Just got my Excalibur, can't wait 'til the weekend!

[china-clipper]

Well, just got the Excalibur I bought on eBay; the battery has some charge to it so I assembled it and tried it out in my house. Man, this is going to take SOME getting used to. I'm used to the steady tone of my PI and the sounds from this beast remind me of my DFX with the tones enabled. I hope I can hit the beach on Saturday for a shakedown cruise with it.

 

[Gulf Hunter]

Highly recommended read for your Excal success. Good luck to ya!

 

[china-clipper]

Not yet, I was looking it over on the web site but haven't ordered it yet.

 

[adam in cal]

thats quite an arsenal you got going there, I am sure you will love it, just remember be paitent and dont try to figure it all out on the first trip , just let it work and have fun , eventually all of the nuiances will come to ya.........good luck

 

[china-clipper]

Maybe I'm experiencing a truly dumb moment here; but the battery charger and the battery pack do not have any type of indicator to signal when the battery pack has reached full charge. I have a $7 wall charger for nicads that has an indicator; am I wrong that my $1,000 detector battery has to be "guess-timated" as to when it's charged? If so, isn't there any "smart" chargers available?

 

[Gulf Hunter]

The charger that comes with the unit works fine in my opinion. Put it on charge all night and she'll be ready to hunt, before you put her in the truck. Always charge all night before a hunt. This works for me.
GH

 

[china-clipper]

OK, I'll give it a shot. Does the battery get warm when charged?

 

[china-clipper]

After all I've read here on the forums, I hope I can get acclimated to the Excal quickly. I guess I'll try weaning myself off the PI a little at a time

 

[Gulf Hunter]

n/t

 

[Gulf Hunter]

It will help you tremendously with the learning curve. Don't get in too big a hurry to just replace the PI. I use both, have Aquasearch Goldquest. The Excal shines in iron infested surf, bays and lakes. PI still gets the nod for scalding depth. Excal is deep, don't get me wrong, but maybe not PI PRO deep. GH

 

[Mephysto]

Excalibur and SovGt: "Princes of tides". No way for the others. Once you master the tone system you can really imagine what's waiting underground to be digged. Anyway I'm going to buy a surmaster P.I. pro to use it in no infested areas and to test its deep skill. I've never used a P.I.; I imagine there's no tone changing so how can you fell the presence of a target?

 

[china-clipper]

Actually the White's PI is amazingly simple: you set a low threshold buzz and then as you sweep you listen for ANY change in threshold. A loud ping will either be an iron target or a very large or shallow non-ferrous target. It's the "whispers" that tell you there's gold. A faint throb or increase in sound usually reveals a deep non-ferrous target. The gold rings I've found with my PI were about 10 to 12 inches deep in the rock beneath the sand in about three feet of water. The PI does have amazing depth, but can't discriminate; I've also dug a LOT of iron, pulltabs, bottlecaps, bobby pins, etc. Hence, my getting the Excal to try. I intend on keeping both machines.

 

[Wisconsin Pete]

n/t

 

[Mephysto]

Thanks China-clipper for the explanation: I think Excalibur & P.I. could be the right choice to pick up all is underwater.

 

[Bobbie]

You should always have a backup battery on hand.
I recently bought a NiCad/NiMH battery charger and it charges the battery within an hour and automatically senses it and shuts off. I have used the chargers that come with the Excal and done the 12-14 hour charge on them but I find that I get only 5-6 hours to the charge before the death squeal. I have checked with Minelab and one of the technicians has told me that 8 hours is good and 12 hours the best. SunRay used to sell a NiMH battery and charger for the Excal, but they no longer sell that one and they are in the process of getting another one ready for the market. We have a NiMH battery and it does last about 30 hours. There is a company "Batterys Plus" that will rebuild your NiCad into a NiMH battery for about $35. When our 3 NiCads start to die off, we will go that route.

 

[china-clipper]

Bobby, do you have more information on that charger that you have? I'd be interested rather than have to guess-timate the charge on the NiCad. I will most likely change over to a NiMH also when the NiCad fails.
Thanks, Rick