Has Anybody Weighed A S-12 And 10" Tornado?

[Critterhunter]

I've settled on the Sunray 12" over the WOT for my deeper coin hunting. While there are a few who say the WOT is slightly deeper, the Sunray is much lighter and handles more trash. My question is has anybody weighed the Sunray coil and the newer (not bbs) Tornado 10" coil? They claim the Sunray is lighter but I think this was comparing it to the old BBS coil. Online checking makes me think it's about 1/2 ounce heavier than the Tornado but we all know how numbers can be fudged. I'd much rather hear from anybody who has weighed them both themselves.

Also curious what the weight of that 8" Coinsearch coil is and the S-5.

 

[Critterhunter]

According to what I can dig up on the net the stock Tornado 10" is 23 ounces and the Sunray 12" is 23 1/2 ounces, so it appears to only lighter than the older BBS 10" coil.

 

[UtahRich]

I have a Minelab 8" coinsearch, the stock BBS 1000 and a Sunray S-12 and will put them on the scale when I get home. My coinsearch came used and has a 4' cable on it rather than the full length. It will make a small difference.

Somebody out there has a personal webpage comparing ALL the available coils for the Sovereign, their weight and performance characteristics. I'll see if I can dig it up later.

Rich (Utah)

 

[plugger]

n/t

 

[UtahRich]

Steo on the digital kitchen scale please:

The Minelab BBS 1000 weighs a hearty 1 lb 13.9 oz. w/coil cover
The Sunray S-12 weighs 1 lb 6.7 oz. w/open coil cover
The Minelab 8" Coinsearch 1 lb 1.6 oz w/coil cover (4' cable)

That's all I have folks.

Rich (Utah)

 

[JHM]

For what it's worth, I saw very little difference in depth between the s-12 and the tornado 10 inch coil in my ground. I'm sure in the right situation like beach hunting the s-12 could be deeper. The WOT was both deeper and heavier.

 

[Neil]

For what it's worth, I saw very little difference in depth between the s-12 and the tornado 10 inch coil in my ground. I'm sure in the right situation like beach hunting the s-12 could be deeper. The WOT was both deeper and heavier.

I agree on both accounts. I no longer have a sov but have an excal with an 8" coil. I kept one of the 10" tornado coils when I sold my sov to later have fitted on my excal. I just weighed it, with coil cover and full length cable and its 25.23oz.

both have the same feel when you hunt with them(S12 and tornado) but the WOT is both heavier feeling and deeper.

something to remember about large coils, masking isnt just in trashy areas. you can have a wide open beach, one with very little trash, and come upon a ring with a nail a few inches off of it and never hear the ring, just your sov/excal blanking. what I have found after my years of hunting is that I never really found more by using large coils. the large coil=more finds thing can only be proved by hunting alot with both coils on the same beaches and paying close attention to how many finds you make.

critterhunter: I read a little about your ring finding journey and would like to comment that the rings you used for your comparisons might not be the rings you encounter when hunting. your idea is one all of us have had who have sov hunted over the years, but I agree with kred and of course my hunting is easier since I beach hunt, but I hunt a range which is small iron to zinc penny and think most to all gold items fall in that range.
so what Im saying is the rings you used are fine if that indeed is all your looking for, but there are other rings and no matter your numbers, plenty fall in the nickel and pulltab range. plus there are earrings, chains, bracelents, charms, all sorts of gold items to be found. a lot of the smaller gold religious medallions fall in right at the nickel range. like I said I have the luxury of easy digging and areas not so trashy.
when fisher developed the CZ series, they did what your doing so you might want to go back and research that a little to shed a little light and help you in your quest.

Neil

 

[Critterhunter]

Yea, I've read the Fisher test, but like I said the CZ's "VDI" is much more primative without the resolution of the GT. I also wonder just where those rings came from. If even some of them were found with a detector then chances are very good that the numbers are biased. For instance, if somebody concentrates on the nickle zone when hunting you would of course have a higher percentage of test rings in that area. These rings I used were all found with an Exalibur water hunting and digging anything that sounded off. They were also found over several years and at various locations, so that helps eliminate any potential bias by what is more consitantly found at one location over another.

You could of course find that another large test pool of random rings has slightly different results in the percentages but as a whole they shouldn't differ too much if they are indeed a true random sample. Even still, wider variations in results shouldn't alter the base theory much at all (avoiding tabs while still recovering a decent percentage of rings well above 50%). We are talking averages here. Some locations might offer a different assortment of rings (IE: a child's swing area where a women is more apt to lose a small ring versus a larger man's). That's where using your brain to ask yourself what type of ring might more likely be found here.

I still maintain that the old "dig the nickle zone" theory isn't holding up under the numbers. I feel it's biased due to less resolution on many machines out there, in that the "nickle" zone on some of these machines may be much wider. As that strategy was followed more people would dig the nickle zone and as a result find more rings in that zone, further adding a bias and tilting the numbers even further to support that theory.

Of course earrings and other such items can alter the numbers, but I'm not as interested in them as I am rings.

 

[Critterhunter]

Thanks for weighing them. Then it appears from your numbers the S12 coil is about 2.53 ounces lighter than the 10" Tornado. That's good to know. If it had been heavier then I might reconsider my purchase.

 

[Ron from Michigan]

n/t

 

[UtahRich]

Thanks for weighing them. Then it appears from your numbers the S12 coil is about 2.53 ounces lighter than the 10" Tornado. That's good to know. If it had been heavier then I might reconsider my purchase.

Unfortunately, my older Sovereign came with the older and heavier and not quite as good BBS 1000. If it had come with the 10" Tornado, I would have skipped getting an S-12 (at least for the time being) and would have picked up an S-5 instead and used the two of those as my arsenal. But, I had the coinsearch and S-12 come along at just the right time so my arsenal is up sized a couple inches. So far, the 8" coinsearch seems to be hanging in there even in the heavily trash area I've been messing around with. (see Tabs Tabs and More Tabs post). I've tucked the BBS 1000 away and will be using the coinsearch and S-12 exclusively for the foreseeable future.

I have so little time with my Sov. that I can't offer much in the way of an educated opinion, just impressions to this point. Consequently, I am following along with others to hopefully learn from those more experienced with the Sovereign.

Rich (Utah)

 

[Neil]

Yea, I've read the Fisher test, but like I said the CZ's "VDI" is much more primative without the resolution of the GT. I also wonder just where those rings came from. If even some of them were found with a detector then chances are very good that the numbers are biased. For instance, if somebody concentrates on the nickle zone when hunting you would of course have a higher percentage of test rings in that area. These rings I used were all found with an Exalibur water hunting and digging anything that sounded off. They were also found over several years and at various locations, so that helps eliminate any potential bias by what is more consitantly found at one location over another.

You could of course find that another large test pool of random rings has slightly different results in the percentages but as a whole they shouldn't differ too much if they are indeed a true random sample. Even still, wider variations in results shouldn't alter the base theory much at all (avoiding tabs while still recovering a decent percentage of rings well above 50%). We are talking averages here. Some locations might offer a different assortment of rings (IE: a child's swing area where a women is more apt to lose a small ring versus a larger man's). That's where using your brain to ask yourself what type of ring might more likely be found here.

I still maintain that the old "dig the nickle zone" theory isn't holding up under the numbers. I feel it's biased due to less resolution on many machines out there, in that the "nickle" zone on some of these machines may be much wider. As that strategy was followed more people would dig the nickle zone and as a result find more rings in that zone, further adding a bias and tilting the numbers even further to support that theory.

Of course earrings and other such items can alter the numbers, but I'm not as interested in them as I am rings.

Ive put this up here before, I just rechecked it to make sure..its a nickel reading. its 14k, weighs just under 2oz(about 1/3 gram light) and I had the diamonds tested and they are real. I found this in the wet sand at the ocean with a sovereign but it could have been in a park, college campus, tot lot, pretty much anywhere. no graph is gonna show you where. Im told the link is what the detector reads, I have no idea. Ive got several nice 18k chains as well that are around that range, I will have to dig them out and take a few pics as well. Honestly I cant imagine why you wouldnt be interested in this type of find.

I really dont know about your dig the nickle zone theory and please no disrespect, I dont want to. Ive hunted to long and found things that have suprised me in to many places to want to walk over them using any type of notch or disc in the gold area.

the bracelet was found in the wet sand at the ocean with a sov.

the gold coin, guess where that hits, and its another beach hunt find, with an original sov, when they first came out, my first one
that one really got me using the sov alot.

Would you be so kind as to tell how long youve used the sov and any detector for that matter, sounds like your new into this whole hobby, is that correct?
Not that thats a bad thing, just trying to gauge what your experience is versus your input as to what is what in this hobby.

Neil

 

[Neil]

n/t

sorry Ron no, I had one a while back from a detector I bought and I just resold it, never hunted it.

Neil

 

[Critterhunter]

I've been hunting since the early 90's and have owned or used most of the machines out there...Some I've owned include QII, QXT Pro, 6000 pro xl, Garrett Treasure Ace (one of my first machines), Bounty Hunter (80's model, my first), Tesoro Bandido II Umax, around 3 Explorers, Tesoro Tiger Shark, and so on. I've also used or went head to head with the DFX, Fisher CZ6a, XLT, Etrac, GTI series, Excalibur (got my first bust dime-1835 land hunting with one!), and a few others. I just don't assume that what's widely known and taken for granted is a given. I prefer to question assumptions and prove them to be right or wrong for myself before relying on them as fact. Investigating to me is half the fun, and not just in this hobby.

Another thing to remember is that, as I've said many times before, I am not arguing that you shouldn't dig everything in many situations. Places like the beach, low trash sites, and so on are areas where I live by this rule. However, I have many sites I hunt where it would take years or a lifetime to dig every signal, and I simply do not have that kind of time. If I know for a fact that I'm not ever going to be able to dig every trash signal out of an area it makes no sense to me to begin to do that. Lacking that effort, I'm now forced to decide what method of hunting it is going to increase my odds of good-to-bad targets and make even the effort worth trying. Besides stretegicly picking one small section of that area and digging everything out of it (such as a wade pool area), I'm forced to use something to even the odds more in other areas.

I've atleast proven to myself that there is indeed the potential to avoid most of the tabs and still have the potential to find a large percentage of the rings. That's the whole point of why I did the research. Bottom line for me. Unless somebody can show me some proper research done on rings that proves otherwise I'm going to rely on what I found by my own investigation. I've searched the net over the years and the only project that even remotely held some merit was the Fisher test, and even with that I have serious doubts lacking proper information on the testing criteria.

I look at it this way...When playing cards would I bet all out on each and every hand despite what the odds show? Of course not. To win more often I need to develop certain percentages of probable success, increasing the odds in my favor as much as possible. That's the whole concept when selective digging is the only realistic option.

 

[Critterhunter]

By the way, I have done some of this ring testing in the past on other machines but most of these did not have the Sovereign's resolution. I did investigate this on the Explorer but found it's resolution to be too fine with the ferous/non-ferous scale, making patterns harder to see, though it was an improvement and did offer me more success. The GT's 180 scale and broad lower spectrum seemed ideal to see if I could carry some of my theories further. All said and done, it is all only a theory on paper and needs to be proven with extensive field use.

 

[Neil]

I understand what your saying about the nickle range, I was trying to show you that although your ring percentages arent very high in the nickle range, theres a boatload of other goodies in that range and also that your ring range might not be the variety you make it out to be. your goal is about like mine, I dont believe in a dig all approach either, its small iron to zinc for me only when gold hunting and if Im bored I will just add in some quarters. easy enough to do, I use an etrac or f75 mostly with a Tejon sometimes in the mix.

3 explorers and an etrac and you like the sovs resolution better. good luck hunting.

Neil