Crash Course In Beach Detecting?

[GA1dad]

Heading down to the SC coast tomorrow for our annual Christmas camping trip. Gonna throw the Equinox in the truck and if I have a chance will try to swing it a bit. Since I have never detected a beach, I would be most appreciative of any basic tips you could throw my way.

Such as,,, do you hunt low tide,,,,,,, find patches of hard pack sand?

Also since I am new to the Nox,,,, anything I should know?

Thanks,,, Jay

 

[tvr]

Can't help with the NOX ... haven't used one.
We would spend two or three weeks on the South Carolina coast every year for a couple decades ... last year we bought our retirement house and moved to South Carolina.
Low tide, look for cuts and hunt the deepest cuts you can find. This time of year with a lot of people still walking the beaches or sitting in a chair reading or just sleeping and not playing in the surf, the high tide line can be productive because it is where people are still actively setting up and taking down their chairs and umbrellas. A little below the high tide line or above it where people are walking or running it more than during the summer might not be a bad place to detect. Do some sampling of the pathways to and from the beach, sometimes I've gotten lucky on those too.
Good luck!

 

[vlad]

Heading down to the SC coast tomorrow for our annual Christmas camping trip. Gonna throw the Equinox in the truck and if I have a chance will try to swing it a bit. Since I have never detected a beach, I would be most appreciative of any basic tips you could throw my way.

Such as,,, do you hunt low tide,,,,,,, find patches of hard pack sand?

Also since I am new to the Nox,,,, anything I should know?

Thanks,,, Jay

Basic rules for wet sand is do not turn sensitivity up too much--it will chatter. Dial in some iron disc, this will null some of the wet salt. (doing this along with your ground balance is what we call a double ground balance) Try different sweep speeds too. Low tide is good but whether high or low on beach where you hit aluminum is not where you find coins or gold. Generally goodies will be in a line down the beach. Have something to cover head and 'phones: will block out wind/surf noise. These are the general rules I use on a CZ, Sov/Excal, or a Explorer SE Pro. (but if there is black sand, magnetite, results will not be too good. (at least that is what I've seen in Florida and friends comment on about Hawaii) Run as many frequencies as you can simultaneously if you have that option, The more VLF ground compensation signals transmitted gives the circuitry more ground compensated target responses to analyze, identify and compare the target with. (and disc is another)

 

[tvr]

Basic rules for wet sand is do not turn sensitivity up too much--it will chatter. Dial in some iron disc, this will null some of the wet salt. (doing this along with your ground balance is what we call a double ground balance) Try different sweep speeds too. Low tide is good but whether high or low on beach where you hit aluminum is not where you find coins or gold. Generally goodies will be in a line down the beach. Have something to cover head and 'phones: will block out wind/surf noise. These are the general rules I use on a CZ, Sov/Excal, or a Explorer SE Pro. (but if there is black sand, magnetite, results will not be too good. (at least that is what I've seen in Florida and friends comment on about Hawaii) Run as many frequencies as you can simultaneously if you have that option, The more VLF ground compensation signals transmitted gives the circuitry more ground compensated target responses to analyze, identify and compare the target with. (and disc is another)

The sensitivity down and a little bit of discrimination helps when running in discrimination mode. Several years back, one of the guys who had been running Fisher CZs longer than I have convinced me to run all metal at the beach and when over a target flip to discriminate mode just as a check. He posted as The Rover or as JC based in New Jersey. Some call this hunting in reverse discrimination mode. I have since then used all metal mode with every detector that I use at the beach. Less chatter if any at all running all metal, and finding deeper targets, with some that are not detected when I check them in all metal.

I can not say whether the same is true with the NOX.

 

[vlad]

The sensitivity down and a little bit of discrimination helps when running in discrimination mode. Several years back, one of the guys who had been running Fisher CZs longer than I have convinced me to run all metal at the beach and when over a target flip to discriminate mode just as a check. He posted as The Rover or as JC based in New Jersey. Some call this hunting in reverse discrimination mode. I have since then used all metal mode with every detector that I use at the beach. Less chatter if any at all running all metal, and finding deeper targets, with some that are not detected when I check them in all metal.

I can not say whether the same is true with the NOX.

The wide-scan, autotune mode? A friend hunted like that at the beach with a CZ. I like very old sports fields and neither the autotune or pinpoint modes will hit the deep cents/dimes I look for that are 11 to 12 inches. My CZ's are NASA Tom tuned and have 10.5" loops. In the old days reverse discrimination was used after finding a target in VLF and placing the loop atop the signal and going into TR and sliding the loop off the target: if it went silent it was good and if you got an audio it was trash. (the reverse of normal TR) Hunting in All Metal and switching to Disc was the preferred method for both VLF/TRS and VLF/GB DISC when I started out in the 70's: TR-disc and 4 filter disc would have us missing the deep whispery signals. (And that was how I hunted with my Treasure Baron Coin Trax-2 with Deephunter. Hurricane Ida took it and many more. All metal did not i.d.) The F75 Ltd is 3X deeper in non motion than in motion and it i.d.s too. And I can i.d. a BC with the F75 correctly.

 

[tvr]

The wide-scan, autotune mode?

Yes.

The F75 Ltd is 3X deeper in non motion than in motion and it i.d.s too. And I can i.d. a BC with the F75 correctly.

That is how I run the F75 LTD I have. I find it a little deeper than other modes but not 3X ... my gosh, if it were three times deeper I'd need a backhoe.

 

[fwcrawford]

The others have already given you great advise… I’ll add to use Beach 1 which should be fine even if you encounter the surf coming in …run sensitivity up as high as you can and still be stable.
Keep the coil low and do not swing fast.
I run low recovery speed to get more depth and very low iron bias.
Good luck to you and hope you make some nice finds…

 

[vlad]

The others have already given you great advise… I’ll add to use Beach 1 which should be fine even if you encounter the surf coming in …run sensitivity up as high as you can and still be stable.
Keep the coil low and do not swing fast.
I run low recovery speed to get more depth and very low iron bias.
Good luck to you and hope you make some nice finds…

I experimented with recovery speeds with my V3i and a 9.5 & a 10X12 SEF. You can run it so high one sweep will give you three target hits (sounds like a pinball machine) and drastically diminish depth too.

 

[Confetrit]

Ga1Ddad, Merry Christmas, and Best of luck to you on your beach hunt. What beach are you headed to? My wife and I were down at Tybee Island a few months back. I'm by no means a professional beach hunter, but we had pretty good luck. Check those deep cuts in the early morning. My wife made a nice eyeball find on a nike ring in the side of one of the cuts. Good luck to you and the Nox at the beach. Let us know what you haul in.

 

[vlad]

Yes.


That is how I run the F75 LTD I have. I find it a little deeper than other modes but not 3X ... my gosh, if it were three times deeper I'd need a backhoe.

On a nickel dime or 1-cent it is in my ground. Playing around in air tests I could hit a nickel at 18" in stat--that boggles the mind. In disc I use boost and crank the sens, with a very slight iron disc. You have a F75, are BC's giving problems reading quarter/half with the 11"DD? ( I use a Nel Tornado too & a friend uses the Mars 12" coil)

 

[LawrencetheMDer]

Owned 2 NOX 800s for beach hunting and just gave my old 1 (no longer under warranty) to sister, a dirt digger, for Christmas. Also gave her Andy Sabisch's Equinox book - an absolute MUST read for anyone who has the 600 or 800. Careful, I've drowned 2 of them in past 3 1/2 yrs so advise, if no longer under 3-yr warranty, against dunking control unit! BEACH 1 works flawlessly in dry, wet sand and in water. Set gain at max you can handle w/o too much chatter. Regarding chatter and maximizing gain, I null from -9 to +3 when in salt water. Most of my chatter/noise occurs at +1 to +3 so by nulling these values I can increase my sensitivity (15" coil) from 19-20 to 23-24! Just see where on the low plus scale most noise occurs (below +5) and cancel these values. [I assume you null -9 to 0.] I never have found much below +5 on my NOX 800. All gold rings (est N= 45) have run from +5 to +23 for me and my settings and locations. Btw, nickels hit hard at 12 and unlike pull tabs, are very stable (+/-1) where as push pull tabs vary more (+/-3), typically from 12 - 17 or so.

 

[GA1dad]

Ga1Ddad, Merry Christmas, and Best of luck to you on your beach hunt. What beach are you headed to? My wife and I were down at Tybee Island a few months back. I'm by no means a professional beach hunter, but we had pretty good luck. Check those deep cuts in the early morning. My wife made a nice eyeball find on a nike ring in the side of one of the cuts. Good luck to you and the Nox at the beach. Let us know what you haul in.

Thanks,,, heading to Murrells Inlet SC.

Thanks to everyone for the tips. We got here and brr,,,, cold. Now I gotta wait for the winds to die down.

 

[tvr]

On a nickel dime or 1-cent it is in my ground. Playing around in air tests I could hit a nickel at 18" in stat--that boggles the mind. In disc I use boost and crank the sens, with a very slight iron disc. You have a F75, are BC's giving problems reading quarter/half with the 11"DD? ( I use a Nel Tornado too & a friend uses the Mars 12" coil)

I've not tried to master bottle cap identification with the F75. Mine is an original LTD model that was starting to get flaky and needed frequent factory rests to bring it back to any sort of sensibility. Was about to send it in when the DST update came out so I sent it in for the DST and it came back like new. At the beach I got best stability and could run highest sensitivity with the 10 inch elliptical concentric coil on it. Today, I'm much more interested in mastering bottle caps with the Impulse AQ ... they sound wider than good targets. I'm digging them anyway just to confirm. Eventually I will be walking away from many of them.

 

[tvr]

Thanks,,, heading to Murrells Inlet SC.

Thanks to everyone for the tips. We got here and brr,,,, cold. Now I gotta wait for the winds to die down.

Good luck!

 

[Confetrit]

Thanks,,, heading to Murrells Inlet SC.

Thanks to everyone for the tips. We got here and brr,,,, cold. Now I gotta wait for the winds to die down.

Murrells Inlet. You are in Seafood Heaven. Get yourself some great seafood, and find some cool stuff.

 

[GA1dad]

Murrells Inlet. You are in Seafood Heaven. Get yourself some great seafood, and find some cool stuff.

Yep,,,,, one of my first stops was to the Seven Seas Seafood Market for some skrimps and grouper. We eat nothing but fresh seafood when in Murrels Inlet. We've been making 2 to 3 trips a year to Murrels for about 8 or 9 years. In that time we've spent all but one Christmas here. Looking at possibly retiring here.

 

[Confetrit]

Very nice area. We became familiar with Murrells Inlet back in the 60's when I was a kid. We found the area there while camping at Lake Arrowhead Campground which is gone now. One of our favorite seafood restaurants, Bay Harbour was lost to a fire some years ago, but I believe another restaurant was built where Bay Harbour once stood. A lot of great memories. Enjoy, and Merry Christmas to you and yours.

 

[Grunter]

Yep,,,,, one of my first stops was to the Seven Seas Seafood Market for some skrimps and grouper. We eat nothing but fresh seafood when in Murrels Inlet. We've been making 2 to 3 trips a year to Murrels for about 8 or 9 years. In that time we've spent all but one Christmas here. Looking at possibly retiring here.

Are you staying at Huntington and for how long? I'll be running a Nox 800 or my Legend after Christmas.

 

[GA1dad]

Yep, at Huntington. Leaving on Monday.

 

[GA1dad]

So,,,it was in the 20's and windy for the last couple of days. But today it warmed up to freezing.

I guess my first attempt at beach detecting was a success. In 1.5 hours and about 300 yards of beach I found 37 cents, very little trash and a piece of junker bling. However, when I got back to the camper I found out my bling was marked 925,,,, it's a pretty fancy silver earring. I did dig one deep beer can, but I called it as a can before digging it just to confirm.

I ran Beach 1, multi, 5 tone and disc'd out up to positive 4 and it ran quite stable. I was getting worried when I hadn't heard anything for the first hundred yards. But it is generally a mature crowd here, and it is long past tourist season. So there simply weren't many targets

The last picture is my daughter being silly, checking on my progress. Funny, I purchased the scoop 6 or 7 years ago and put it in the camper storage area,,,,, where it stayed until this weekend. Was good to finally dig it out and use it.

Anyways, thanks everyone for the tips.