I got permission to hunt a old 25 acre farmhouse property, where the new (75 year old) brick house still stands. I not new to MDing; been using a CZ, 1266, Coinstrike, and a few Tesoro's, for years, but mostly at the beach. Bought a new E-Trac and Andy Sabich's book, and read up on it. I loaded his coin pattern, and set out on my first hunt at the beach on Saturday. The only targets I pulled out of the sand, rang as coins, but were pop tabs, broken pieces of pop-tops, and 2 screw caps. Grrrr... never did thin bad with my CZ-20.
OK. Back to the farm. I went there today, and the detector was chirping and beeping and singing constantly, with every swing. Finally realized that it somehow hot set into manual sens. Changed it to Auto. OK, a little quieter, but still multi-tone beeps, and numbers jumping all over the place, with just about every swing. All of this was in the front, side and back yards around this house. I was sure I would find solid number hits, ringing loud and clear, on some old coins, but no such luck. The 4 times I saw what I was sure were going to be nice finds, with numbers that reasonable consistently shows 12-47 or 11-??, and dug'em, they were bent rusty nails, an old fence wire staple, a round steel nut, and a round steel ball (old rusted bearing???).
I changed disc settings; went from multitone (which was driving me nuts), to 4 tone (not much better to me, and finally to 2 tone ferrous. Even then, the high tones turned out to be trash. I had it set to fast off; deep on; response normal; trash high; sens Auto (no + or -).
I left frustrated, but not empty-handed. I did find my Garrett ProPointer lying in the grass, which was lost about a week and a half ago, when my wife and I went there the first time. It apparantly fell out of her pocket (no, she wasn't using the holster). We didn't dig any good targets that time either, but I was using my C$, and she her Cutlass II. All we dug was trash that day. I can't believe there isn't some great old coins in the dirt around this place, but I am not sure I even want to go back, The E-Trac just isn't working for me yet.
I'm back to reading the book, and trying to find what I'm doing wrong. Or am I wasting my time trying hunt among all this trash? Is it even possible? I would have been happy with even a zinc penny.
OK. Back to the farm. I went there today, and the detector was chirping and beeping and singing constantly, with every swing. Finally realized that it somehow hot set into manual sens. Changed it to Auto. OK, a little quieter, but still multi-tone beeps, and numbers jumping all over the place, with just about every swing. All of this was in the front, side and back yards around this house. I was sure I would find solid number hits, ringing loud and clear, on some old coins, but no such luck. The 4 times I saw what I was sure were going to be nice finds, with numbers that reasonable consistently shows 12-47 or 11-??, and dug'em, they were bent rusty nails, an old fence wire staple, a round steel nut, and a round steel ball (old rusted bearing???).
I changed disc settings; went from multitone (which was driving me nuts), to 4 tone (not much better to me, and finally to 2 tone ferrous. Even then, the high tones turned out to be trash. I had it set to fast off; deep on; response normal; trash high; sens Auto (no + or -).
I left frustrated, but not empty-handed. I did find my Garrett ProPointer lying in the grass, which was lost about a week and a half ago, when my wife and I went there the first time. It apparantly fell out of her pocket (no, she wasn't using the holster). We didn't dig any good targets that time either, but I was using my C$, and she her Cutlass II. All we dug was trash that day. I can't believe there isn't some great old coins in the dirt around this place, but I am not sure I even want to go back, The E-Trac just isn't working for me yet.
I'm back to reading the book, and trying to find what I'm doing wrong. Or am I wasting my time trying hunt among all this trash? Is it even possible? I would have been happy with even a zinc penny.