Mick in Dubbo
New member
The family returned last week after a 2 week holiday on the Gold Coast, with a good time had by all.
On the way, we stopped off to see the grave of a well known bush ranger that used the tittle of Captain Thunderbolt (Fred Ward) I only found out 6 weeks back from my father, that his grand father claimed to be a personal friend of him. I wonder what other surprises there are in the family history.
Anyway, after arriving on the Gold Coast and doing the family things, it was time to pull out the toys and play. Took the XS, the X-Terra 30 and the Ace 250. the first night out, was with the XS. After 3 hours on the beach (a night hunt) I returned with $18 and a silver ring (my first beach hunt with an Explorer). Sure do like the back light. The second night out was with the X-Terra and third night out was with the Ace. Each night the finds dropped off.
I got to do a bit of experimenting with the detectors, at times taking all 3 to the beach for some side by side comparisons. The X-Terra had the 10.5 inch round DD coil and the Ace was armed with the 12 inch elliptical coil. Using a $2 coin as the test subject (20mm diameter) In the dry sand, the Ace seemed to do best of all for depth (10inches) which caught me off guard a bit as I expected the Explorer to hit it real easy. It did hear the coin, but only after I passed the coil over it a dozen times. It could hear it every pass after that, but no good in real world situation. I had the sensitivity turned up to max on all machines. in the wet sand though, the other 2 machines were no match for the XS. I used the Explorer most on the beach and enjoyed becoming more familiar with it as I haven't used it a great deal as yet.
I spent a bit of time hunting the grassed areas adjacent to the beach and did all right out of there as well. There was a lot of metal trash in the ground as well as some mineralisation issues. Due to the fact that I'm stuck (literally) with the standard coil on the XS, as when I bought it, the shaft was glued into the main housing (sure wish there was some way of debonding it!) I found that there were just too many signals in the ground for this operator to cope with with this machine. I tried the X-Terra for which I have well over 200 hours on, but in the end, resorted back to the Ace. Even with it's large coil on and fixed ground balance, for me, it handled these conditions best of all. To cope with the mineralisation, I dropped the sensitivity down to 5 bars and knocked out the first 3 notches of discrimination. This quietened down the detector quite a bit and became quite manageable. In time I expect to get better with the Explorer, but at the moment I have a strong preference for the Ace when lawn hunting. I just love it's accuracy, fast recovery and target feed back when in pinpoint.
I'm interested in feed back into what to listen out for when hunting with the Explorer. It's got to be a lot more than just a good discriminator that makes this machine so popular. What do you listen for to help you separate good from bad targets? Is there anything about the pinpoint function, that can assist you with identifying targets?
By the time returned home, I'd found $105 ($3.85 not in picture), 2 rings (1 silver, the other a cheapy that At first glance looks like a gold one) and a necklace.
Oh! and Dang. I hoped I haven't rained on your parade, as I tend to be a clad hunter!
. What might apeel to you though, is that in Australia, we have around a 100 different designs of our 50 cent coins, around 50 different designs of our $1 coins and perhaps half a dozen different 20 cent coins. Most of them are very attractive designs. If you look closely in the photo, you will see quite a good mix of these designs! I hope that you can enjoy them.
Mick Evans.
[attachment 71120 RIMG1132.JPG]
[attachment 71121 RIMG1138.JPG]
On the way, we stopped off to see the grave of a well known bush ranger that used the tittle of Captain Thunderbolt (Fred Ward) I only found out 6 weeks back from my father, that his grand father claimed to be a personal friend of him. I wonder what other surprises there are in the family history.
Anyway, after arriving on the Gold Coast and doing the family things, it was time to pull out the toys and play. Took the XS, the X-Terra 30 and the Ace 250. the first night out, was with the XS. After 3 hours on the beach (a night hunt) I returned with $18 and a silver ring (my first beach hunt with an Explorer). Sure do like the back light. The second night out was with the X-Terra and third night out was with the Ace. Each night the finds dropped off.
I got to do a bit of experimenting with the detectors, at times taking all 3 to the beach for some side by side comparisons. The X-Terra had the 10.5 inch round DD coil and the Ace was armed with the 12 inch elliptical coil. Using a $2 coin as the test subject (20mm diameter) In the dry sand, the Ace seemed to do best of all for depth (10inches) which caught me off guard a bit as I expected the Explorer to hit it real easy. It did hear the coin, but only after I passed the coil over it a dozen times. It could hear it every pass after that, but no good in real world situation. I had the sensitivity turned up to max on all machines. in the wet sand though, the other 2 machines were no match for the XS. I used the Explorer most on the beach and enjoyed becoming more familiar with it as I haven't used it a great deal as yet.
I spent a bit of time hunting the grassed areas adjacent to the beach and did all right out of there as well. There was a lot of metal trash in the ground as well as some mineralisation issues. Due to the fact that I'm stuck (literally) with the standard coil on the XS, as when I bought it, the shaft was glued into the main housing (sure wish there was some way of debonding it!) I found that there were just too many signals in the ground for this operator to cope with with this machine. I tried the X-Terra for which I have well over 200 hours on, but in the end, resorted back to the Ace. Even with it's large coil on and fixed ground balance, for me, it handled these conditions best of all. To cope with the mineralisation, I dropped the sensitivity down to 5 bars and knocked out the first 3 notches of discrimination. This quietened down the detector quite a bit and became quite manageable. In time I expect to get better with the Explorer, but at the moment I have a strong preference for the Ace when lawn hunting. I just love it's accuracy, fast recovery and target feed back when in pinpoint.
I'm interested in feed back into what to listen out for when hunting with the Explorer. It's got to be a lot more than just a good discriminator that makes this machine so popular. What do you listen for to help you separate good from bad targets? Is there anything about the pinpoint function, that can assist you with identifying targets?
By the time returned home, I'd found $105 ($3.85 not in picture), 2 rings (1 silver, the other a cheapy that At first glance looks like a gold one) and a necklace.
Oh! and Dang. I hoped I haven't rained on your parade, as I tend to be a clad hunter!
. What might apeel to you though, is that in Australia, we have around a 100 different designs of our 50 cent coins, around 50 different designs of our $1 coins and perhaps half a dozen different 20 cent coins. Most of them are very attractive designs. If you look closely in the photo, you will see quite a good mix of these designs! I hope that you can enjoy them.Mick Evans.
[attachment 71120 RIMG1132.JPG]
[attachment 71121 RIMG1138.JPG]
Mike