rookie with an F4

[TXdavid]

I have to say that I have had a blast my first 2 times out. RFtexas has been coaching me on the finer aspects of mding. We have found coins on both hunts.
If you have an F4 and have any tips for a novice I would love to hear them.

 

[mudpuppy]

Go early, and go often! Think about your location, find "the lane". Think about what you find and where and why was this item here? Is there a pattern to this particular site? Get fast with target retrieval, especially if you like clad stabbin'. As far as set up of your F4, try not to run too high of a sens for starters, especially if you are in the trash, read as many of these posts as you can, even on the other threads, try to emulate other successful hunters habits, styles, thinking. This is more of a thinking game than anything, the rest of the skills just take time and practice, your machine is quite capable of paying for itself very quickly, its up to you to see that it does! Good Luck!
Mud

 

[richard thompson]

My first year and half with my F4 I got about 3500 coins and 7 rings. After digging up many bottle caps which read about the same as a quarter I found out how to tell the difference. If you swing the detector over the same spot very fast several times and it does not respond as a coin then it is a bottle cap. Also, get a garrett pen pointer, you will be able to locate the coin fast without digging up a yard of dirt. Have fun!

 

[TXdavid]

Thanks for the quick responses. I certainly can understand what your saying about thinking and making good assessments of the location. This came true for me just yesterday. I wished I would have read your responses before I went out yesterday because I dug up about 6 bottle caps . I think I learned my lesson on them. This was my first outing without my coach, Rftexas and I did pretty well at a school even though I dug a lot of trash. I found a Putt Putt token, a 90's dime, 2 pennies, and a 1994 dog tag. Needless to say I am hooked and cant wait to get back out again. I just got my Garrett Pro Pointer this week and it really takes the work out of it..

 

[nimbus]

I too am a new collector. I have the F5. Mr. Thompson your advice about bottle caps is a keen interest of mine. I have found that on many occasions I get one tone and target ID when I sweep left to right (70) over a single target and a different tone and target ID (85) when I sweep over the same spot from right to left. Following everyone's advice, 'when in doubt dig'. As an example, I find an inconsistent batch of old metal twist caps, the tops or bottoms of pull tab cans, quarters or dimes. Has anyone else had shared experiences like this? And is there any tuning in the settings that might help, although I don't mind helping to "clean out" an area for later collections or collectors. As a note I am using the 3 tone mode.