So, I actually won a contest that landed one of these in my lap! I've done some head to head testing with it against a 4.5 x 7 Excelerator and run it on several trashy filled hunts and thought I'd give my first imptressions.
A little background first on my experience with small coils. My first small coil was the Sunray 5". I thought it was great until on a trashy hunt with two other people with different machines we were doing head to heads on undug targets. I discovered it's weakness, on edge coins. It flat didn't like them and if there was any iron in the area they were not just hard to hit, they were invisible. So I got the Excelerator. In head to head comparisons it was deeper by maybe an inch but also was hitting on edge coins that the Sunray never even gave any signal on.
Now I have the Coiltek in hand. So far the comparison is they are very close. On the bench, and we all know air tests only indicate just so much, the Coiltek is .5 inches deeper on a clad dime and 1" deeper on a clad quarter. This test was also done indoors with enough EMI that Auto plus 3 was only running at 15. Checking ability with rusty iron and a clad dime on the surface they run pretty much neck and neck. Putting an on edge dime within two inches of a rusty nail and swinging across them I give the slight edge in audio to the Coiltek, just barely, when running in auto +3. They both miss it when swinging parallel.
In actual field hunts I give mixed results both ways. The Coiltek seems to handle pushing the manual sens higher in trashy spots with less falsing. The Excelerator seems to give louder reports on very small targets. I still give about a 1" depth increase to the Coiltek over the Excelerator. Part of that may be due to the strange arrangement of the coil cover on the Excelerator. There is a half inch air gap between the cover and coil, never understood why they did that. The coil cover on the Coiltek comes sealed with some sort of heavy tape from the factory and appears to fit flush like most covers.
Both coils are well made but the strain relief on the wire at the coil appears better on the Coiltek.
I did make an accidental discovery while playing around with targets laid on the ground. I had a rusty bolt about one half inch in diameter and about four inches long. I laid a clad dime within an inch of it. I do most of my testing with a wide open screen. Of course neither coil caught the dime at a normal hunting swing speed with manual sens at 25, just trashy looking numbers and ID. But for kicks I turned on a slightly modified version of the trashy park pattern and swung both again. The Excelerator did the same thing but the Coiltek gave be a mixed audio that I would stop and check in the field, nothing conclusive but something I'd investigate. When I slowed way down to the kind of very slow swing you'd use to check out something interesting in a trashy setting I got a signal that said coin! The FE was of course way off but I got a 43 conductive, and that would always get my interest in the field when there's plenty of trash. The audio was also much better. So somehow this coil was working better WITH heavy disc then without. None of my other coils did this and I tried them, only the Coiltek. Now the question is will this repeat itself on buried targets, only time will tell!
A little background first on my experience with small coils. My first small coil was the Sunray 5". I thought it was great until on a trashy hunt with two other people with different machines we were doing head to heads on undug targets. I discovered it's weakness, on edge coins. It flat didn't like them and if there was any iron in the area they were not just hard to hit, they were invisible. So I got the Excelerator. In head to head comparisons it was deeper by maybe an inch but also was hitting on edge coins that the Sunray never even gave any signal on.
Now I have the Coiltek in hand. So far the comparison is they are very close. On the bench, and we all know air tests only indicate just so much, the Coiltek is .5 inches deeper on a clad dime and 1" deeper on a clad quarter. This test was also done indoors with enough EMI that Auto plus 3 was only running at 15. Checking ability with rusty iron and a clad dime on the surface they run pretty much neck and neck. Putting an on edge dime within two inches of a rusty nail and swinging across them I give the slight edge in audio to the Coiltek, just barely, when running in auto +3. They both miss it when swinging parallel.
In actual field hunts I give mixed results both ways. The Coiltek seems to handle pushing the manual sens higher in trashy spots with less falsing. The Excelerator seems to give louder reports on very small targets. I still give about a 1" depth increase to the Coiltek over the Excelerator. Part of that may be due to the strange arrangement of the coil cover on the Excelerator. There is a half inch air gap between the cover and coil, never understood why they did that. The coil cover on the Coiltek comes sealed with some sort of heavy tape from the factory and appears to fit flush like most covers.
Both coils are well made but the strain relief on the wire at the coil appears better on the Coiltek.
I did make an accidental discovery while playing around with targets laid on the ground. I had a rusty bolt about one half inch in diameter and about four inches long. I laid a clad dime within an inch of it. I do most of my testing with a wide open screen. Of course neither coil caught the dime at a normal hunting swing speed with manual sens at 25, just trashy looking numbers and ID. But for kicks I turned on a slightly modified version of the trashy park pattern and swung both again. The Excelerator did the same thing but the Coiltek gave be a mixed audio that I would stop and check in the field, nothing conclusive but something I'd investigate. When I slowed way down to the kind of very slow swing you'd use to check out something interesting in a trashy setting I got a signal that said coin! The FE was of course way off but I got a 43 conductive, and that would always get my interest in the field when there's plenty of trash. The audio was also much better. So somehow this coil was working better WITH heavy disc then without. None of my other coils did this and I tried them, only the Coiltek. Now the question is will this repeat itself on buried targets, only time will tell!
