Sorry no pics yet ( camera/computer don't get along anymore) so I'll try to give some help full info with my story. I received a super 12' coil as part of a trade with another forum member recently and decided to test it out at a local school field. I had been told a rumor that several men had been searching an area of the field intently the day before so I decided to see if I might be able to find a valuable recent drop in the 3-5" long grass. The lawn had been cut in some areas and not in others so I decided to set up near an old baseball backstop, in a cut area, near where I was told the people were searching previously. The machine was hard to stabilize with the large coil but the soil in the area was very wet and sandy so I toggled to SALT on the tracking and I was able to run stable up to +1.( If it hadn't been for reading Jeff Fosters book I may have given up using that coil then & there, awesome book Jeff ! ) Set up- Relic (trigger forward/ alternate mode), gain (varied ), Salt tracking, slight hum. This field has a very bad water drainage problem so I've been told they occasionally mix a load of sand in when they re-plant or sod. Because of this the ground mineralization varies greatly depending on the spot so I had to adjust my gain anywhere from the high of +1 down to 7 to maintain stability. ( I know, not the best place to try out the 12" coil, but I figured I'd at least learn something new). Also the sink rate in this field is phenomenally fast. ( An early target was a 1981 penny at 7-8" ! ) Another early find was a solid bangle bracelet at 4-5" that shone a bright gold when it hit the sun but later determined to be gold plated. ( I swear it looks just like solid gold but no proof-mark and a tiny bit of corrosion and well...that's the way it goes ) Looking for one more diggable signal before ending my 1-1/2 hr. hunt, I got a very brief high-tone towards the edge of the field. When I glanced at the screen I saw, in rapid succession, the VDI flash 83, 87, 90 and then iron. When I tried re-sweeping the spot several times I couldn't pull another high-tone signal out but after continuing to try I eventually was able to cross-sweep a repeated signal in the high 80's ONE time. Pinpointing was a little iffy ( I was definitely dealing with nearby trash, but I dug a plug and about 6-7" down was a 1969 D Kennedy half-dollar in really nice cond. I know that's not very deep for a target like that but I was impressed with the 12" coil's ability to even see and separate the coin at all. I can't seem to find old silver coins but 'Ole Jack seems to come out of the ground regularly to say Hi. I was born 3 days before Kennedy was assassinated so maybe there's something to that.? The most important thing I learned from this find is that the edges or margins of the field have apparently NOT been repeatedly buried under layers of sand and sod. Also this field has apparently not been hunted much if at all as there's quite a few high VDI targets shallow and in the open. The perimeter of this large field has to be around 1/2 mile total. Multiply that by a swath of 10-12' and I guess you could say I have a bit of square footage to hunt. Next time with the 10"DD but I would really like to pick up and try a 10x12 SEF. Who knows what else is there ? I'll try to get up some pics and keep you posted. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it.
HH
Scott
HH
Scott
Congratulations on the Half and that is a special 40% silver coin too.........
HH and thanks for posting, Nancy