Hey folks, got an AT Pro for myself last Saturday and just got around to playing with it some this week. I honestly had looked over this machine a few weeks ago and selected a Fisher Gold Bug over it. When I had tested the AT Pro out, I didn't know anything about it and I had it in STD coin mode when playing with it. No wonder it lacked in air testing depth! It wasn't until I came back and saw what it could do in PRO mode that I knew I had to have one. So that's my story.
Like the others have said, it does lack a lot in its design. It could have been built a lot better and made life a lot easier for us. It took me and Don of North GA Relics at least 15 minutes to put the coil connector into the control housing. There just ain't room to work with right there...swapping coils out is going to be a major pain on this machine. Then it was all we could do to get it tightened down. The headphone plug was a little easier; we got lucky and got it on the 2nd try. Then there are the rod issues; it was too short for me too from the arm cuff to the grip. I was actually thinking of just putting everything onto a different rod once I found one it could fit good. Then there is the coil itself; the stock coil is very nose heavy. My only reasoning is that they done that to help keep it from floating in the water. On land, it is a pain. I have a Minelab GPX that weighs a touch over 6 lbs but is balanced really well....I can hunt with it all day long and not feel fatigued. Within 3 hours of swinging the 3 lb AT Pro, my arm had had enough. I will come up with something there. I don't have the headphone adapter yet so I've just been using it without headphones. At any rate, despite its short comings, it seems to be an impressive little machine.
The first place I took it to was an older little park that sits in my home town. Nobody uses it anymore, as all it is, is a couple of old abandoned drinking fountains and some large trees. I have hunted it pretty good in the past and I knew it was very very trashy with aluminum can frags and bottle caps everywhere. But mixed in there are some coins. Well I hit it up Monday evening for a bit. Not knowing what to expect with it in the IDing department, I opted to dig most everything for a little while. When I left I felt pretty confident that when it says TAB, it is either a tab or a piece of can slawed up from a lawn mower. I dug quite a few coins and every one of them IDed as coin even with the correct tone. The only thing that bothered me was that I wasn't digging anything deep; seemed like 4 inches was tops of what I was digging anything at. More on this later. I was running the machine in Pro mode, Zero disc. I like hearing everything and every individual target.
Here was my take for my first outing.
Two wheaties, a 1944 and the other is unreadable, and a 1918 French 25c piece. The only "foreign" coin I've dug before was a Canadian quarter and penny. So this was pretty cool to dig. As you can see I dug my share of trash too. But over all I was pretty happy with what I got considering most had been in the ground a while, and that I've hunted this park with some pretty heavy hitter and high dollar detectors over the yrs.
Now back to what I was saying earlier about the depth. I returned this morning with the AT and my GPX PI machine. I hunted with the GPX to see if I missed any coins. I have you know that there just wasn't any deep things in this park, for whatever reason. I dug two coins today, and I had the AT Pro there to check them and I was able to get coin signals on both of them. I had just missed them on the previous hunt. Neither was deep, and one of them was a first for me too. I thought I had another "foreign" coin and I actually had never seen one of these. It is a year 2000 one dollar coin from right here in the US, and read as a quarter on the meter. Merc dime is 1941.
My plan is to get it in the water in the next few days. I've never water hunted; all we have here is freshwater lakes and rivers. But I am wanted to see what is in there. Maybe I can get on the roll of some jewelry like you guys have been here lately. My problem is going to be figuring how to dig/recovery targets in the water. I only have land tools; what do you guys use for the water hunting thing? Our lakes/rivers don't have much sand; most is just mud and rocks. I wouldn't think a scoop would do good in that but you guys know more about it than me. I would appreciate any suggestions!
Like the others have said, it does lack a lot in its design. It could have been built a lot better and made life a lot easier for us. It took me and Don of North GA Relics at least 15 minutes to put the coil connector into the control housing. There just ain't room to work with right there...swapping coils out is going to be a major pain on this machine. Then it was all we could do to get it tightened down. The headphone plug was a little easier; we got lucky and got it on the 2nd try. Then there are the rod issues; it was too short for me too from the arm cuff to the grip. I was actually thinking of just putting everything onto a different rod once I found one it could fit good. Then there is the coil itself; the stock coil is very nose heavy. My only reasoning is that they done that to help keep it from floating in the water. On land, it is a pain. I have a Minelab GPX that weighs a touch over 6 lbs but is balanced really well....I can hunt with it all day long and not feel fatigued. Within 3 hours of swinging the 3 lb AT Pro, my arm had had enough. I will come up with something there. I don't have the headphone adapter yet so I've just been using it without headphones. At any rate, despite its short comings, it seems to be an impressive little machine.
The first place I took it to was an older little park that sits in my home town. Nobody uses it anymore, as all it is, is a couple of old abandoned drinking fountains and some large trees. I have hunted it pretty good in the past and I knew it was very very trashy with aluminum can frags and bottle caps everywhere. But mixed in there are some coins. Well I hit it up Monday evening for a bit. Not knowing what to expect with it in the IDing department, I opted to dig most everything for a little while. When I left I felt pretty confident that when it says TAB, it is either a tab or a piece of can slawed up from a lawn mower. I dug quite a few coins and every one of them IDed as coin even with the correct tone. The only thing that bothered me was that I wasn't digging anything deep; seemed like 4 inches was tops of what I was digging anything at. More on this later. I was running the machine in Pro mode, Zero disc. I like hearing everything and every individual target.
Here was my take for my first outing.
Two wheaties, a 1944 and the other is unreadable, and a 1918 French 25c piece. The only "foreign" coin I've dug before was a Canadian quarter and penny. So this was pretty cool to dig. As you can see I dug my share of trash too. But over all I was pretty happy with what I got considering most had been in the ground a while, and that I've hunted this park with some pretty heavy hitter and high dollar detectors over the yrs.
Now back to what I was saying earlier about the depth. I returned this morning with the AT and my GPX PI machine. I hunted with the GPX to see if I missed any coins. I have you know that there just wasn't any deep things in this park, for whatever reason. I dug two coins today, and I had the AT Pro there to check them and I was able to get coin signals on both of them. I had just missed them on the previous hunt. Neither was deep, and one of them was a first for me too. I thought I had another "foreign" coin and I actually had never seen one of these. It is a year 2000 one dollar coin from right here in the US, and read as a quarter on the meter. Merc dime is 1941.
My plan is to get it in the water in the next few days. I've never water hunted; all we have here is freshwater lakes and rivers. But I am wanted to see what is in there. Maybe I can get on the roll of some jewelry like you guys have been here lately. My problem is going to be figuring how to dig/recovery targets in the water. I only have land tools; what do you guys use for the water hunting thing? Our lakes/rivers don't have much sand; most is just mud and rocks. I wouldn't think a scoop would do good in that but you guys know more about it than me. I would appreciate any suggestions!
