First day out and a question...(Long)

[Anonymous]

Went to Zuma beach this morning. Got there about 4:45am. Finds for the day 9 quarters, 6 dimes, 1 nickle, 14 pennies, two pieces of junk jewelry and a ton of trash.
While detecting my screen showed Quickstart-Smart Discrimination.
I set the Explorer up the day before. I set for deep, Iron mask -14, Volume max, Gain 8, sounds at conduct, sensitivity I set at 21 it had a straight line rotating around the number so I take it I was in semi-auto, respone was at normal.
To say the least I was a little confused. Now remember this is used machine (6 months old)and had settings already set-up. What I wanted to do was hunt with very little discrimation and dig everything to get the feel and sounds of the machine. It seemed to be working great for me.
I detected for 6 hours and was surprised that my arm was less tired than when detecting with my Sovereign which is hip mounted and set-up with the WOT coil. The Explorer also had the added weight of the X-1 probe which I don't use with the Sovereign at the beach. Maybe the arm strap made the Explorer feel lighter.
Every time the Explorer said it was trash it was trash. All targets that were in the upper right hand corner were all keeps.
Zuma is a pretty clean beach and with school still in session good targets are few and far in between. I was hitting some nails and small pieces of straight iron that sounded high pitched but were located way to the left on the screen. With my other detector I would have dug these sounds. At the beach I pretty much dig everything, but I feel that I wouldn't be missing much by not digging those high sounds that are way left. Could this thinking be a mistake? Remember I had Iron Mask at -14 so when I say the were way left they were almost to the other side of the screen. I found, which I'm 99.9% sure is junk, a diamond earring that when I first saw it got me a little pumped up. It kept falling threw the holes in my sandscoop. I used the X-1 to find it. I couldn't believe how sensitive the Explorer with the 10.5 coil was. I pulled up some very small targets. If I go to the SR X-12 coil would I lose some of this sensitivity? It also was rock soild on the wet sand.
Over all the Explorer worked great for me and I'm sure the more I use it the better I'll get. The big test comes when I start using it at the parks looking for older coins.
Thanks to Rich, Ric and all the others who have e-mailed me with suggestions.

 

[Anonymous]

Told ya it was a great machine!!
The problem with it not starting with the previous days settings could be holding the start button down to long. This will cause the machine to reset to factory defaults.
As far as the bigger coil, you will lose some sensitivity to smaller targets. It will give you better coverage but don't count on much extra depth.
As for targets that show far left, Leave em where they are unless your looking for iron. It's a pretty safe bet if it's to the left of center it's iron.

 

[Anonymous]

Randy,
After looking at my above screens, were you in iron mask -14? Sounds like you were. At the beach don't worry what I said about those signals that bounce high left like above. Your main interest are in low hitting targets, that is where the majority of the gold will hit unless it is a big honking mans ring. You want to dig everything at the beach. Also, at the beach, you want to run at least 32 Auto, better to run manual as high as you can that the threshold just breaks up. If you have a solid unwavering threshold at the beach, you will miss the deeper small gold rings, IMO. Also, make sure you dig those hits that are below the lower line and to the left of center. That is where small gold rings hit for me. Those small gold rings can have a huge rock in them! <IMG SRC="/forums/images/biggrin.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="">