A
Anonymous
Guest
I recently bought my first metal detector, an Explorer, and I have had it out the past two weekends. However, I have had a very difficult time recognizing the various tones, and in analyzing the smartfind and digital windows. I was not making very much progress. For one thing, by the time I located and dug up 6-8 targets, the afternoon was shot.
What has really helped me is this week I got an old deck of playing cards and I super glued coins of various denominations to the front of the cards. I also gathered other small pieces of various types of metal from my garage, including several types of pull tabs, and glued them to the cards too. This evening I took these cards out, shuffled them up, and I dealt them in rows on my front lawn with the metal sides down. Not knowing which cards had the coins under them, I would run the Explorer over the cards and carefully analyze each target in an attempt to identify the coin targets. After repeating this process about three times, I soon found that I was only flipping up the cards with the coins attached to them. I quickly improved my tone recognition and ability to analyze the windows. I also would close my eyes and practice my pinpointing, while in the pinpoint mode, and I really got good at putting the detector right over the center of the targets with my eyes closed. I learned more this evening, in one hour, about using the Explorer than I did in the two previous weekends combined. It really has sped up the learning curve for me. I am going to continue to practice with my metal flash cards, but I am starting to feel a great deal more confident with this detector now. I know this is a longer post, but hopefully it will be a tip that other new Explorer users can try and learn from. I know that it has helped with my frustrations in learning to use this detector.
What has really helped me is this week I got an old deck of playing cards and I super glued coins of various denominations to the front of the cards. I also gathered other small pieces of various types of metal from my garage, including several types of pull tabs, and glued them to the cards too. This evening I took these cards out, shuffled them up, and I dealt them in rows on my front lawn with the metal sides down. Not knowing which cards had the coins under them, I would run the Explorer over the cards and carefully analyze each target in an attempt to identify the coin targets. After repeating this process about three times, I soon found that I was only flipping up the cards with the coins attached to them. I quickly improved my tone recognition and ability to analyze the windows. I also would close my eyes and practice my pinpointing, while in the pinpoint mode, and I really got good at putting the detector right over the center of the targets with my eyes closed. I learned more this evening, in one hour, about using the Explorer than I did in the two previous weekends combined. It really has sped up the learning curve for me. I am going to continue to practice with my metal flash cards, but I am starting to feel a great deal more confident with this detector now. I know this is a longer post, but hopefully it will be a tip that other new Explorer users can try and learn from. I know that it has helped with my frustrations in learning to use this detector.
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