A co-worker I sold a Garrett GTA 550 a couple of years ago tried to hunt a playground at a local county school with it, but the nonstop trash signals were more than he could handle. He gave up within a few minutes and, not so affectionally, nicknamed it "the playground from hell". He asked me to go check it out so I put a 5.5 inch coil on one of my Barons and gave it a try. When I got there I saw why he had problems. What is now part of the school was a garment factory until a few years ago, and in 1960 I had a between school years job that occasionally involved unloading rolls of cloth from trucks at a dock that was maybe a hundred feet from where the playground is now. Back then the area where the playground is located was a shallow gully that was used as dump. Basically they leveled off the dump, put a few inches of dirt on top and 4 or 5 years ago built the graveled playground on top of it. I gave it a try but he was right about the nonstop signals, even with the sensitivity set at minimum and the small coil the detector sounded like a machine gun. I actually found a couple of coins, but gave up in less than a half hour. The next day at work I told him about it being built on a dump and that I didn't think it was worth the effort required to hunt since there wouldn't be any old coins there anyway. That was in December of 2006.
Afer I bought the $20 Fast Tracker I mentioned in the other post I tried it at a couple of places here in town and found it ran smooth at max sensitivity, plus it had more depth than I expected. I got a 3/4th by 1/2 inch sterling silver teddy bear from a bracelet or necklace that was close to four inches down and a couple of coins an inch or so deeper, but I noticed the sensitivity could be set low enough that it would barely <img src="http://www.imageuploading.com/ims/pic.php?u=158581DwEJ&i=101383.jpg" align="left" vspace="0"hspace="1"/>get a dime an inch or so from the coil. The next Saturday afternoon I took it to the "playground from hell", set the sensitivity to a level low enough it couldn't detect most of the deep trash and it kicked new coin booty. I dug some trash, mostly pieces of aluminum cans, but the ground under the gravel was hard enough so the coins that weren't still in the gravel or lying on the surface of the ground were only maybe an inch down. No pennies in the photo, I dropped those in the "ruint penny bucket" before I made the photo. Would have rather been hunting older sites for silver coins but it was rather gratifying to be able to hunt the "playground from hell" and find coins, even if they were corroded clad
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<center><img src="http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i57/mctubb/Stuff/cladfinds.jpg" border=></center>
Afer I bought the $20 Fast Tracker I mentioned in the other post I tried it at a couple of places here in town and found it ran smooth at max sensitivity, plus it had more depth than I expected. I got a 3/4th by 1/2 inch sterling silver teddy bear from a bracelet or necklace that was close to four inches down and a couple of coins an inch or so deeper, but I noticed the sensitivity could be set low enough that it would barely <img src="http://www.imageuploading.com/ims/pic.php?u=158581DwEJ&i=101383.jpg" align="left" vspace="0"hspace="1"/>get a dime an inch or so from the coil. The next Saturday afternoon I took it to the "playground from hell", set the sensitivity to a level low enough it couldn't detect most of the deep trash and it kicked new coin booty. I dug some trash, mostly pieces of aluminum cans, but the ground under the gravel was hard enough so the coins that weren't still in the gravel or lying on the surface of the ground were only maybe an inch down. No pennies in the photo, I dropped those in the "ruint penny bucket" before I made the photo. Would have rather been hunting older sites for silver coins but it was rather gratifying to be able to hunt the "playground from hell" and find coins, even if they were corroded clad
.<center><img src="http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i57/mctubb/Stuff/cladfinds.jpg" border=></center>
