BarnacleBill
New member
This morning I had about an hour to visit a location which I call Aggravation Beach to test out how the LF coil would handle this difficult area. As you can see pictured below the area is a bed of large gravel/P-stone size and larger, over which sand lays at various thicknesses. The cottages that front this area are circa 1900 so some old silver is possible as I have pulled some early wheaties out of here.
[attachment 24036 aggrv.jpg]
I used the following procedure to set the machine up for this area and I recount it to help some of those new to the X70.
1. First order of business was to hold coil waist high and parallel to the ground. Then Noise Cancel was brought up on the Menu and Auto pushed and the X70 allowed to find the cleanest frequency. Note: You need to hold the coil parallel to the ground, not vertical, and not at 45 degs or so. The coil is directional so you want to achieve the greatest cancellation at the coil angle you will be hunting at.
2. Sensitivity was then set to 15.
3. Coins mode and AM(All Metal) were engaged.
4. A clean spot was located to GB in, but here is a special note. Since I am working in a gravel bank with rocks varying inch by inch in their ground characteristics, I made sure I had about a 3ft coil path swing, clear of any targets for the GB method I was about to use.
5. I engaged GB and then immediately entered tracking mode and observed what the ground was giving for numbers as I CONSISTENTLY swung over the same patch. The numbers were varying between 8 to 12 over this patch. Here a decision needed to be made, take the mid-point 10, or opt to go more positive which I did at a setting of 8. I opted not to use tracking from this point forward because I felt the ground matrix would be changing at an extreme rate, in the future I may try it, but I wanted to establish a baseline behavior.
6. Without moving my feet, I entered Coins AM mode, and then I went to Menu/Sensitivity and pushed the sens up to 28. I went back to AM and bobbed the coil as if GB'ing over various spots in my GB patch. I was receiving low tones and (-)8's from various spots so I began lowering the sensitivity and checking using the above procedure. The machine stopped responding to the gravel with a Sens=20 setting.
The machine ran very quiet, absolutely no hot rock falsing. Keep in mind that fixed GB machines need not apply here, you will lose your mind! I did use stability mode as a little added insurance, and on junk targets noticed a wild disparity between tone and visual ID amidst this gravel.
With the short time only a few targets were found, the most notable being a quarter that locked solid and was at 10+ inches, I was so hoping for silver that deep, but clad she was.
A Barnacle Tip: On freshwater lake beaches, that could have old coins, never ever ignore surface targets that may ID at a desired number. I have found countless old coins on the surface brought there, or exposed by storm/wave action, ice sheet plowing, or beach cleaning(some beaches are cleaned with road rakes).
HH
BarnacleBill
[attachment 24036 aggrv.jpg]
I used the following procedure to set the machine up for this area and I recount it to help some of those new to the X70.
1. First order of business was to hold coil waist high and parallel to the ground. Then Noise Cancel was brought up on the Menu and Auto pushed and the X70 allowed to find the cleanest frequency. Note: You need to hold the coil parallel to the ground, not vertical, and not at 45 degs or so. The coil is directional so you want to achieve the greatest cancellation at the coil angle you will be hunting at.
2. Sensitivity was then set to 15.
3. Coins mode and AM(All Metal) were engaged.
4. A clean spot was located to GB in, but here is a special note. Since I am working in a gravel bank with rocks varying inch by inch in their ground characteristics, I made sure I had about a 3ft coil path swing, clear of any targets for the GB method I was about to use.
5. I engaged GB and then immediately entered tracking mode and observed what the ground was giving for numbers as I CONSISTENTLY swung over the same patch. The numbers were varying between 8 to 12 over this patch. Here a decision needed to be made, take the mid-point 10, or opt to go more positive which I did at a setting of 8. I opted not to use tracking from this point forward because I felt the ground matrix would be changing at an extreme rate, in the future I may try it, but I wanted to establish a baseline behavior.
6. Without moving my feet, I entered Coins AM mode, and then I went to Menu/Sensitivity and pushed the sens up to 28. I went back to AM and bobbed the coil as if GB'ing over various spots in my GB patch. I was receiving low tones and (-)8's from various spots so I began lowering the sensitivity and checking using the above procedure. The machine stopped responding to the gravel with a Sens=20 setting.
The machine ran very quiet, absolutely no hot rock falsing. Keep in mind that fixed GB machines need not apply here, you will lose your mind! I did use stability mode as a little added insurance, and on junk targets noticed a wild disparity between tone and visual ID amidst this gravel.
With the short time only a few targets were found, the most notable being a quarter that locked solid and was at 10+ inches, I was so hoping for silver that deep, but clad she was.
A Barnacle Tip: On freshwater lake beaches, that could have old coins, never ever ignore surface targets that may ID at a desired number. I have found countless old coins on the surface brought there, or exposed by storm/wave action, ice sheet plowing, or beach cleaning(some beaches are cleaned with road rakes).
HH
BarnacleBill