I have always said its not a universal wonder coil that works in all site conditions, no coil is. You can use a WOT in conditions that old school thinking says it would not work. I have used it in parks, fields, even the woods hunting cellar holes. Got my first 1798 large cent with the WOT in the woods way out in the boonies deep and I mean deeeep. I dug 140+ silver coins out of parks with the WOT. AND...I used the WOT for two seasons straight before switching back to the stock coil. When using the WOT I routinely dug IH cents and dimes in the 8-10 inch range in our soil. In using the stock coil now for a couple years I rarely dig coins at those depths. The only reason I don't use the WOT now is its too rough on my shoulder.
But you have to be reasonable about it as with all coils. The WOT does not like sopping wet iron conditions. Trying to use a WOT right on the celler hole where theres 6 thousand rusty nails would be a waste of time. I used it on the outer lying areas and fields around the cellar holes. Trying to use it where there is mega amounts of trash e.g. areas you would normally hunt with a 5 inch coil isn't going to be fun. I never used a WOT on the beach but all my other coils false on the wet sand and it stands to reason the WOT being larger would be no less of an annoyance and probably more so.
So what good is it? Well when you want to cover a lot of ground fast, where targets are few and far between its going to beat the stock coil hands down. When you have hunted out a productive site with the smaller coils and you want to pick back over that site slowly, it can and often does lock right onto deep targets the stock coil can't even get a signal on. Its also really good on deeper coins on edge, a field geometry thing.
The same is true of the stock coil, I have used the ML 8 to pick off targets the stock coil could not get, and a custom 9 inch concentric neither one of those could get. At a given site theres going to be targets all the coils can get, and some that only one of those coils will be able to reach. If people are looking for a one size fits all wonder coil I think its going to be a long wait.
For the beach...thats a different animal. I think we need a coil specifically designed for Explorer for beach hunting to address falsing, coverage, and weight. I and others having been building our own beach coils for a while now. We have the size up to 11x14 inches and weight well under the stock coil. Now we are experimenting to reduce or eliminate the falsing.
