I was visiting my parents over Easter weekend, and spent Monday hunting a spot I've wanted to hit for a while. During the 1860's early California settlers had an adobe here, and I was hoping it might be a good place to find 1800's Spanish or U.S. coins. The settlers had a conflict with the local Indians there, and had a battle with them (the settlers lost and were killed by the Indians).
I started off with the stock coil on the F70, but it was way too noisy. The ground at this location is volcanic soil and highly mineralized (I was getting three dirt bars on the F70, and ground balancing in the 40's), so I switched to the new little 5" DD coil. I had the sensitivity set to 50, threshold ~ +2 (I played around with the threshold quite a bit), disc set to 6, nothing notched, and ran the tones at 3H. There weren't a lot of targets (trash or otherwise), but I managed to find several black powder balls, a few relic do-dads, and a 1916S Mercury dime at about 4" depth (WHY COULDN'T IT BE A 1916[size=x-large]D[/size] MINT-LOL!). I was a bit surprised to find the merc, it was the only coin I found at that location, even though the other relics were clearly mid 1800's.
Overall impressions of the new 5" DD - It was definitely a lot more quite then the stock F70 coil in this ground, and I thought it had good depth. While playing with the settings, I was doing various air tests and it was air testing to around 8", pretty good for this tiny coil. It wasn't a trashy area, so I can't say yet how well it does in trash or iron yet, but it did better in the volcanic mineralized soil then the stock F70 coil. I have an area that's a bed of square nails that'll really be a true test for this coil and the F70.
It'll take me the rest of my life to hunt this area with this little hockey puck, but it's a capable coil. I haven't compared it to the football coil yet, it would be interesting to see how the two of them compare in a head to head test.
HH,
Brian
I started off with the stock coil on the F70, but it was way too noisy. The ground at this location is volcanic soil and highly mineralized (I was getting three dirt bars on the F70, and ground balancing in the 40's), so I switched to the new little 5" DD coil. I had the sensitivity set to 50, threshold ~ +2 (I played around with the threshold quite a bit), disc set to 6, nothing notched, and ran the tones at 3H. There weren't a lot of targets (trash or otherwise), but I managed to find several black powder balls, a few relic do-dads, and a 1916S Mercury dime at about 4" depth (WHY COULDN'T IT BE A 1916[size=x-large]D[/size] MINT-LOL!). I was a bit surprised to find the merc, it was the only coin I found at that location, even though the other relics were clearly mid 1800's.
Overall impressions of the new 5" DD - It was definitely a lot more quite then the stock F70 coil in this ground, and I thought it had good depth. While playing with the settings, I was doing various air tests and it was air testing to around 8", pretty good for this tiny coil. It wasn't a trashy area, so I can't say yet how well it does in trash or iron yet, but it did better in the volcanic mineralized soil then the stock F70 coil. I have an area that's a bed of square nails that'll really be a true test for this coil and the F70.
It'll take me the rest of my life to hunt this area with this little hockey puck, but it's a capable coil. I haven't compared it to the football coil yet, it would be interesting to see how the two of them compare in a head to head test.
HH,
Brian
, so until I find another position I'll have plenty of time to detect.