Last weekend I visited a beach on the East coast of NSW....I haven't been to this part of the coast for over 18 months, and when I saw the beach I was shocked...the whole beach was about 2' lower than normal, parts of a huge retaining wall had been eroded to the point of collapse etc....there were pebbles,stones and rocks on parts of the beach that I had never seen before...The first morning I used the Excalibur, and dug up 83 coins, 51 of them were pre 1964 (the last year of minting any of our pre-decimal currency) and these pre-decimal coins must have been lost prior to 1968. All were covered with a hard verdigris, and I am still in the process of cleaning them. I have dated some to between 1947 and 1956. On the second morning I returned to the beach, which had commenced the process of repairing itself. I decided to give the X-Terra 70 (with my new 3kHz coil) a go. The area where I had found the coins was on both mornings in the west sand area with waves still washing over, but not more than about 1' deep. With the X Terra 70 I was able to find a 3d and a 6d, which are both small silver coins (50% silver) and two decimal coins. I thought it had done well, as this beach has large quantities of black sand, which , when stirred up can make detecting with a PI machine frustrating and difficult...there are also a good quantity of hot rocks littered around, even at normal times.
Having used the X Terra for a short while, I decided to give the Excalibur another go, and it did find more coins, which on the second morning were at a greater depth, but it only found 13 on that morning..... I thought, considering the circumstances, the X Terra did very well, as the conditions were very difficult for a VLF machine. The depth of the coins it found was something between 2" to 4", I had it in beach mode,All Metal with Tracking on. There was little to no falsing, and I kept the coil out of the waves to prevent the false signals which the waves cause as they wash over the coil. I've used the X Terra 70 at the beach before, with success, but these were definitely the toughest conditions in which I had used it. I didn't expect it to do as well as the Excal., but I think it actually performed a bit better than I thought it might. If you've got this far, thanks for reading, and I hope it helps anyone who is considering taking their X Terra to the beach.
Having used the X Terra for a short while, I decided to give the Excalibur another go, and it did find more coins, which on the second morning were at a greater depth, but it only found 13 on that morning..... I thought, considering the circumstances, the X Terra did very well, as the conditions were very difficult for a VLF machine. The depth of the coins it found was something between 2" to 4", I had it in beach mode,All Metal with Tracking on. There was little to no falsing, and I kept the coil out of the waves to prevent the false signals which the waves cause as they wash over the coil. I've used the X Terra 70 at the beach before, with success, but these were definitely the toughest conditions in which I had used it. I didn't expect it to do as well as the Excal., but I think it actually performed a bit better than I thought it might. If you've got this far, thanks for reading, and I hope it helps anyone who is considering taking their X Terra to the beach.