Ace 250

[junktabman]

So im new to this and my name says it all my question is ? Is the Ace 250 a good md
i know of alot of good places to go but still can only find junk I have been to old old school yards old home fronts lakes and so on even some civil war sites and still junk what am i doing wrong?

 

[Uncle Willy]

Try hunting some local bark chip playgrounds until you hone your skills with the 250. Stop looking for those "old" treasures until you learn your detector and know what it is telling you and learn how to pinpoint correctly. Have you found any coins at all?

THe 250 is one of the best detectors out there and is comparable to machines costing three to four times as much, and is the most sold machine on the market. I, along with others on the forums, own all the high end detectors but we all walk out the door most of the time with the 250. I've been at this for 44 years and I leave all my $1000 plus machines at home and go tecting with the 250.

Give me a clue as to what you are doing and how you are doing it, how you have it set up, and I'll try to help you out. Detecting isn't as easy as it sounds. Many belive you just unpack the machine, run out and wave it over the ground, and treasure magically appears. It doesn't work that way.

Bill

 

[John 'n' W.Va]

School yards and old homes are hard places to MD. It takes time to learn your detector and what it is trying to tell you. To do these places well it helps a lot to have the smaller coil for the Ace. Trashy places are always harder, so why would you want to start at the hardest places? Don't give up though. You can still MD these places, but be patient. After you cleaned out all the trash, you will have found some goodies. You may have a sore back, but you will know your detector better. Read all the old posts and learn from other's expertise. A wood chip tot lot is a great place to start. You can also find jewelry there. The main thing is don't get discouraged. Do you know about wiggling your coil? What is junk and how can you tell a good target? Where does a gold ring versus a silver ring hit? Should you notch out pull tabs? All those answers are in these posts. Ask questions, but do read the posts. YES, THE ACE IS A GREAT DETECTOR!!!

 

[NM5K]

>Many belive you just unpack the machine, run out and wave it over the >ground, and treasure magically appears. It doesn't work that way.

I was watching another brands TV commercials the other night..
I can see how some people might get the idea it works that
way...

To junktabman, the 250 is a good machine. That you are finding
lots of junk proves that it is working. Metal is metal.
After a while, you will start to see what ID tones usually
end up with what.. IE: many pulltabs hit around the nickle
ID notch. Just one of those quirks of conductivity that we
have to live with. After a while, you will recognize those.
But... If you ignore all tabs, you are taking the risk of
missing nickles, or even rings. Many rings can ring up around
the same ID notches.
So almost everyone still digs a lot of trash to make sure they
don't miss goodies.
I agree with the others. Find a less trashy or busy area to
hunt, until you get more used to IDing targets. In some areas,
you will have to "de-trash" an area of it's unwanted tabs, iron,
etc, to be able to find any real goodies in the area.
Either that or get a sniper coil, which is small enough to be
able to weed out good stuff from trash much easier than the
larger coils. The large coils work well, but sometimes too
well.. If your coil sees 5 targets at once, but only one is a
coin, pinpointing can get skewed from the extra targets masking
the good one. Also, the ID jumps around as it's seeing the various
targets. In a case like that with a big coil, you just have to do
as well as you can. Maybe even pulling the trash to be able to
nail down the desired target. The sniper doesn't have that problem
near as bad, as it's small, see's fewer targets at once, and you
can go through the targets, pop, pop, pop.. BTW, don't run the
sensitivity too high, until you are used to how the machine reacts,
chatters, etc.. If it's too high, it will chatter and false a lot,
making it harder to tell what is real, and what is chatter.
After a while, you can tell the two apart, and slowly starting
cranking it up if you want. But at first, keep it fairly low,
like about 4-5 notches worth..
MK

 

[Mick in Dubbo]

Hear hear to the Ace Bill. I own an explorer, but prefer to hunt with the Ace!
Welcome to the forum junktabman. Those first few hours with a detector can be very frustrating, especially if you have nobody to show you how to use it. I started liked that and questioned my sanity for taking up the hobby. I didn't know about the forums then either. you are very lucky to have selected a first class machine straight up. The Ace is probably the easiest to learn detectors on the market and will give you full confidence in it very quickly.(Even though you may not feel that at the moment.)
A couple of pointers to get you started. Practice at home first just long enough to become familiar with your machine. Start by grabbing some common coins and put them on ground that you have just gone over with your detector (to make sure there isn't any other metal present in the ground). See where they register on the metre. Most good targets will give you a steady reading or only bounce 1 notch. As you go over them, press the pinpoint button. Centre the coil over the coin, then slide the coil back to you. It will lose it's signal right under the inner coil as it passes over it. Do the same thing again, but this time cover the coin. See how accurate you are. Something that I learned to do when pinpointing, was that once I'd centred the coil over the target, I draw it back toward myself and watch the spot where the pinpoint dropped off. While still holding down the pinpoint button, nudge the coil back to where you lost the signal. Now give the coil a little wiggle while you can still hear the signal and draw it back toward yourself again. Once you have wiggled it back and forth across the signal and have found the spot that gave you the last bit of signal,that is the location of your target! Sweet ain't it. If a target is deeper in the ground ( over3inches)then the target may be a little closer to the middle of the coil (not much).
Try and do the same thing with a peace of junk that you have recovered from a previous hunt. Note how it behaves. The metre will bounce over more than one notch and often you will notice that the loss of signal in pinpoint will sound different. ( The pinpoint info is strictly a rule of thumb only and not always accurate.)
Unfortunately there is still a lot of junk targets that sound like good targets and no matter how sophisticated a detector you buy, that will always happen. It's just part of the hobby. The main culprits for that, are pull tabs, screw caps some twist tops and bits of coke cans. If you are digging these, then you are doing it right. Over time, you can figure some of that out. Just remember, to read the instructions, and if you get frustrated digging a lot of the same targets, with the notch system, you can eliminate them (plus whatever else is in that area of discrimination).
Good luck and if you have any more questions, keep asking. Also look up some of the posts of the last few weeks of other folks that are in the same position that you are in, as there is a lot of useful information there that you can put to good use.
Mick Evans.

 

[junktabman]

Ok sweet guys thanks I will let you know how i do today

 

[Uncle Willy]

Yeah that White commercial kills me.

Bill

 

[Uncle Willy]

Just stick with it and practice, practice, practice. If you took up bowling you wouldn't expect to bowl 300 your first time out. We all started the same way but you're lucky because the detectors of today are a far cry from the old clubs I swung 44 years ago when I started. They had no discrimination, no silent search, no ID, no pinpoint, no nothing. They emitted a constant motorboat sound and when you passed over any kind of metal that sound increased and it was up to you to figure out where the loudest sound was to try and pinpoint your target. It was an adventure.

Bill

 

[draaiorgel]

Hey junktabman,
All the guys on this forum really know their stuff and they all started just like you. Read all the earlier posts for all hints and tips. The Ace is a cracker of a machine, just be patient and the good stuff will come.
Practice, practice, n more practice, that's what it boils down to.

 

[pizzacoil]

I doubt you're doing anything "wrong". The 250 is a turn-on-and-go machine, but yes, it does take a little bit of time to get the hang of even this user-friendly machine.

It took me a while to realize the incredible potential of this machine at the right sites. I went through my own share of junk, until I started to understand what the machine was telling me.

Back in the infancy of metal detecting, people dug a lot of junk, but they also dug a lot more keepers than hunters today. The reason for this is that we now rely so heavily on discrimination, and bigger coils, which can lead to missing targets (some rings, and even some older coins tone like pulltabs) and having bigger coils mask good targets.

Take your time, keep at it, and just remember what junk sounds like. It's only a matter of time before those "keeper" tones start ringing in your ears.

I've got my share of finds to show for two years' worth of hunting with the 250.

check out: http://www.jrazquin.com/md.html

HH