Hey Joe,
That seems to happen alot during metal detecting--you go over your grided area 50 times, and then someone else comes in and finds a coin. I have done it to myself, I have done it to my friend Richard, and he has done it to me. We both have explorer XS's and were using identical settings. I think that there are several variables that must be just right in order to hear a given coin. I have an area that I have collected zillions of time. I went out there last week and found an 1884 seated liberty dime in awesome condition--I really didn't think there was anything left in that area.
My friend Richard and I hit a very small area about 10 times and covered it really good. I came in for an 11th time and found a 1927S standing liberty quarter. Neither Richard nor I could believe it because the quarter was such a strong and obvious hit!
There is certainly nothing wrong with heavy discrimination to get those obvious coin hits. But the drawback is that with lots of discrimination, the iffy coin signals will sound even worse, or will altogether dissappear. So if you want to really comb an area for the rest of the coins that are there, you must open up your machine by reducing the amount of discrimination you are using. Use iron mask -10 in ADVANCED Mode to start with. Iron mask -10 creates a simple rectangularly shaped pattern on the left side of the screen. Don't swing fast. Have about a 3 second sweep and touch the ground with the coil at all times. Practice sweeping over some coins ON CLEAN GROUND at different altitudes in order to learn basic coin sounds. Notice the higher your coil, the more warbling the coin produces. When you are detecting in the field, you must adjust your manual sensitivity down and up. If you are in a clean area, you can turn it up pretty high (25, 29). Then when you get into localized trash pods, or in trashy areas, turn your sensitivity down until the signals quit sounding like sticky splats. You get better depth by doing that. If you have a dense trash layer at 6 inches deep, then your maximum depth potential will probably be 6 inches at optimum sensitivity settings. With super high sensitivity, that trash will probably drown out the coins at 6 inches. But if you reduce your sensitivity appropriately, you will be able to hear those 6 inch coins.
When you get over a nice, high-sounding signal. Make very fast little swings over the target and the signal will improve. I think the signals are the best when the sweep speed is real fast. BUT, you cannot use this fast speed on normal sweeps because the signal processor in the machine only works at a certain rate. If you go too fast, the machine will miss targets. Only use the fast little sweeps when you are checking out a target you already know is there. The little sweeps should be about 6 inches long.
If you don't know what settings to use, just set up your machine with the Mike Moutray settings which are posted on this site. Stick with these settings and don't change them. If you change your settings around all the time, you will not learn the sounds. Learning the sounds is the most important part of using the XS and XS2. Only adjust sensitivity when needed.
Mike
