to see if I could determine whether a high tone signal was a pop top buried in the ground as opposed to a coin.
I actually forgot to turn the sense back up to my normal full power, (that's how I hunt...you don't have to), and went on scanning.
My next target was a loud, solid and very easy to tell dime that was at about 5 inches...and after I dug it I noticed that the sense level was still down at only one bar.
The coil I was using at the time was the 4" sniper coil, even on one bar in good soil I believe the F2 can still hit that 6" mark, imaging what the bigger coils can do on low power.
My first ever experience in this hobby was with an extra noisy, constantly falsing detector that gave me training that most don't have in determining false tones, or ghost signals, from real ones.
The extra noise I hear at some of my sites never bothers me so unless I am right under some high power lines, I rarely turn down that sense.
That is me, not you, and learning to ignore these false signals will be a skill you will learn in time, but for now, just turn it down to a level that actually makes hunting fun for you...not a hassle.
Some owners have gone to a few different sites and had chatter problems at all of them, but that 4th site it was quiet as a mouse.
All sites are not the same, and don't assume that they are and that your F2 will work the same at all of them.
As I said, I hunt on high sense most of the time and at many sites I get signals galore...lots of them false.
Not a problem for me, I can pick out the real ones, but last week I was at a new-to-me park where my F2 was absolutely silent except for real targets that were being picked up in the ground as I rolled over them.
This was strange to me, and I had to keep checking to see if the thing was actually working because this is so rare in my experience.
I must add that as far as depth, (some owners get more, some get less), keep in mind mineralization levels are different all over the country, and the depth that I now get in my wonderful Kansas soil is completely different then most of my sites in the devil soil I had to deal with when I lived in Alabama.
There, if I got past 3 inches using any of my detectors, (and I also own a Vaquero), I considered myself lucky.
[size=medium]OTHER STUFF[/size]
So I guess you are getting tired of reading this thing and my fingers already went numb long ago so I will wrap this up and maybe add a few more helpful things as I think of them in the future.
The only other thing I can think of to tell you right now is that if you use a decent pair of headphones your battery life will be extended by a lot.
That speaker on the F2 will use a ton of power vs any set of phones, and getting used to using headphones will actually give you a shot at hearing the differences in the tones you will hear...and make no mistake there are some slight differences in those 4 tones.
Also, if you are out in the field and you get real low on battery power and aren't carrying extras, (which you should), swap the position of the two batteries and you should gain an extra bar or two for a limited time.
The audio/tone generating circuit is actually run by only one of those batteries, not both, so the batteries will drain at different levels and time frames.
Lastly, if you are completely new, don't ever lose heart or feel like giving up.
So many new users have poured out their problems and frustrations in their first posts when they did not have a clue, but a few weeks later, and with a few hours of experience under their belt, everything seemed to have changed, miraculously, and from then on they are all pretty happy campers.
In this hobby as in life, the more you know and understand the better things get, overall.
My only wish for you is that you have the patience to learn how to use your fine new detector, continue to learn new things, always, and if you end up being half as happy and satisfied with your F2 as I am with mine, you will also end up being very happy indeed!
HH Always!
