Life on the hot sands of.......I'm not telling ya where one of my Cherry Patches is:nono:

[BarnacleBill]

Last Saturday I decided to hit a beach that I have covered thoroughly for many years and is resulting in leaner and leaner finds. I know that there are deep coins there that are out of reach of most of my machines, and I also know that about 75% of the area is filled with iron. So I decided to try two solutions at opposite ends of the spectrum to increase my recovery rate.

The first solution would be to use a CZ20 with 10 inch coil to go after the really deep stuff seeking out those weak low tones. In order to accomplish this I ran Sensitivity at 10 and Disc at 0(zero) all tone mode. After about an hour of loud burping low tones and a few surface clad finds, I threw in the towel. Making my way back to the Barnacle Buggy I exchanged the CZ20 for the Edge with the small Killa coil.

Now I have used the Killa coil at several beaches, and have my normal routine I go through to set the machine up. Set the Sensitivity to 8, find a clean spot to GB, turn Sensitivity up to 10 and away we go. So I followed my routine up to the point of "away we go", when a nagging little voice in the back of my head said "better check stability", since I know the sand on this beach can be shall we say, problematic(Hot). So I set the Edge to All Metal mode and pumped the coil resulting in loud tones and negatives 30's spitting from the machine. Dang, maybe I GB'd over a target, so I moved and re-GB'd, same result, then I moved again with still the same result.

As stability was going to be an issue, I reduced Sens to 9 which displayed negative 30's about 30% of the time. At a Sens setting of 8 pumping the coil yielded weak tones and occasional negative 30's about 10% of the time, which I felt I could live with. From this beach one can gaze upon an ancient volcano, but the sand looks yellowish just like any other sand, however the gravel or stones can be very reactive. Usually with the 8 inch coil on the Edge I can run Sens at 8 on this beach, and here are a few other GB settings for reference:

1. CZ20 w/ 10 inch GB is 2 to 2.5, keep in mind the CZ20 is locked in salt mode for normal CZ users.
2. ML X-Terra 50 GB is 1 to 2.
3. ML X-Terra 70 GB is 10 to 14.

So the moral of the story is, that even though you can usually run the Sens wide open with the Killa coil, it won't always be the case, and if working through trash, having an unstable machine will make searching even noisier.

There were no earth shattering finds this day, but the copper nails were a definite surprise. I thought I had cleaned most of these out some time ago, only finding maybe one every couple hunts. But this shows what heavy iron masking can do, as these nails were found at 1 to 4 inches of depth in the iron. Also the chunk of lead above the tabs is coated in rust from being mixed in with the iron.


The Killa coil showed once again that it can produce.
[attachment 38084 calHot.jpg]
HH
BarnacleBill

 

[Jackpine Savage]

When you GB'd the Edge with the Sens at 8 did you always get one beep? The reason I ask is that a couple lakes around here will not GB at higher sens settings you always get the 4 beeps. I have to reduce the sens to 6 to get it to give one beep but am always able to raise the sensitivity back up to any level I want with smooth performance.

One other quirk of the Edge, which I found out later from another forum member is not unusual with other detectors, is that when looking for a clean spot to GB at one of my sites the detector was reading high 30's all over the ground even though I know from past hunts the area is relatively clean except for the iron. I do not know if the GB from the last site was carried over and was so far off from the site I was at that hot rocks were showing up or what was going on. I just went ahead and GB'd the Edge and the phantom 30's signals disappeared. Have you ever run into this in that ground of yours?

Tom

 

[BarnacleBill]

Hi Tom,

Nope, only single beeps every time, which shows that it varies enough to not tell you the GB was "the same" as the previous. One thing I would have liked to seen was a numerical GB indication, even a 10 scale would have been helpful.

Yes on the 30's, at one point I asked Fisher if there were any key press combos to set the Excel or Edge back to a centered starting point on GB and the answer was no. Now I had a very specific need for that type of feature, and it has to do with saltwater hunting. If you arrive at a saltwater beach and it has rained the night before, then there is NO dry sand to be found. And I would have liked to get the machine back to at least a centered GB like the fixed machines have to reduce falsing.

HH
BarnacleBill

 

[Bavaria Mike]

n/t

 

[Mike Hillis]

I had been wondering how to know I have my sensitivity set correctly for my ground. That always seems the most difficult setting to achieve. I knew there had to be a way. I'd been guessing most of the time based upon what I knew about the ground.

By the way, the ground at that beach sounds like my normal ground. I get worse. The Xterra70 balanced out most times between 8 and 12. 14 was good ground here.

Great report and I can't wait to try this out.

 

[Bill Ladd]

I like how you always show every single item that comes up. That's cool......
I always just put the good things in my hand