Hitting the park with the CTX

[bklein]

The local SoCal beaches have been boring for me so I thought I'd try something completely different and hit Irvine Park. I've never hunted there before and don't hunt parks much. There is one just 600 feet up the street but only 30 years old or so and targets are mostly chewed up by the lawn mowers and pretty far down in the sod. So at Irvine, I didn't really have a plan ahead of time and didn't know how they feel about detecting so I went to the back area of the park, parked my car in the lot, and hit the local green belts. There is some area that is more rugged but surely has poison oak etc. I don't know where you experienced guys hunt there - I know the park is over a hundred years old and has some areas where traffic would have been focused - but they are also more visible and if they don't like hunting I'd get stopped pretty quickly.
So here's my deal. I had set up a pattern just to find the rings I have found as well as dimes and quarters by setting a dark screen and then using Auto Accept to open up good target areas. What I noticed though was that although that pattern might have been good for the 11" it seemed ID's were shifted a bit with the 17" coil I had switched to recently. It could find some quarters and dimes but the pull tabs were overwhelming and some hit where the rings hit. I'm wondering what you guys do at such parks - do you hunt just silver and mask out (either by detector screen or brain) the left half of the screen?
I also have grown used to setting the Volume Gain up 27+ to hear the deeper targets. With the 17" I see a lot of targets indicate 12" and don't know why (they aren't that deep). Do you just resort to digging 1-3" targets and maybe drop the Volume Gain down? There were enough targets within that range to keep a person pretty busy. But maybe the good silver is deeper - don't know, didn't find any where I was hunting.
I plan now to retry setting up Accept patterns for my desired targets - but a separate Mode set up for each coil. I think even then there may be some ID skewing depending on whether I am at my backyard, a park, or at the beach. Have to verify.

 

[bklein]

I went to a park and tested the pulltabs for ID. Most were 12-15, the same ID as my favorite gold ring. So I tried to come up with something that would differentiate the two - and couldn't.
Not acceptable. I'm going to try other detectors I have to see if they can differentiate the two. I saw the videos on the Tesoro Golden uMax and it looks pretty impressive. I have a Tejon and not sure how it compares. Also have a Whites Spectrum XLT to try.

 

[trojdor]

bklein,
It will be interesting to hear your results.

My guess is that you're going to find out that your fav rings and pull tabs have the same ID on most machines...but that's just a guess.
But of all the machines I've got and/or tried, I've not had an XLT to compare...and I've been told it's a real ring magnet.

Let us know what you find.
My experience is that most gold rings lost, are lost by women...and they fall squarely in the foil and pull tab ranges on all detectors.

Acceptable or not, that's just the way it is.
But I'm certainly open to new info.

Good luck, and HH,
mike

BTW,
Park hunting is a completely different beast to beach hunting.
Beach trash (in general) either gets cleaned up, or sinks quickly down. The stuff in parks stays forever...and builds into an intimidating level of trash over time.
This trash is far more prevalent than most realize, and hides/masks more efficiently than is fair.

I tend to hunt/swing in sandy areas much faster than parks...and listen to big, obvious 'dig me' signals in sand. I call them 'engraved invitation' signals.
In parks I hunt/swing much more slowly...overlap more...and listen to the much less obvious and much more subtle signals in dirt.
Almost all of the big obvious 'dig me' silver targets were dug up 40+ years ago. Most of what is left is either deeeep, or co-located with trash.
I like to think in the terms that they're still there...they're just trying to hide from me, now.

I'll also go over the same area from different angles to try to flush out the co-locates.
And yes, although I generally prefer a more open screen, I tend to focus on the conductive signals from about 30-ish on up...occasionally going after a nice round nickel signal.

PS - as far as hunting rings in parks go, my technique is to be VERY selective of WHERE I hunt for them...
Baseball diamonds are my fav, but any sports field/area is game. Volleyball is super choice, but typically/regularly over-hunted to extinction.
Large open sports areas are:
More likely to have lost rings,
Less likely to have as much aluminum food/drink related trash.

Most lost rings get tangled/hung up in the grass roots, so a trick I use is to hunt those sports fields for shallow foil/tab signals, then quickly check them with my pulse pinpointer as well as the TRX (VLF) pinpointer.
If it's just as solid on the pulse (or moreso) as the TRX, it's worth digging.
If you get a solid signal with the TRX, but none with the Pulse pinpointer, it's foil...move on. (Pulse detectors don't see most foil well.)

The sad fact of life is that, in reality, gold jewelry can be found literally anywhere on the TID scale...and so can aluminum.
My good friend and hunting partner calls it, "God's cruel joke on detectorists."

 

[trojdor]

GOSH...Sorry that last post was so long!

I hadn't realized I was writing a book...

 

[bklein]

That's fine, Way better than too short.
I thought the same thing about the fields as its pretty bad form to take a drink on field and pull the tab off for someone to fall on...
Only danger is the lawn mowers - those guys don't mind chewing up soda cans laying around.
I quickly got tired of the tabs by eating areas and moved away to where there was foot traffic and just hunted quarters and dimes. That won't give you rings though. I really wanted old silver but I didn't set up for it and didn't find it in the short time I had there. For an area I thought was reclusive it really had a lot of surface coins. I got to the point where I wasn't going to dig more than 3" - too much work and damage to the grass. So basically I woosed out because I just wasn't enjoying it. If I had that uMax and it operated like it did in the video it would have been fun.

 

[Ben Town]

bkline
In a trashy park situation I would choise a smaller coil over the 17" .
I use my 17" in open fields with low trash.
I have a 6" coil but can't comment on how it performs yet as it's new and other then the test garden it's not been tested.
I do have a over 100 year old park that has a pavilion area that's just loaded with trash, the stock 11" coil won't separate it very well and that's where the 6" will be tested soon.
Just my 2 cents
I'll be following the post to see what shakes out
BT

 

[bklein]

You are willing to accept that the 12-15 is a pull tab then. Basically that's life with the CTX.
I haven't done any tests with pull tabs surrounding a silver coin to see how things detect out. The 6" would have to do better I would think and I don't want to dig deeper anyway.
I'm now wondering if I can design a pinpointer that will tell you if that 12-15 may be a ring rather than a pull tab. I'd rather find rings than dimes...
ID shift caused by coil or soil changes is of secondary interest, but I'll get to it.

 

[Mutley]

I like using the 10x5" Coiltek in the Parks I go to, it separates a lot better than the 11" coil, not as good as the 6" of course but the Coverage remains good. I knock back the Volume gain to 15 or a little lower and listen for the quieter signals which are usually the better deeper targets, more likely to be the goodies.

 

[cjc]

I think that a lot hunters using the CTX become too reliant on the target ID features and don't take the time to attend to the basics. This means checking the size, shape and consistency of targets--no less than you would with a pulse. That said, it's also important to remember that although the 17" coil will go deeper in open ground, its size "loads up" the machine with tasks. When you add only accepting a small range of targets--it's a lot to ask and this placesr a great emphasis on coil control. For this kind of hunting you are always better off with the stock coil. That said, there are some "standard" tab numbers that can knock out a good proportion of them. In my area there are a lot of small ovals--12-16, 17...around there. Down at the bottom most 12-1,2,3's are foils. Up above 20 you get some ring pulls but a lot of these will have the tongue attached--giving a scattered response. It's the separated ones that mimic a ring. It's really a site by site process where you can gradually "narrow the mesh" to zero in on those responses that have both good structural AND target ID characteristics. Add to this some prime ground with something that might cause gold to be lost and your chances are much better than just excavating low conductors wholesale. The CTX can take you in both directions.
cjc
clivesgoldpage.com

 

[bklein]

I tried the Spectrum XLT, GMT, Fisher Goldbug2, Classic 1 SL, and the GP Extreme and all detected the ring and pull tab pretty much identically.
The Goldbug did have a different amplitude for each (ring louder) but that doesn't help any in the field.
Now I'm going to switch to the TI LDC1000 inductive sensor to see if I notice any difference using the variations possible in its configuration.
I've done a bunch more reading and it seems the Aluminum vs Gold problem has stumped designers since day one.
I do want to look harder at PI detection too - maybe there were signatures that differ between the two - only seen on a scope, not heard in an audio output.(?)