chef5011 :
Does anyone have a favorite setting for relic hunting with the Anfibio? I'm in 5 tones, 95 gain, pretty low disc., 15-20.
First, it depends on the type of Relic Hunting 'site' you are working. You might 'Relic Hunt' a wide-open pasture or farm field and all targets are just incidental encounters.I used to mainly Coin Hunt '65 to '82 and just occasionally go hit some out-of-the-way old-use locations. Since mid-'83 to date, 80% of my detecting falls in the Relic Hunting category and 20% is urban Coin & Jewelry Hunting. And of that, the majority of my Relic Hunting sites include ghost towns, pioneer and military encampments, homesteads and out-buildings, logging camps, mining camps, stage stops, RR depot and siding sites, and many others where I encounter very dense amounts of Iron Nails, other discarded debris, mostly ferrous in nature, and dense brush, building rubble, etc.
Search coil choice is also to be factored in to achieve functional settings since it does involve the frequency of target encounters. I use three sizes of coils most of the time. The densest of trash and confini9ng brush, it is the 5" DD. For somewhat less trashy sites with more workable space, I use a mid-size coils. That would be either the 7" Concentric or the 5X9½ DD. In the very open plowed fields, rangeland, etc. with sparse targets, the stock 11" DD.
In the trashiest areas I most often rely on the 5" DD coil and hunt in 3-Tone.. Just too many targets in really trashy sites to get a worthwhile audio response in 4, 5 or more Tones. I saved 3-Tone mode at '99' Sensitivity, Disc. at '3' to just barely accept Iron Nails, Iron Low-Tone Audio at '10' with the Iron range Break Point at '15' , Iron Audio Volume at '1' and I work those very littered sites slowly and methodically.
At times when the primary trash I encounter is Iron Nails or cut wire-iron such as pieces of fence, etc., then I hunt in '2-Tone' mode. Saved Sensitivity if '95' and other settings are the same and I use a mid-size coil. In wide-open spaces with the 11" DD I use either the standard 2-Tone mode or the 'Deep' mode and, again, the same settings, and when in 'Deep' mode I use a slightly slower and comfortable sweep speed. On some occasions I do use All Metal mode, but most of th time it is '3-Tone' then '2-Tone' and then 'Deep' mode in that order.
I always start in the default '14' kHz and in dense Iron trash contamination it is the 5" DD and '20' kHz that gets worked as well in order to best tackle the Iron challenges and unmask those partially hidden smaller coins, trade tokens, buttons, insignia and other desirables. I never increase the Disc. level above just barely accepting Iron Nails because I want to know the masking ferrous trash is present. Then I make use of hearing the Low-Tone audio volume for targets in the Ferrous Range to alert me. Then I can slowly work around the masking debris to try and nab a partially-masked 'keeper.' I use that same approach and available search modes an settings on my CoRe, Relic and Simplex+.
Monte
