I received my AT Gold late this afternoon, so I quickly assembled it, put on that 5" x 8" DD search coil and headed to the woods near-by to see how it performs. These woods have been hunted before. I won't say they have been pounded to death, as that is simply not the case. There have been large cents, silver coins and some nice jewellery found in the past 20 years or so. Now gold rings or nuggets didn't come flying out at me nor did hundreds of silver coins. But I did get an introduction as to how this fine new entry to the Garrett line operates. And that new 5" x 8" is a welcomed addition to the AT metal detector line. I found nice variety of targets including junk, coins and relics. The weather was great, and the hunt lasted about 2 1/2 hours.
Here are the total finds of the day. The outside perimeter of the woods was very high in junk targets, especially some of that melted aluminum, some buried tinfoil and iron junk. Hunting in all metal was not an option. So, I switched to DISC 1, with my iron set to 30. This program is similar to the AT Pro in PRO MODE. I had the option of running the iron audio either on or off. I chose to keep it off, but set the threshold so I could hear a constant humming. As I wandered further away from the perimeter of the woods, I switched to all metal (which is a true all metal) and again made adjustments to hear some audio threshold. Once the threshold is set, you either wait for a signal, or listen for an increase in audio, which alerts you to a deep signal. That would be the preferred way to hunt looking for small nuggets.
Now this 5" x 8" coil is fantastic! It gets nice depth and is very sensitive to the most tiniest pieces of metal in the soil. And with a positive threshold, you get an increase in audio before you get the coil over the target. A nice feature to have, when searching in very thick brush of fist sizes rocks.
Here are a number of examples of how the different types of targets were identified on the AT GOLD. I actually took a tape measure with me along with a note book and pen to write down the reading so as to include them in this hunt. These results should give some good information to both new hunters and seasoned hunters. The air rifle lead pellets and 22 slug gave off a nice clear audio. This new coil ROCKS! I am am looking forward to trying this coil on the AT Pro, and also putting my 9" x 12" concentric coil on the AT Gold. This machine should be an excellent nugget hunter due to it's higher operating frequency of 18 kHz.
For more information on this new metal detector...click on the link below:
http://www.garrett.com/hobbysite/hbby_at_gold_main.aspx
And finally, the find of the day........an old play dime.
