Question for Mike Hillis and other F5 experts-about ID'ing nickels

[ChuckDiggin it in Florida]

I got a Fisher F5 about a week ago and already owned a White's MXT. The mxt say's 18-20 and 90% of the time it's a nickel.
The F5 has nickels in with the pulltabs.
I'm looking for advice!
I wonder why Fisher didn't make the F5 to more correctly ID nickels? Or at least be able to notch them in or notch out pulltabs and leave nickels?
The F5 is a very deep seeking detector though and surprisingly enough, will GB on my wet salt Gulf beach! The MXT will not GB in this wet salt.
Of course all detectors have their good and bad points, but to me, making a basic coinshooter like the F5 and not making nickel ID better is odd?
I wish Fisher had a mod or something. I ain't about to dig up 50 tabs to get a nickle!
I started out with the F5 just digging nickel readings and loaded up on tabs and only got a couple of nickels and saw no difference in the sound or readings on nickels over tabs-have any of you found a way to seperate nickels better with the F5?

 

[iskirkra]

Chuck, I am no expert but have dug many nickles with the F5. For me almost all my nickles came in with a solid 30 with an occasional 29. If the F5 gave a 31 or 32 it would be a tab almost every time. I don't remember ever digging a nickle when it was hitting 31 and 32 so I stopped digging those.

 

[ChuckDiggin it in Florida]

I spoke too soon! I should have done more testing!
I just took a bunch of nickels and a bunch of pulltabs and sure enough! Tabs all hit above 30 and varied up to 34 and down to 31.
The nickels all hit at 30, with a very occasional 29.
When I did my "Nickel field test" I only found 2 nickels and a few dozen pulltabs.
It appears I just missed the fact that those 2 hit at 30!
Then, when I did a full set discrimination and used the nickel "notch in"- it didn't eliminate the tabs [which it doesn't] and so I wrongly formed my opinion.
I am surprised still [from the air tests I did just now, that you can't set disc to barely pickup a nickel and have tabs discriminated out?
I barely set the disc with keeping a nickel [which is 30] but still get the tabs at 31-34. I wonder why that is?
Still, I feel so much better now that you helped me "GET MY MIND RIGHT"
Me and my F5 were like Cool Hand Luke.
"What we had here, was a failure to communicate"
MY FAILURE!
Thanks for straightening me out!

 

[Alimo88]

Keep your pull tabs in a pile for a while and I bet you can come up with both higher and lower numbers. My lowest is from a small can of soft drink (soda?) we used to call a "handi can" My highest is from the the top of a tube of tennis balls even without the cover, just the ring bit. The only thing that varies more in my H opinion is gold alloy rings. Guess this is where the kissing frogs analogy could come in.

 

[ChuckDiggin it in Florida]

Ya, when I did that airtest last night, I only had 4 pulltabs i'd set on a bench in the garage. All were the newer small square tabs. I've found thousands of them since I started detecting in 1976 so I know what you are talking about!
3/4 of the tabs in this park are the most common ones I had last night and most of the rest are ringtabs.
I'll get a more proper feel for the F5 tomorrow at that park on another neckel hunt attempt!
Thanks,
Chuck,Diggin'it in Florida

 

[Oakman404]

What Kind of Depth do you realistically get with the F5? I am thinking about getting an F5 or F70 to add some deep seeking capabilities to my arsenal.