salmonriverhotrock
New member
I've been detecting since around 1982 and recently had been considering adding a plug in F2/4 DD coil to my BH Pioneer 505 to pick up an added advantage of that kind of coil. Most of my experience is with manual ground balance machines with concentric and or DD coils. My area is full of hot rocks and minerals so I've come to really appreciate the use of DD coils with power I could not use with a concentric coil. After a lot of research of all the pro and con reviews of the F2 and having personally used an Ace 250 a few times, I ordered the F2 today with the 11" DD, 8" and 4" round concentric coils. Though it is said the F2 is pretty sensitive with high recovery, I'm thinking the 11" DD coil will tone down the chatter and allow more use of power if there is an issue with using the concentric coils.
Considering cost of a new F2 11" DD plug in coil for my 505, I figured I was ahead to just go a new F2 machine with the screw in 11" DD and round concentric coils package. I know some out there are furious about Bounty Hunter taking over Fisher and look on Bounty Hunter machines as junk but I personally think the BH machines are quite capable of keeping on the heels of some of the more expensive name brand machines if they are not outdoing them. Though I have never before owned a Pre-BH Fisher machine, from my experience with a BH 505 that has served me well and with an added 4" coil, I believe this F2 is going to be sweet for what is called a beginners machine. A great deal of detecting successes are not so often a result of the cost of the machine as much as they happen because of the operator and the coils used for the conditions. Seldom on my 505, do I look at the digital display but rely more on distance of coil sweep in relation to tone given or pin point sounding. What I believe I will use on the F2 display more than anything is the numerical numbers the machine will assign to different targets. Personally, I could care less about an iron or foil indicator for example because I dig more more targets than I don't but Notching is a good feature and has it's place. My Garrett Freedom II Coin Commander from the 1980's was actually one of the first machines that could have been thought of as a Notch Machine. It has manual dual discrimination settings.
When it gets here and is supposed to be this week, I'll have to give it a run to see what this rascal will do. Last year it got so hot here for so long, I did very little detecting. This summer is not quite as bad yet but it's best to get detecting out of the way before noon. We do reach in the 100 and above temperatures down here on the Salmon River of Idaho.