Just a question on TID machines

[BarberBill]

We all know (or should) that the Target Identification machines give info that is the detector's best guess. That said, on the TID machines I've used, often trash will be displayed as a coin, however, I don't remember ever retrieving a coin that displayed as trash. It seems that when the target actually is a coin, the display is generally surprisingly accurate. Was just wondering about others observations on this?
Thanks,
BB

 

[gmanlight]

There's a exception to every rule. ROTTEN ZINKCONS

 

[therover]

A lot of those freaking things sound like gold on the salt water beaches here in NJ !

 

[Larry (IL)]

TID does have it's faults, it is just another tool to help you deside to dig or not. TID will be off on multiple targets, good target next to trash, really deep targets, targets on edge and many more reasons. BUT, for most targets up to 6 inches in depth the TID is a pretty good guesser.

 

[Hombre]

I'll dig every zinc signal there is because most people walk right past them. Some neat old items and large men's 10Kt class rings come in at the zinc ID....and Ta Da... Indian Head pennies, watch fobs, store card tokens($$$) deep barber dimes, you name it. There, I just blew my cover, and gave away a priceless tip

 

[Jim West Pa]

n/t

 

[UK Brian]

This is where you need an established test bed at least a few years old. Most modern detectors on my test bed I.D. semi correctly ie ferrous or non ferrous, to five or six inches. Beyond that depth copper, silver or gold move down the scale and can I.D. as iron. The more mineralised the ground the worse the effect.
George Payne, the father of S.P.D. (motion) detectors recognised this and did produce some models that pulled the target response up into the non ferrous which didn't make the I.D. right but made it more likely you would dig.

The Whites Spectrum and Fisher CZ's that came out about the same time illustrate the two sides of detector design. Deeper items can't be I.D.'d correctly so the Whites designers opted to indicate iffy signals as "bad" so you didn't dig them and the detector had a reputation of excellent iron rejection though many of the bad targets were in fact good. The Fisher designers opted to I.D. doubtful responses towards the "good" side. Thus it got the reputation as an iron magnet when in fact it really enabled you to dig more good targets overall but at the price of an increased number of ferrous as well.

With a modern detector like an XP or T2 when tones are used you find that the I.D. fails at a shallower depth thus I prefer to use them as "beep and dig" like most of the Tesoro models.

 

[digginLa]

My DeLeon did well id'ing zinc pennies and dimes down to 7-8" and was even fairly accurate on the depth of the coins, my Omega will sometimes show a zinc penny as a screw cap and the depth meter seems to be off at least on shallow coins, I dug one penny Sat that it showed at 2" but was down at least 4".

 

[BarberBill]

Well one thing I didn't mention, but have discovered showed up in this thread. Dig zincs - fairly often you'll dig a goodie that id's as a zinc. I've found several small, gold rings that did that. Anyway, nearly every clean coin signal that was a coin has been quite accurate in my experience. Mixed signals such as masked targets and coin spills are something else again, but if you know your machine pretty well and have detected a lot you learn to dig these as well, just in case.
BB