There was a post recently, which I cannot find right now, about the problems of finding good targets in really trashy sites. I'd like to offer a bit of my own experience and hopefully some encouragement to those new to the hobby. I've used an MXT for a few years now and only recently have I felt like I can really understand when it "talks" to me. At first I was intimidated with it and thought I had made a big mistake, but now I'm so very glad I hung on. I'm attaching some photos of an old dumpsite that I hunt regularly. As you can see in the ground photo, it is littered with all sizes of rusty iron, aluminum, lead, copper and brass, as well as thousands of bits of broken glass of every imaginable color and hue. What passes for ground is sometimes simply ash from burned combustibles collected over the past century and a half.
The only coil I've found usable in this site is a little Excelerator 5" DD, and even with it I sometimes find several targets within its range at once. Without imtimate familiarity with my machine I would undoubtedly miss a lot of good targets, and probably still do, but it does a phenomenal job of separation. Most everything I've found there has been in Relic Mode, trigger forward, gain at preset or higher if possible, ground track and threshold barely audible. Recently I've discovered that Prospecting Mode, trigger forward (not sure it that's necessary), ground lock, SAT as high as practical works even better if I keep a real close eye on the VDI's. In either mode I go at a snail's pace and dig the deeper "iffy" signals. When practical, I dig all small non-ferrous above 0 VDI.
ALL the items in the photos are from this garbage site, so the MXT CAN pull them out. Not shown here are a lot of other finds such as 1889 Seated Dime, 1907 IH, numerous silver Mexican coins, 1860's era Emperor Maximilian tunic button, various tokens and artifacts, pounds of lead, brass, etc. My point is, hang in there! Get to know your machine, whatever it may be, extremely well and you will find good stuff wherever you may live! HH
Marc
The only coil I've found usable in this site is a little Excelerator 5" DD, and even with it I sometimes find several targets within its range at once. Without imtimate familiarity with my machine I would undoubtedly miss a lot of good targets, and probably still do, but it does a phenomenal job of separation. Most everything I've found there has been in Relic Mode, trigger forward, gain at preset or higher if possible, ground track and threshold barely audible. Recently I've discovered that Prospecting Mode, trigger forward (not sure it that's necessary), ground lock, SAT as high as practical works even better if I keep a real close eye on the VDI's. In either mode I go at a snail's pace and dig the deeper "iffy" signals. When practical, I dig all small non-ferrous above 0 VDI.
ALL the items in the photos are from this garbage site, so the MXT CAN pull them out. Not shown here are a lot of other finds such as 1889 Seated Dime, 1907 IH, numerous silver Mexican coins, 1860's era Emperor Maximilian tunic button, various tokens and artifacts, pounds of lead, brass, etc. My point is, hang in there! Get to know your machine, whatever it may be, extremely well and you will find good stuff wherever you may live! HH
Marc
