Have just moved house and can finally find a patch of the garden to put in a test bed.
At my last house I used a manual post hole borer with a 6" wide auger, when it settled down it served me well for over 16 years. Have any of you just used a quicker method of poking a hole in the ground, filling it in, them tamping down with any success?

The small auger sounds like the ideal way to place targets as it disturbs less ground.

I put my test bed in using PVC pipes, I used an Auger bit on a cordless drill placing PVC pipes into each hole as long as I could slide a coin don through the pipe down as deep as I wanted them set then I called it good and filled them with dirt once I placed the coins down into the bottom, I did put a few pipes in with various coins set at around 23 inches deep for test PI detectors and my depths range from 3 inches to 23 inches deep, I also placed some 1 1/2 inch PVC pipes in the ground so I could slide various targets in that I have glued to dowel rods all my PVC pipes are at an approximate angle of 45 degrees down to various depths, my test bed has been in the ground for well over two years

x2 on the drill augar

I just dig a regular plug like when you recover a target.

Then I place the coin or whatever I want in the hole.

I then bust up the clod and mix it with water get all of the air out of the matrix and cover the coin back up.

Works for me