Well, around here it has pretty come down to private yards for decent hunts. There isn't enough new construction in CW battle areas. I got a T2 in a "group buy" direct from FT before the GNRS of that year as a member of the "Bounty Hunter" team. The T2 changed everything for FT. I still have and LOVE that machine. It has been back to Texas once, I don't remember what for... lol. Then I got an F-75 when they first came out. I had a hunting buddy who loved it so much I ended up selling it to him. Last I heard he was a full colonel in the guard and living in the NOLA area and doing well. So, I bought the camo F-75 LTD as soon as it came out. I'm excited about getting it upgraded and getting rid of the camo, I don't care for camo much.
I have anther hunting buddy who got an F-75 SE and just never liked it. It would work one place and be useless at another. I only found one place I couldn't use it but later found that with the 5" coil and BP I could run the sens up to 99 and still use it and it is so quiet that sometimes I don't know if it is working. Like Daniel said, the TID is erratic. I hope that it is better with the upgrade. sing the tone for ID is better, IMO, but can drive you nuts. Especially if you also use a Sovereign and an E-TRAC, but there is always a place where some machine/coil combo is better than the others.
The think I am most interested in is to see if I get a better TID and separation with the new F-75. It sounds promising.
Personally, with the F-75 I like to use either 2F or AM. Sometimes I will use (I forget what you call it) the disc mode with all the tones. I don't mind digging a big piece of iron as long as it isn't 2' deep in hard clay, it might be totally masking something and with any detector the best discriminator is the shovel. I don't remember what machine I was using but 5+ years ago they were building a church just off Barrett Pkwy, just west of hwy 41 in Kennesaw. The site was just north of Kennesaw Mtn. There were RR spikes in the area I suppose from cross ties from the RR nearby that were brought in to use in trenches etc. Anyway something I always thought was really interesting is that I was late to the party. The local club had been hunting the site for nearly a month. I was told by a friend that there had been about 30 people there at one time and different people had been hunting it regularly for a month. The "hottest" area was a corner of the property on the north end, as area maybe 75x75 ft. That was where everyone concentrated the search.
SO... I went one day and found some junk then I hit a big target about 2" down.. got a huge signal. I KNOW that many people had to have hit it and passed on it. I dug it. It was a pristine zinc screw in fuse holder for a 20# Parrot shell. That has ALWAYS amazed me that out of all those people, no one bothered to dig it. It wasn't hard packed soil. I just don't get it. It's the same with "iffy" signals in known areas. If you want to find the goodies in known areas you have to dig the "iffy" signals, they are all that is left and many are good targets, relics and coins mixed in iron or bad soil.
There is a park down the road from me. It sits across the site of the very first Confederate hospital of the CW. It has been hunted since metal detectors came into existence. One day I find nothing, another day a couple "V" nickels, one day two 1865 kepi buttons, one day two chewed carbine bullets. Another day... nothing. A site is NEVER hunted out but the key is "iffy". Dig them! I mean, why not? Gold comes in ALL OVER the TID range and masked targets are always iffy but if there is a peep of something, there is usually either round iron or a masked target. The F-75 will give you a hint and the faster the swing, the better the TID (which can be maddening in high trash) it works though.
The new mode in the upgrade may make the F-75 a detector I can use for a longer period of time by switching between 90 and 91. After a while, in some places, it's sounds become overwhelming to me plus, and this is particular to me, after a while, even though it is light, it makes my back hurt. I have some disk problems (cervical/thoracic) and the heavier E-TRAC helps me because I can easily tweak the shaft length frequently. For some reason, it helps me to be able to change it by an inch or two especially on a slight grade.
Maybe I'll have time to take some pictures in the next month or two. I have a collection at a local business that I need to get and do some work on and a LOT of items around here I need to sort through, some detectors I need to get rid of. Thankfully, I remembered to check and take the batteries out of everything.
I hope this spring and summer I can get back to it. A lack of new sites and some health changes, a renewed interest in audio recording started to take up my time and I just let detecting slip (except when I go to the beach) BUT... I remember now how much I love it and am going to go again! I need to do it before the politicians run out of other things to restrict and remember us...
Thanks for asking!
Julien
We want to learn!..this is gonna be along cold winter...