First Turf hunting impressions & cool political find of my favorite 20th Century U.S. President

[Ytcoinshooter]

I've received my NOX800 on March 20 while in FL for the winter. Until this past week all my hours on it have been on Gulf coast beaches and wading up the control head using inexpensive BT earbuds w/CSR8645 chipsets. Not low latency but perfectly good for my purposes. I may even get some IPX7 rated ones for rainy day hunts. I have not found anything sporting the CSR8670 chipset and IPX7 rateing (headphones or earbuds). Re the beach, Tiny earring backs at about 4" in wet salt sand! This post is regarding my first 3 turf hunts, the first two were very short at an hour and a half ea and last Thursday I was at it for 4+ hours in 85-90 degree heat on a 1730 home. All hunts were in Park2 with sense at 20-23, noise canceled and auto GB (NO Tracking). I understand well ground balancing and also the plusses and minuses of using tracking. On one of my favorite detectors that has tracking I lock it and recheck the GB as I hunt. The first two sites the goal was to find silver where there was suposedly none left (yeah sure). Really, a carpet of trash beneath my feet in many areas of these park / passive rec areas that I know very well. I managed a silver Roosevelt from ea of the first two sites and some wheats in the 7-8" range. This gave me a feel for how I can cherrypick with my NOX. However screw caps (not crown tops) were sounding and ID'ing as good as a coin. The 4 hour hunt last Thursday left me wishing I dug more mid conductors, but that heat (and my stepson's previous discovery) had me leaning toward picking out high conductors until a cooler day...perhaps tomorrow.
The symphony of all the metal and iron at the home site had me turning up the reject to +9 to quiet it down. I preordered the 6" coil, I need it! This was the first time I ever used any disc in the positive range on my 800. My stepson found the site a week or so earlier and pulled a 4 copper spill out of the front yard, 2 Williams and 2 KG 2's in the same hole. I dug several deep small iron nails that I did the walk around on and swapped frequencies, they still sounded and looked good. All my sensitive high end detectors will sometimes do this and is it possible the NOX may also be wraping the target ID on these (?). I do like the audio to be independant of the VDI on my detectors, traditionally audio ID goes deeper than VDI so a deep good sounding deep depth reading targets get my attention. That brings up the mediocre depth indicator on the NOX, it's better than nothing but I've hunted without depth indicators so I can try to employ traditional old school methods to counter this. Large targets were were easy to determine by lifting the coil. The VCO pinpointing was just as I like it. Sorry, I'm just stringing thoughts here without much of a formula for this post. I will say I DO LIKE this detector, the reactivity, versatility, feature set, modern tech and light weight. This a really, really nice mid priced detector that performs above expectations...but that is what they are marketing IMHO. I'm not influenced by the Explorer, Etrac, CXT or any FBS because of all those the only one that ever seemed geared toward me is the CTX. The ergonomics of the Etrac / Explorer are just a no go for me and I never cared for the fluty audio but may be adjusting...slowly
Keep the good posts and helpful info coming!
HH - Bruce
PS - Should I up the iron bias in conjunction with knocking out a few low numbers between +1 - +9? Or would that iron bias hurt picking out a high mid to conductor in or next to iron? I suspect it may hurt that....
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Q8KOgobQaKCBy3wg2
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Uwg76E8qcYhatd0i1
https://photos.app.goo.gl/EfENTyyrz8iXBvXt6

 

[tometusns]

Nice write up Bruce. Good finds, I really like the Roosevelt relic. Maybe it was a political watch fob. Things like that are just cool.
I know what you mean about discing out stuff but some places just cause a guy to have to. I don't really like the flutey sounds either that's why I have 5 tones set up in my modes. I had my etrac set up with more traditional sounds. That's just what I'm usedto. Anyways good hunt and more to come I'm sure. Tom

 

[laplander]

Cool fob, Charles Fairbanks was his conservative running mate/vice president. Roosevelt was to radical, sound familiar? Great write up and hunt results YT
Laplander

 

[dbado1]

That is a cool watch fob! My favorite president as well. Nice hunt!

Dean

 

[sgoss66]

Bruce --

NICE digs, NICE report. Good info in there.

Not sure on the iron bias question. I run mine at "2," at this point, but it's an interesting thought you bring up, regarding how to run iron bias in conjunction with iron disc...a nuanced thought that I haven't thought about yet, as I always run no disc and thus it's not been something I've had to think about; I've never considered the implications of discriminating iron and thus where to set iron bias. Interesting...

While I haven't thought this through, my knee-jerk thought would be this...iron bias, as we know, should affect how "easy" or "difficult" it is for the machine to report a high tone near iron -- either a "false," OR an actual non-ferrous co-located. High iron bias = more likely for the machine to give iron IDs (even if a co-located non ferrous is present); low iron bias = higher chance of hearing a high tone with the iron (either a false, or a co-locate). SO, if you want to run iron disc, I would almost think that to compensate you'd want to run iron bias low -- like even zero. That way, you would not HEAR the iron low tones (giving your ears a break), but you'd give yourself the best chance of a high-tone squeak being heard. Yes, it means you'd hear more falses and thus likely dig more nails despite discriminating the iron, BUT, you'd also have more chances of hearing that non-ferrous chirp NEAR that iron that you discriminated out/aren't hearing...

Bottom line, I think your suspicion that high iron bias AND iron disc. might not help with your ability to unmask, is probably correct. I'd think keeping LOW bias when discriminating iron would be best.

Steve

 

[halfstep]

The equinox has a built in bias that cleans up the signal giving you a better usable tone. If you experience a lot of clipped compressed tones in your hunting site, play with the iron bias and see if it increases the quality of your tones. This will help to identify targets more accurately. With the equinox, adjust for tone quality. You can knock out number 40 on the notch scale to eliminate most iron wrap around.

 

[borntofli]

For parks, i run 0 iron bias and all metal.... like hearing the low iron, and when something good is next to iron you can hear both clearly..... 50 tones almost gives you eyes underground....If you have 4 targets in a 2 sq inch area, nox will identify all 4 seperately... cherry picking certain coin types is a breeze w/nox...IMO, this 600$ detector nullifies all other sub 1000$ detectors out there.....TY minelab, simple and better than 90% of us have used....