New and need some 505 help

[KNMIB1]

I am fairly new to this hobby. I love my 505 the only problem I have is that I hunt primarily with auto notch and it seems I get a lot of readings with high pitch then low pitch or visa versa. I dig everything but would like to not dig tabs. Any ideas?

 

[mudpuppy]

Just a lot of practice, and try lowering your sens to about half power, When I was new, an old timer told me if I wanted to get real good, real fast, to go out and dig 1000 pennys and dig 1000 tabs, and to use nothing but a screwdriver as a digging tool....He was right, I still use the screwdriver for 99.999% of my targets. If you get really good and fast on this retrieval method, you can find 200 targets per outing instead of 100, therefore, your learning curve is greatly accelerated. I still run sens at half power or less, results? Last year, my second year detecting, I decided to keep track of clad coins, got 10,200 of them for 804.00...It really does take several months of committed hunting to get to know what your machine is telling you, even then, theres always a surprise along the way, multidenom stacks and spills can be a challenge, but after a while, you will be so good, you wont miss much of anything..keep the sens low, disc out iron if you must, and practice.
Mud

 

[salmonriverhotrock]

I'm a 505 owner myself but am curious why so soon in the game are you off into notching?

 

[KNMIB1]

No idea seemed like a good way to go. I am new to the 505 I used to play around with a cheaper unit and now I have time to get more serious. Any ideas would help. Thanks for serving our country.

 

[BH505Man]

When I first started using my 505, I started out using autonotch and notch modes because I didn't want to dig a lot of junk. However, I have since learned that by doing so that I missed many valuable targets such as gold jewelry, nickels, brass trade tokens, etc. I now use disc mode with the disc/notch knob fully ccw. I also do not hesitate to turn the sensitivity knob down even as low as 12 o'clock as needed if I start to get false signals or the detector beeps irratically. I now dig all good steady signals. My best find this year was a brass trade token that sounded off like a zinc penny. I sold it for 100 dollars and it paid for most of the cost of my 11" DD coil. Had I been discriminating out zinc pennies like I used to, I would have missed it. With your detector set as I described, it will id your targets and give the targets depth,then you can decide whether to dig it or not. Remember, to find gold you need to dig all targets from iron to zinc range.
Walt from Washington State
Veteran US Air Force TSgt Retired

 

[KNMIB1]

Thanks for the advice. My response was delayed because we were wiped out by a tornado Nov. 17th. We lost everything but I did recover my 505 and my digging supplies. It will be some time before I get back to it plus we are now frozen. I can't wait to dig this spring it will be a great relief while we rebuild.