PryorCreekJoe
Member
Or at least to me it is. It all started Sunday morning May 22, 2016. As I prepare to go on vacation I was waiting as long as possible to mow my 1 ½ acre yard. I usually wear ear plugs and headphones when I mow but when I reached for the earplugs they were dirty so I thought that I would just wear the headphones this time. Not wearing earplugs proved to be a big mistake and test the limit of my skills as a detectorist. You see, I wear hearing aids. Now I should have taken them out before going out to the shop to get on my riding mower but that still would not have been a problem had the ear plugs been serviceable as they would not go into the ears with the hearing aids in place. But I just put on the headphones and off I went.
I had been mowing an hour or so and had the headphones knocked loose and totally off two or three times by some lower hanging branches on some of my trees. I pulled up at a place where I needed to move some potted plants to mow that area. I got off the mower (which shuts down when you get off the seat) and took off the headphones and immediately knew something was wrong. The left hearing aid was GONE. The right one was still in place but the left was not in my ear, not on the mower seat, not on the mower deck but GONE. I tried to think of just where the spots were that the headphones had been knocked loose and where they had been ripped off my head. Since I have a couple dozen trees, it was hard to narrow down the search but I got it down to about 5 trees, each about 25 feet apart in one row. A visual search yielded nothing. Time to face the music and tell my wife about what a stupid thing I had done.
She came out to help and I grabbed me Deus with the 9 inch coil. I set it with the sensitivity low and with no discrimination. I dropped the other hearing aid on the ground and swung the coil over it. I knew it would be a long shot since just about the only metal would be the battery and it was tiny. I swing across it I got no signal at all. Swinging the length of it, it would barely hit in only one direction. So out under the trees I went. I hunted for about two hours and finally told my wife that it looks like I need to call my homeowner’s insurance first thing Monday morning. I knew that nothing could be done before I headed out on vacation on Wednesday but I had to get the ball rolling on it. So we headed back indoors and had a very late lunch and I decided to take a nap.
Up from my nap I went back out to look some more even though I had told my wife that it must have fallen out when the headphones came off and maybe rode the mower to the other side of the yard, who knows. Still nothing was found.
An hour or so later I just happened to look to my detector side of the garage and noticed a 5 inch coil for my F75. Then it hit me that the F75 has a jewelry mode on it and with the 5 inch coil may stand a much better chance than the Deus.
I put on the coil and headed back out and dropped the other hearing aid onto the grass and swung over it. I got a pretty good signal in JE mode, no discrimination and low sensitivity. I headed back to where I thought would be the most likely spot. 3 minutes later I got a signal. I got down on my knees and parted the grass and there was my hearing aid and still in one piece. The F75 in JE mode had came through for me. That detector will be getting a lot more love in the future. It may take the place of the Deus in some future hunts.
Finding that hearing aid was as good or better than finding a diamond ring, in more ways than one.
If you want to really test your detecting skill, have someone randomly toss one of these tiny batteries out in your and see if you can find it. It is a whole lot tougher than you think!
I had been mowing an hour or so and had the headphones knocked loose and totally off two or three times by some lower hanging branches on some of my trees. I pulled up at a place where I needed to move some potted plants to mow that area. I got off the mower (which shuts down when you get off the seat) and took off the headphones and immediately knew something was wrong. The left hearing aid was GONE. The right one was still in place but the left was not in my ear, not on the mower seat, not on the mower deck but GONE. I tried to think of just where the spots were that the headphones had been knocked loose and where they had been ripped off my head. Since I have a couple dozen trees, it was hard to narrow down the search but I got it down to about 5 trees, each about 25 feet apart in one row. A visual search yielded nothing. Time to face the music and tell my wife about what a stupid thing I had done.
She came out to help and I grabbed me Deus with the 9 inch coil. I set it with the sensitivity low and with no discrimination. I dropped the other hearing aid on the ground and swung the coil over it. I knew it would be a long shot since just about the only metal would be the battery and it was tiny. I swing across it I got no signal at all. Swinging the length of it, it would barely hit in only one direction. So out under the trees I went. I hunted for about two hours and finally told my wife that it looks like I need to call my homeowner’s insurance first thing Monday morning. I knew that nothing could be done before I headed out on vacation on Wednesday but I had to get the ball rolling on it. So we headed back indoors and had a very late lunch and I decided to take a nap.
Up from my nap I went back out to look some more even though I had told my wife that it must have fallen out when the headphones came off and maybe rode the mower to the other side of the yard, who knows. Still nothing was found.
An hour or so later I just happened to look to my detector side of the garage and noticed a 5 inch coil for my F75. Then it hit me that the F75 has a jewelry mode on it and with the 5 inch coil may stand a much better chance than the Deus.
I put on the coil and headed back out and dropped the other hearing aid onto the grass and swung over it. I got a pretty good signal in JE mode, no discrimination and low sensitivity. I headed back to where I thought would be the most likely spot. 3 minutes later I got a signal. I got down on my knees and parted the grass and there was my hearing aid and still in one piece. The F75 in JE mode had came through for me. That detector will be getting a lot more love in the future. It may take the place of the Deus in some future hunts.
Finding that hearing aid was as good or better than finding a diamond ring, in more ways than one.
If you want to really test your detecting skill, have someone randomly toss one of these tiny batteries out in your and see if you can find it. It is a whole lot tougher than you think!
