Mick in Dubbo
New member
On Friday, I had to take my eldest son to an appointment in Parks. ( Parks is located 120kms to the south of Dubbo and is the closest population to us of a town of 10 000+. It is an even 10 000. It is best known out of the area as the town on which the movie "The Dish" is based on a few years back.) On about the 10th of January every year, a large festival called the Elvis Festival is held there as well. It brings out most of the Elvis wanna be's from even as far as the US and is a great week end.
Anyway, after the appointment was dealt with, about 3pm, I told my son that he would have to hang around for a bit while I detected in the park that the festival was held in.
Unfortunately, he had an ace (not of the Garrett variety) up his sleeve in the form of music lessons at 7pm; so that reduced my window of opportunity somewhat. Anyway, I kicked off the hunt with the Explorer for the first 45 mins. After a bit of a hot start, by finding a $2 coin, came up empty after that, hunting besides the pathways where the stall holders had set up.
At this point, I put the Explorer away and pulled out the Ace, fir it's first hunt of the year. Although, I only got another 35 mins of hunting in, due to time constraints, i still managed to snag another $7 with it, hunting some of the less obvious places. It was quite clear that this park had be hunted of a number of occasions between, the Festival and the time I'd hunted it, which isn't a big surprise really. There is at least 1 local that hunts regularly that I'm aware of, plus a number of folks travelling in motor homes, which is quite prevalent in these parts.
The highlight of the hunt came in the form of the last recovery. I have noticed, that with the Ace, I find less coins than I do if I use my other 2 detectors. As I have found bits of metal that is a bit smaller than a square millimeter in size, I know that it's not the Ace that is missing the targets, but rather, how I process the information that it is telling me. So figuring this out will be an interesting project. Anyway, back to the last recovery. on this target, i seemed to get a relatively clean hit, however, as soon as I tried to pinpoint it, was when the fun began. I didn't seem to be able to get a solid lock on the target despite making several attempts. After this, I tried to pinpoint it by detuning. This proved to be just as difficult, as the detector kept lighting up the back half of the coil still, then if it wasn't doing that, then the target would disappear completely, or cause a wide non descript pinpoint. After trying to resolve this with the detector, I decided that it was time to brake out the Pocket Probe, and find out what was going on. After retrieving it from the car, I put it into action. even with this, finding the target was still a bit tricky. Eventually, I found the target, and it was a $2 coin on edge, only about an inch down in the dirt. It showed up as 4 inches down on the Ace. So that is one reason found, but over time, I think that some more of those more iffy signals need further investigation, so as to improve the Ace's strike rate.
Mick Evans.
Anyway, after the appointment was dealt with, about 3pm, I told my son that he would have to hang around for a bit while I detected in the park that the festival was held in.
Unfortunately, he had an ace (not of the Garrett variety) up his sleeve in the form of music lessons at 7pm; so that reduced my window of opportunity somewhat. Anyway, I kicked off the hunt with the Explorer for the first 45 mins. After a bit of a hot start, by finding a $2 coin, came up empty after that, hunting besides the pathways where the stall holders had set up.At this point, I put the Explorer away and pulled out the Ace, fir it's first hunt of the year. Although, I only got another 35 mins of hunting in, due to time constraints, i still managed to snag another $7 with it, hunting some of the less obvious places. It was quite clear that this park had be hunted of a number of occasions between, the Festival and the time I'd hunted it, which isn't a big surprise really. There is at least 1 local that hunts regularly that I'm aware of, plus a number of folks travelling in motor homes, which is quite prevalent in these parts.
The highlight of the hunt came in the form of the last recovery. I have noticed, that with the Ace, I find less coins than I do if I use my other 2 detectors. As I have found bits of metal that is a bit smaller than a square millimeter in size, I know that it's not the Ace that is missing the targets, but rather, how I process the information that it is telling me. So figuring this out will be an interesting project. Anyway, back to the last recovery. on this target, i seemed to get a relatively clean hit, however, as soon as I tried to pinpoint it, was when the fun began. I didn't seem to be able to get a solid lock on the target despite making several attempts. After this, I tried to pinpoint it by detuning. This proved to be just as difficult, as the detector kept lighting up the back half of the coil still, then if it wasn't doing that, then the target would disappear completely, or cause a wide non descript pinpoint. After trying to resolve this with the detector, I decided that it was time to brake out the Pocket Probe, and find out what was going on. After retrieving it from the car, I put it into action. even with this, finding the target was still a bit tricky. Eventually, I found the target, and it was a $2 coin on edge, only about an inch down in the dirt. It showed up as 4 inches down on the Ace. So that is one reason found, but over time, I think that some more of those more iffy signals need further investigation, so as to improve the Ace's strike rate.
Mick Evans.