Wow, was that really necessary? You don't seem to be paying much attention to what I'm saying here and reading into it things I'm not even commenting on or arguing about, so there's no need for the snub. Read back through this thread again and then ask yourself if it was really necessary to get a short with people here. I'm not making a comment about it's performance, I'm talking about it's size for beach hunting. The 8" BBS (7 1/4" in size, ain't it?) coil on my friend's Excal looks like a hockey puck to me. Not really that much bigger than my S-5, so I can see why people recommend using that coil for max trash separation rather than buying an S-5 or Excelerator 5". There really wouldn't be the much difference in separation probably, or at least that one could notice. I'm not knocking the coil, as my friend has dug a ton of rings water hunting with it. I know it goes deep too, I just personally wouldn't want to use something that small while water or beach hunting. That's all I was saying, nothing more, and if you want to flame that then feel free, but I really don't see the point. No argument here, as we are talking about two different things.
And as for air tests and compiling data....I find it funny that some people feel it doesn't offer the same as in field experience (which it doesn't, of course), and therefor it should be shunned as something like the black plague. The truth is that knowledge is king, and in that respect ANY aspect of this field is what I'm interested in. Whether that be in field reports, personal experience, or somebody conducting tests on machines at home. They all offer up bits of data that can be compared for contrast. Just like there is something to be said for actual in field experience, there is also much to be said for controlled environments, settings, and intentionaly induced circumstances at thome.
Here's a point to that aspect...Typical high kill trades involving sophisticated electronic equipment involve about a 50/50 mixture of school training, half being lab (actual equipment use), and the other half being theory/book work/& testing of that equipment. I follow the same line of reasoning in metal detecting. Sure, there are going to be things that only can be learned in the field, but there are also things to be learned that you might not ever know unless you take the time to conduct controlled testing of various settings and situations. If you're a "lab guy" then I have no problem with that. What I do have a problem with is somebody telling me that nothing else matters. Maybe for you, but not for me. I've learned too much by trying to prove or disprove what is "conventional wisdom" in this field by crunching those numbers, conducting those tests, and asking those questions that seem to be sacrilegious to much of the detecting crowd. I never was one for organized religion, so I choose to question the origins of some of this "mythology" in this field.
Fri st of all you can never have too many coils for ones detector. The only question now is since I have the 10" BBS coil I don't need another 10" coil only a 8" one. So we have the S-8 and the Mineab both are close in price, the Mineab being few bucks more. BTW the UPS man show up last night with my new toy, like a kid in the candy store it didn't take me long to open the box and put her together then since I have already read the manual twice and watch the video I headed right to my test garden which has been in place for years. After turning her on and setting the controls I when over each target and understand now that this is going take some getting use to but all my targets which are down at 8" came in loud and clear, sounded like what you hear from a pipe organ
