kittlitz
Active member
My slightly-used black Tejon arrived just before our first major blast of winter, so I've been itching to use it for the past two months. A recent vacation to Honolulu gave me a chance to finally try it out.
Overall, I really like it. Gound balancing was not as hard as I'd feared, and the weight wasn't an issue. The "language" of the tone was quite similar to the Mojave's, so I didn't have trouble learning it. I set the primary discrimination to point to the "F" in "Foil", and the alt discrimination to where pull-tabs break up. I'd often use the "Tesoro roll" to get a better idea of what a target was, and found that jewelry and nickels come in pretty solid when rolling down the discrimination knob, whereas foil and iron junk would hiss, pop and crackle.
As expected, the Tejon was too unstable to use on wet salt sand, so I stuck to the dry stuff.
Only a couple of minor disappointments. The machine seems quite susceptible to EMI, of which there was quite a lot due to the big hotel buildings. I found that if I slowed down, though, I had no trouble hearing the real signals over the chatter. And the 8"x11" DD coil, while covering a lot of ground, really loves bottle caps. Quite often, they'd still sound fairly good even at max discrimination. I also found the eliptical coil was a bit hard to pin-point with. Neither problem was much of an issue on the beach, but I think I'll get a concentric coil for hunting where I need to dig plugs.
As for coins, I found 76 coins totalling $8.80, including a Canadian $1, and about twice that much junk. Not a great total for 20 hours of hunting, but the Waikiki beachs are pounded hard.. I often saw other guys out there with detectors, and one guy I talked to said he'd brought three machines with him (!). Given that, it's kind of surprising that some of the coins looked like they'd been in the sand for quite awhile.
As for the jewelry, I found a pair of large rose-gold colored hoop earrings that came in strong between "Iron" and "Foil". No mark on them, though. Ditto a gold chain with a "kind of tacky" (my fiancee's description) cross on it that came in just below the 5-cent mark. The best find was what appears to be a platinum diamond engagement ring, which also came in a bit below 5-cent. I haven't verified that it's real yet, but I'm pretty sure it is.
So finding that ring was very exciting. Almost as exciting as getting the "inbound missile alert" on my phone when I was a good 30-minute walk away from the condo... that's the kind of excitement I can do without.
Overall, I had a lot of fun. Now the memories will have to tide me over until the ground thaws.
-Ken
Overall, I really like it. Gound balancing was not as hard as I'd feared, and the weight wasn't an issue. The "language" of the tone was quite similar to the Mojave's, so I didn't have trouble learning it. I set the primary discrimination to point to the "F" in "Foil", and the alt discrimination to where pull-tabs break up. I'd often use the "Tesoro roll" to get a better idea of what a target was, and found that jewelry and nickels come in pretty solid when rolling down the discrimination knob, whereas foil and iron junk would hiss, pop and crackle.
As expected, the Tejon was too unstable to use on wet salt sand, so I stuck to the dry stuff.
Only a couple of minor disappointments. The machine seems quite susceptible to EMI, of which there was quite a lot due to the big hotel buildings. I found that if I slowed down, though, I had no trouble hearing the real signals over the chatter. And the 8"x11" DD coil, while covering a lot of ground, really loves bottle caps. Quite often, they'd still sound fairly good even at max discrimination. I also found the eliptical coil was a bit hard to pin-point with. Neither problem was much of an issue on the beach, but I think I'll get a concentric coil for hunting where I need to dig plugs.
As for coins, I found 76 coins totalling $8.80, including a Canadian $1, and about twice that much junk. Not a great total for 20 hours of hunting, but the Waikiki beachs are pounded hard.. I often saw other guys out there with detectors, and one guy I talked to said he'd brought three machines with him (!). Given that, it's kind of surprising that some of the coins looked like they'd been in the sand for quite awhile.
As for the jewelry, I found a pair of large rose-gold colored hoop earrings that came in strong between "Iron" and "Foil". No mark on them, though. Ditto a gold chain with a "kind of tacky" (my fiancee's description) cross on it that came in just below the 5-cent mark. The best find was what appears to be a platinum diamond engagement ring, which also came in a bit below 5-cent. I haven't verified that it's real yet, but I'm pretty sure it is.
So finding that ring was very exciting. Almost as exciting as getting the "inbound missile alert" on my phone when I was a good 30-minute walk away from the condo... that's the kind of excitement I can do without.
Overall, I had a lot of fun. Now the memories will have to tide me over until the ground thaws.
-Ken
