C$ or F70? + pic

[bruce01364]

I have the love-hate relationship with my C$ that others have. I dig a lot of trash but have found some nice coins with it. Found my first liberty cap dime today. Pic follows. I also have a minelab elite that I really like but it is no match for the C$ in trashy areas. That is, if I can find the right settings. I'm not a pro so I am still experimenting with the C$. I bought it expecting to learn it eventually but it has taken longer than I thought. I think the ground conditions (and amount of junk) determine the best settings which takes a lot of trial and error. If I were more experienced I could probably determine settings a lot easier.

The F70 will tell you ground conditions and that should make it a lot easier to adjust settings here in New England which has a lot of mineralization in some areas. My minelab has the DD coil and it covers a lot of area but tough to find something between trash. The C$ concentric coil has an advantage there. Can the F70 DD coil find the good stuff in trash? The confidence bar seemed like a nice feature at first but when my C$ locks on a number I am sure it is a good target. A few numbers off and less sure. Same as the confidence bar?

Since I am not a pro at adjusting a detector for ground conditions, would the F70's ability to inform you of ground conditions be a good enough reason to trade in my C$? Will you dig less trash with the F70? Or would the concentric coil of the C$ be a better choice in trashy areas? Think the C$ will be able to find anything the F70 can. Just a matter of experience. I would like to stick with the C$ but the F70's ability to tell ground conditions (a major factor I think in adjusting settings) is very tempting. What do you think?

Here's a pic of today's find in a very trashy area. The C$ didn't lock on a number in both directions but was close. I dig all those iffy's and glad I did.

 

[Cal_Cobra]

Bruce I'm in the same boat as you. Out my way we have a real mix of ground conditions (mostly highly mineralized, and of different types), and I've found that just about when I feel like dumping the C$ on eBay it seems to sense the tenacity and squeaks by with a nice find. I too bought a Minelab Sovereign. I wanted to see how it would do at the ocean beaches and in the mineralized ground because the C$ just can't handle the wet salt sand and mineralization around here, the Sovereign does excellent on wet salt sand. I'm also finding that the Sovereign is an excellent turf hunter, it's very stable in mineralized ground, BUT it's slow going, and as you mentioned you really have to work it around trash (again slowly). I recently took it to a trashy Victorian era area site and the Sovereign found some great targets (including my first Indian head cent, and an 1800's saloon token, and an awesome sterling silver antique bracelet), and this weekend I'm planning to hit the same spot, first with the C$ (with the 6" coil), remove some of the trash (and hopefully find more goodies) and then was thinking about going over the same area again with the Sovereign and see what it finds that the C$ didn't find, or at least see how much better it can do with some of the trash removed.

I'm seriously considering selling the C$ and moving on to the F70 once I see some positive field and user tests, preferably from some folks around here so I know how well it performs in MY soil. I have at least 60 hours on the C$, and I fell like I have a fairly good grasp of the settings, but still find that I fiddle with the settings far more then I feel one should need to at times. I'm a firm believer that if your in an area where the ground is fairly tame, and there's no issues with EMI, it's a solid performer, and will in fact go deep, but if you have highly mineralized ground and/or hunt in a modern city where there's underground, overhead, aerial , etc., power and communications EMI producing lines, it cripples the C$ by having to turn the settings so low that it'll only perform like an average metal detector. In my opinion this defeats the purpose of having the C$. An ID Excel, F4 or the new F5 for that matter would be just as capable (maybe the F5 would be better as it tells you all about the ground conditions).

Just my two zincs worth. Very nice find too BTW.

PS - For what it's worth, the coil on the F70 is listed as a 10 inch elliptical concentric open-center searchcoil, so it's not a DD like the F75.

 

[bruce01364]

Thanks for the info Cal_Cobra. I didn't realize the F70 coil was not a DD.

 

[Cal_Cobra]

The F70 coil sure looks like a DD, but then again the DD coils on the Sovereign look like concentrics, go figure

 

[Jackpine Savage]

The F70 will tell you ground conditions and that should make it a lot easier to adjust settings here in New England which has a lot of mineralization in some areas

Use the tracking feature of the C$ to set the GB and turn it off after several sweeps. Do this regularly when changing locations even at the same site. It does not matter if the C$ sees some iron while tracking into the ground. With the 70 you either fast grab or go to AT to set the GB manually is the way I understand it. I see no advantage there over the C$ as it has an excellent tracking mode that should be taken advantage of. Sure it would be nice if the C$ gave a ground phase readout. but when all's said and done as long as the tracking and or auto GB procedure does its job, the end effect is the same.

My minelab has the DD coil and it covers a lot of area but tough to find something between trash.

Used with the proper slow sweep speed the Sovereigns do OK in iron/trash mainly due to the DD coils characteristics. Concentric coils will find target DD's miss and vice versa. Having both machines available is a good thing.

That is a beautiful capped dime!

HH Tom

 

[oneton]

I'm with you jackpine i'm waiting for fireld test on the f70 but i do not think it will have any advantage over the coin$trike,maybe a little because the f70 can read ground conditions and the coin$trike does not.The coin$trike is hard to beat.I do think that some coin$trikes detectors are hotter than others and ground conditions matters the most.I have no problem running my th at -1 and my sen at 9 and i can hunt near powerlines with hardly no interference picking coins from 5-9 inches.I see a lot of people that use the coin$trike but they do not pay enough attention to ground balancing, if this unit is ground balanced right it will rock.If you want a turn on and go detector than buy a ace 250.All detectors will have their problems even the new detectors that just came out are giving people fits in one way or another.No detector is perfect for all conditions but the coin$trike stands at the top with all top end detectors and will give anyone of them a run for their money.

 

[bruce01364]

Thanks for all the info. Think I will stay with the C$ for awhile. I can't run the settings too high but it does a good job at trashy sites. Think most detectors need the sens turned down with trash also but I don't know if they can get as close to iron as the C$. Maybe a lot of other detectors could have found that capped dime but since I found it with my C$ I consider it my lucky machine for now. I haven't tried GBing with track on. I will give that a shot.
Thanks.

 

[Cal_Cobra]

[quote Jackpine Savage]Use the tracking feature of the C$ to set the GB and turn it off after several sweeps. Do this regularly when changing locations even at the same site. It does not matter if the C$ sees some iron while tracking into the ground. [/quote]

Thanks for the GB tip Tom, I've often found it challenging to GB the C$, but this sounds like a foolproof method. I had the C$ out today with the 10.5" coil (my arm hurts, I should've hip mounted it - LOL!) to an old school where gold coins have been found in years past (long story), but that was long ago, now it's just full of clad (and lots of it), but there's always that glimpse of hope that another will surface. It ran really well out there, I was able to run it at 820 and it ran very stable.

Brian

 

[Jackpine Savage]

HI Bruce

In my ground at least, I found that many times using the tracking to set the GB at older sites with iron gave better hits on co-located targets. All it takes to find out is to set up with the auto GB at a site and locate an iffy possible high conductor like a dime. Move a few feet away and turn on the tracking, let the auto track work for 4-5 sweeps and turn it off, then try that iffy target again. What I saw mostly was that the target would hit better from off angles giving more information that it was worth digging.

Oh yeah almost forgot, sometimes iron will false in the foil range on the C$. Using tracking to set the GB will almost always show it for what it is when resweeping the offending target.

HH Tom

 

[oneton]

Jack i never tried to gb that way,huh i must try this.All i do is turn the tracking on then gb then do 4 or 5 sweeps then turn it off and i am ready to go right thanks jack.

 

[MassSaltH2O]

[quote bruce01364]

The F70 will tell you ground conditions and that should make it a lot easier to adjust settings here in New England which has a lot of mineralization in some areas. [/quote]
Just because the F70 will tell you ground conditions does not mean that the F70 will work well with those ground conditions.