The HF helped find Mom when she was lost.:smile:

[BarnacleBill]

There was ice out on one side of a lake I frequent today, so I took a vacation day to visit a campground beach that I hit twice last fall and has been worked over by others.

My aim today was to go after gold only with the HF coil on the X70. Therefore I set up an acceptance window from (-)2 up to (+)28 initially on Pattern 2 in Coins mode. I also wanted to give the prospecting mode a go for trying to hit gold chains.

Being the glutton for punishment that I am, I set sensitivity to 30 today. The sand plus rocky bottom GB'd at 8 to 9 with hot rocks thrown in that will GB in the 50's. The hot rocks will ID high coin tone, and pinpoint, just to make it interesting.

About an hour in I located the 14K(585) gold pendant. This was a tough target to pull out, as it air tests at (+)2 from any angle, and once laid back on top of the sand gave the following readings when swinging over it. A (+)2 25% of the time, a (-)2 50% of the time, and a (-)4 25% of the time. Without a VDI this would be a tough target to recover, lest digging a good deal of iron.

[attachment 22826 mom.jpg]

I was finding a fair number of tough targets like open hoop earrings, toe rings, stud earrings and earring backs. Later in the day after getting a bit tired I decided to try prospecting mode after setting iron mask to 5, sensitivity to 30, and tones at 22. Once engaged it was if this beach had never been detected before. It took about 30 minutes to move ten feet because stud earrings and backs(14) were coming up one after the other. I finally got tired of it, and went back to Coins mode. I would not want to use this mode in heavy foil trash.

[attachment 22823 earbks.jpg]

I dug a few zincs as the ground was dragging zinc down to 28, so I notched that out. I also dug a few coins that I incidentally hit while in AM mode, but I know I left a lot of clad there. I only dug a fair amount of trash considering what I was after.
[attachment 22825 junk.jpg]
[attachment 22824 general.jpg]

In the end, the HF coil did what it does best.
HH
BarnacleBill

 

[wpaxt]

Nice work & interesting information.

I have a question for you: I have found similar charms at the beach with my Explorer XS II. Do you think this charm would've sounded off on the Explorer?

Thanks again for the report. The HF coil definitely is an interesting option to contemplate when at a saltwater beach.

Bill (S. CA)

 

[BarnacleBill]

Hi Bill,

Whether it would sound on the Explorer I don't know. When I looked at it in the field ,I could see it had several circular current paths, the hanger, the "o", the # sign, so I was expecting the piece to be 18 or 22K, since it ID'ed so far down the conductivity scale, and was about 3 inches deep. If "I" was in coin hunting mode(inside my head, psyche), I would have thought this sounded like ratty foil, or iron spitting high.

Because of the ground/sand GB conditions there is a reason all of the stud earrings & backs are still there. Last fall I arrived to find three guys working this beach, one w/ a Tesoro, one an XLT, and one an Explorer, don't know rev, and I assume many more work it. But the GB just sucks target response down into the iron range. On a saltwater beach with black sand I can see the same happening.

The humorous part was to go into prospecting mode and feel like you just fired up a PI in a volcano crater, it's like the scales fell from your eyes. Tom Dankowski may have it right on the iron masking issue, and the prospecting mode may be just what the doctor ordered, but it has a place and time. You need to be well rested, in a light foil location, and have lot's of time on your hands.

I believe on a given day, I can go back to the same beach and find several gold chains passed over by others, if I can bear to run prospecting mode for an extended time. Keep in mind I strongly prefer silent search mode.

HH
BarnacleBill

 

[wpaxt]

Bill,

Interesting comments on the prospecting mode. Like you, I am curious as to the gold chain potential on the 70 with the HF coil. My testing last week at Santa Monica convinced me that the potential is there but, as you said, a great deal of patience combined with the right environment is required. And Santa Monica is loaded with both foil and little bits of alumninum so it could be a tough go.

Next time I'm out there I may try the prospecting mode. However we share the same preference for silent search so I'll have to be in the right frame of mind to give it a go. I'm really anxious for the first DD to come out to see how it does.

I did have plans to hit beach again the weekend but discovered today that I have a stress fracture in my left fibula and am stuck in a Frankenstein boot for the next 4 - 6 weeks. Not sure how the boot will fare at the beach but I may bag it & give it a try.

BTW, Bill, I've enjoyed your tests, comments and sense of humor in the posts on the X-Terra's.

 

[Des Dunne]

Bill,

Did you notice that on hot rocks there is no movement from the depth >arrows? And, if you raise the coil up a tad the signal drops off?
Not so with real targets?

Regards

Des D
Minelab

 

[BarnacleBill]

No I didn't Des but, I will try that. The reason I didn't even try to develop a strategy or technique, is that I had a very narrow acceptance window dialed in from (-)2 to (+)28, so I couldn't even hear them most of the time. The only reason I even noticed, was when I switched to AM mode I found a few. I did test a couple by moving them over to a target free area, and letting GB track in against them, and they GB'd in the 50's, which is against a ground/sand GB of around 9, quite a disparity.

I was going to AM because I was checking for rusty bottle caps. I am not trying to be puckish, but I think only fellow waders appreciate how tough open loops, like the toe rings, hoop earrings, stud earrings, and earring backs are to recover. They skew from negative up through high coin like a BC. The earring backs are difficult to locate with a Vibraprobe, even nestled in a small plastic shovel. But ignore them and a diamond stud may get by you.

HH
BarnacleBill

 

[BarnacleBill]

If you are going to try the prospecting mode, I have a tip to pass along. Yesterday I was experimenting a good deal to find how the machine reacted to where I was at, and how to avoid digging iron. eg I had found a bobby pin and wanted to see if in prospecting mode an iron mask setting of 5 would null over it, which it did. I was also trying to determine what I was "missing" in coins mode, as opposed to prospecting mode.

Therefore while in prospecting iron mask, I would switch back to coins mode and engage AM. After checking the target, I would push the Mode button to return back to prospecting mode. Since the X70 was in coins AM, it returns to prospecting mode in AM. This meant an extra button push each time to turn iron mask back on. To avoid this I set Disc pattern 3 in coins mode to accept all notches, hence creating an AM disc pattern. Now a quick toggle of the Mode switch avoided extra button pushing, and sped up the hunt.

And I don't think you freshwater wade, but a tip for prospecting mode there, is to avoid using prospecting mode 10ft either side of the water's edge. Wave action tends to congregate the small foil there.

Sorry to hear about the bad leg, especially after you just get a new toy to try out.

HH
BarnacleBill

 

[Mike Hillis]

I like that analogy Bill :Thumbup:

Another valuable post!

On the Prospecting mode, did the iron mask feature help? Your trash looks light so I'm assuming it did good.

HH

 

[BarnacleBill]

Hi Mike,

Yes with IM set to 5 it did a good job, but I advise swinging directly over the target three times to give it a chance to blank. What little iron I did dig was in coins mode, and they were very broken responses, but I was digging almost anything that would ping inside my disc acceptance window.

HH
BarnacleBill