Now I KNOW my machine is bonkers!!
I'm pushing the envelope as far as getting my machine back to garrett before my warranty expires, but I keep thinking that it's *ME* and not the machine.
But today I was out to a place where I had high expectations for coinage, with a reasonable expectation of silver.
I was out for about 2 hours, and getting a LOT of erratic signals and falsing. I got a few solid hits, but then they would go ragged, then clean, then ragged again, but always showing somewhere in the coin range, though it varied. I dug one of them, and it was a bottlecap. After about half an hour, just for kicks I notched out everything under a dime. That quieted down the machine considerably, but I was getting almost no hits at all. I got one clean signal, but in all metal, I traced a target abut a foot long. When I reswept it, I got a good signal all along it's length, maybe a buried copper tube or something. I got a few of the irritating "disappearing coin" crap, where I would find what looked like a dime or quarter about 2" down, but when I went to dig it, the signal disappeared completely.
The final insult came as I went to another spot about 50 ft away. I carried the machine by the shaft, and the damned thing started bonging at me with every step. So I stood still, held the machine by the shaft horizontal to the ground and moved it rapidly up and down - bong-bong-bong with every move.
Totally disgusted, I turned it off and came home.
Now for the fun part: I came in the house, got my video camera to document it, went outside, turned on the machine and started to shake it as I had before. It was FLAWLESS! I couldn't get a bouncy-bong out of it to save my freaging LIFE!
Garrett wants a "short" note describing my problem, but I don't think all the problems I've had will FIT on a short note.
Come hell or high water, I've had it: it's going back tomorrow. With a LONG note.
On the bright side, I did manage to find a clad dime and a quarter. [sigh...]