Mick in Dubbo
New member
Returned from a 2 week holiday with the family on the Gold Coast a couple of days back and had a throughly good time. I even got to stop off and visit the grave of a well known bush ranger (known as Thunderbolt) that my great grand farther was an acquaintance of.
Between taking the kids to the theme parks and Australia Zoo (run by the Irwin family) I managed to get a good helping of detecting. Although the totals were not that impressive, I was able to play around with all my detectors, both to learn more about them individually and to compare who they stack up against each other (to some extent). After reading a couple of comments here about using the Ace in wet sand and mineralisation situations, I was able to apply some notching (first 3 notches eliminated) and reduce the sensitivity (to 5 bars) to get a much more stable performance from the Ace in these conditions. The depth halved in wet sand, but the Ace was still effective. The biggest surprise for me though, was how well the Ace performed at hitting a $2 coin at depth compared to the Explorer! A $2 coin is a smaller sized coin, so when the Ace hit it at 10 inches, I was impressed. The ID was off, but still a clear hit (using the large coil, with the sensitivity set at max). The Explorer took a dozen passes before it could pick the same coin up, but hit t on every pass after that. The X-Terra 30 with the large coil on it (all detectors had sensitivity set to max) would give an accurate visual ID but almost no sound.
As far as lawn hunting goes, I'm finding that the Ace is still my strong preference over the other 2, simply because of it's faster recovery speed (the X-Terra's are a bit faster) the accuracy of the pinpoint and the target feedback that you get in pinpoint. our $1 and $2 coins show up in the same notch on the Ace which is also another great benefit.
All in all, I found$101.52 in total, with the Ace finding $49.52, which was mostly on lawn. Personally, on the dry sand, the Ace held it's own with the Explorer, it's lower find rate on the sand was because I'd taken out the other 2 detectors over the same piece of beach, before I'd pulled out the Ace. I confirmed this, by immediately hunting the exact part of the beach with the Explorer, after hitting it with the Ace. If it ain't there, it can't be found.
The finds on the left side of the picture, were from the Ace,on the left side of the necklace was tfom the X-Terra and on the right side of the necklace were finds by the Explorer. I also fonnd an imitaion gold mens ring, but chucked it out with the rubbish from the finds.
Mick Evans.
[attachment 70707 RIMG1132.JPG]
Between taking the kids to the theme parks and Australia Zoo (run by the Irwin family) I managed to get a good helping of detecting. Although the totals were not that impressive, I was able to play around with all my detectors, both to learn more about them individually and to compare who they stack up against each other (to some extent). After reading a couple of comments here about using the Ace in wet sand and mineralisation situations, I was able to apply some notching (first 3 notches eliminated) and reduce the sensitivity (to 5 bars) to get a much more stable performance from the Ace in these conditions. The depth halved in wet sand, but the Ace was still effective. The biggest surprise for me though, was how well the Ace performed at hitting a $2 coin at depth compared to the Explorer! A $2 coin is a smaller sized coin, so when the Ace hit it at 10 inches, I was impressed. The ID was off, but still a clear hit (using the large coil, with the sensitivity set at max). The Explorer took a dozen passes before it could pick the same coin up, but hit t on every pass after that. The X-Terra 30 with the large coil on it (all detectors had sensitivity set to max) would give an accurate visual ID but almost no sound.
As far as lawn hunting goes, I'm finding that the Ace is still my strong preference over the other 2, simply because of it's faster recovery speed (the X-Terra's are a bit faster) the accuracy of the pinpoint and the target feedback that you get in pinpoint. our $1 and $2 coins show up in the same notch on the Ace which is also another great benefit.
All in all, I found$101.52 in total, with the Ace finding $49.52, which was mostly on lawn. Personally, on the dry sand, the Ace held it's own with the Explorer, it's lower find rate on the sand was because I'd taken out the other 2 detectors over the same piece of beach, before I'd pulled out the Ace. I confirmed this, by immediately hunting the exact part of the beach with the Explorer, after hitting it with the Ace. If it ain't there, it can't be found.
The finds on the left side of the picture, were from the Ace,on the left side of the necklace was tfom the X-Terra and on the right side of the necklace were finds by the Explorer. I also fonnd an imitaion gold mens ring, but chucked it out with the rubbish from the finds.
Mick Evans.
[attachment 70707 RIMG1132.JPG]
Out here we got cliff jumpers who will dive or jump off of anything that has water below it no matter how high it is. When I was a kid we used to jump off a sheer cliff 80 feet plus high into water that had filled up an old shale pit - on our bikes. We tied about 200 feet of clothsline to our bike seat and the other end to a tree, then we would ride off the edge and separate from the bike before we hit the water ( so we didn't wind up singing soprano ), swim to shore, climb up the cliff, fish our bikes out, and do it again. Anything high with water under it we would dive, jump, or ride our bikes of off. It's a wonder I've lived this long. 