Well not in that order nor at the same time. Took the AT to a swimming hole Friday when I got off work. I don't have the underwater headphones so I didn't dunk the AT Pro but I have a question about that.
The manual says you need the underwater headphones if you submerge the headset itself....what about using the unit with the standard headphones BUT NOT getting the headset wet itself? Could I still get the unit itself wet? It was extremely difficult to hunt in water...well I was in a river that gets trout fished and it is cold, clear, and lots of current. Swinging the coil at all was hard to do...and target recovery was even harder. I was limited to water knee-crotch deep. I don't have a scoop and doubt one would have worked here anyway due to rock and sand. I found quite a bit of coins though, after much effort. When I would move them, the current would catch them and move them a foot or more down stream from me. It was only by being lucky that I could look down into the water and spot the round discs laying there...SOMETIMES. I can tell you this hole has never been hit before or if it has, they had a sucky machine. I couldn't go 3 or 4 yards without getting a coin signal. Gonna have to come up with some better way of target recovery though or at least get to where I can lay the machine down in the water instead of holding it up in the air above the water.
So I took the machine relic hunting today. I have a video forthcoming. But might take a day or two to edit and upload. I took it to my infamous red dirt test site with all the bullets. The standard here is to take a machine I know well, mark signals with it that I know are bullets, then test the test machine out on those signals. I honestly didn't expect the AT Pro to really shine here. I don't know why I counted it out so bad; I think it was because I hadn't really dug anything deep with it yet and most of the bullets here are 6 - 14 inches and the dirt is heavily mineralized, so most VLFs don't cut it. The AT Pro ground balanced in the low 80s here and here is the kicker:
I hunted with the Minelab GPX to locate the signals. Towards the end of my trip I had totally lay the GPX down and was hunting with the AT Pro, and then using the GPX to confirm the bullet signals. Every bullet I got with the GPX first, the AT Pro hit too and I was just blown away by this.
Pro mode, Zero mode. Targets would do what I've been calling "the bounce". They read as iron ititially and then bleed over into the tab-zinc range. If they are really deep they wont even do that, just give a good solid signal. The AT Pro has fast enough of recovery speed that it would double blip on a nail and actually give those away.
In one instance, I had an iffy signal on the GPX that I thought might be a DEEEEP bullet (over 14 inches). The iron disc on the GPX works extremely well down to a certain point...seems like about 10-12 inches is the cut off for it on a nail, but at any rate I was convinced it was a real deep bullet. The AT Pro came on and it hit that signal and it double blipped on it. So it was saying it was a nail, GPX was saying iffy nail/bullet but in my mind, most likely a deep bullet. I dug it down to about 10 inches and AT Pro saying double blipping nail the whole way. Guess what it was...yep, good ole nail. VERY impressed with this little machine. It's a mid weight class machine that is fighting like a heavy weight. So versatile, has a ton of muscle, and priced right. A keeper for sure!!
The manual says you need the underwater headphones if you submerge the headset itself....what about using the unit with the standard headphones BUT NOT getting the headset wet itself? Could I still get the unit itself wet? It was extremely difficult to hunt in water...well I was in a river that gets trout fished and it is cold, clear, and lots of current. Swinging the coil at all was hard to do...and target recovery was even harder. I was limited to water knee-crotch deep. I don't have a scoop and doubt one would have worked here anyway due to rock and sand. I found quite a bit of coins though, after much effort. When I would move them, the current would catch them and move them a foot or more down stream from me. It was only by being lucky that I could look down into the water and spot the round discs laying there...SOMETIMES. I can tell you this hole has never been hit before or if it has, they had a sucky machine. I couldn't go 3 or 4 yards without getting a coin signal. Gonna have to come up with some better way of target recovery though or at least get to where I can lay the machine down in the water instead of holding it up in the air above the water.
So I took the machine relic hunting today. I have a video forthcoming. But might take a day or two to edit and upload. I took it to my infamous red dirt test site with all the bullets. The standard here is to take a machine I know well, mark signals with it that I know are bullets, then test the test machine out on those signals. I honestly didn't expect the AT Pro to really shine here. I don't know why I counted it out so bad; I think it was because I hadn't really dug anything deep with it yet and most of the bullets here are 6 - 14 inches and the dirt is heavily mineralized, so most VLFs don't cut it. The AT Pro ground balanced in the low 80s here and here is the kicker:
I hunted with the Minelab GPX to locate the signals. Towards the end of my trip I had totally lay the GPX down and was hunting with the AT Pro, and then using the GPX to confirm the bullet signals. Every bullet I got with the GPX first, the AT Pro hit too and I was just blown away by this.
Pro mode, Zero mode. Targets would do what I've been calling "the bounce". They read as iron ititially and then bleed over into the tab-zinc range. If they are really deep they wont even do that, just give a good solid signal. The AT Pro has fast enough of recovery speed that it would double blip on a nail and actually give those away.
In one instance, I had an iffy signal on the GPX that I thought might be a DEEEEP bullet (over 14 inches). The iron disc on the GPX works extremely well down to a certain point...seems like about 10-12 inches is the cut off for it on a nail, but at any rate I was convinced it was a real deep bullet. The AT Pro came on and it hit that signal and it double blipped on it. So it was saying it was a nail, GPX was saying iffy nail/bullet but in my mind, most likely a deep bullet. I dug it down to about 10 inches and AT Pro saying double blipping nail the whole way. Guess what it was...yep, good ole nail. VERY impressed with this little machine. It's a mid weight class machine that is fighting like a heavy weight. So versatile, has a ton of muscle, and priced right. A keeper for sure!!