So, Monte is a new F5 owner...congrats!
The man knows a great deal when he sees one.
Pretty cool little tool, I am enjoying it immensely.
Not done with the Sharpshooter here yet but I switched over to the sniper concentric because I just wanted to compare a little and see if it is still as good at unmasking as I remembered it on the F2...or better.
Seems to be, most of the targets on this second hunt were not near in-your-face obvious as the first hunt with the Nel, only by manipulating the coil around many of them was I able to get more solid signals I was willing to dig and so many were very short signals I easily could have missed without spending a few extra moments manipulating that coil from different angles.
If I was able to get these same signals in the Nel I would have dug them, I assure you, and I made sure I manipulated that coil all over the place on that Nel hunt, too.
Just the luck of the draw, here, I am not worried at all that the Nel is not up to the task in this dirt but I have learned that many great targets will come in as one way hits or very iffy and bouncy, initially, and only by examining them further with coil movements from different angles can I get those iffy signals to calm down and come in as good to go after targets.
On this hunt I just happened to hit most of these from different angles than the first Nel hunt so I didn't get the short, quick behavior to make me stop to look at them closer on that first hunt...evidently.
This is not a one time visit here at this site so that's ok, out in the field at sites I don't spend the same amount of time at I do examine most targets from at least two angles if not more if I get a hint of a good signal and that is using all my detectors including the F70 and the Nox because it happens on all of them in this weird dirt.
In Kansas not so much, there it was much easier to get great, solid signals right off the bat and I needed to do much less closer inspections and different angle attacks but if I didn't take a few extra moments to do that here I suspect I might have found about 50% less of the good targets I eventually recovered.
Freaking southern hot dirt...yea, we are blessed with it but we learn to deal mostly because we have no choice.
Several targets on this hunt were badly masked by iron in the hole right next to, around or under them on this hunt, mostly the wheats, but more on that in a bit.
I forgot to mention that happened at least once in the Nel hunt too, I recovered a coin in the same hole as a, light, hot rock...a coal clinker, I believe.
This time it was actual garbage iron that vexed me.
Not a long hunt again, started late in the day and it got up to the 80's again and the sun was pounding on me so I got a bit overheated but much cooler weather is coming and I hope it stays around when it does.
10 years ago I could handle the heat easily, for some reason it is just not enjoyable to sweat a lot in the heat when I hunt nowadays...I lose energy fast.
Getting old ain't for sissy's.
I mounted the sniper concentric and I was a little surprised at the high quality.
I went looking for my F2 because it has the sniper still mounted on it but I realized I have it in storage so I will have to go get it and bring it back home.
For some reason I don't remember the F2 sniper coil being exactly the same as this one, I remember it being a bit thicker and not so solid and heavy as this F5 sniper and built slightly different but I could be completely wrong.
The mind plays tricks as we get older.
Again Wi-Fi and EMI messing with me but it was about the same as it was with the Nel coil.
I could get up to about all the same settings and keep it quiet, it balanced at about the same numbers too...perhaps the great stability I saw with the F5 at other sites away from EMI didn't have as much to do with the Nel coil as I thought at first.
Maybe it is just a real super duper stable detector overall no matter what coil I use so when I go back to that much quieter site where I found that Barber, probably with the 10" elliptical concentric, I will see.
I wanted greater stability than I have with the F70, hoped for it anyway, looks like I might have got it with this one.
It was a short hunt but fun, another quarter popped up, a couple more clad dimes and a few more cruddy zincolns, too, but 5 wheats showed up also so I am slowly getting into more of the older stuff now.
Hopefully silver is getting closer by the day.
Hunting these lawns is a process, ya gotta have patience to deal with the masking and get to all the layers efficiently but I have that and I know if I keep at it I will stay successful and eventually find the real good stuff.
On this hunt I think a lot of these coins might have been on edge, maybe most of them, for sure at least two of these iffier coins were standing vertical sticking to the side of the sticky plug when I pulled them up.
Three of those wheats were in the hole really close to rusty iron, the nut covered with a heavy crust and the two rounded blobs of iron seen below.
Not the most super stable signals on those at all, a bit jumpier with a wider number range than I like to dig, usually, but there was enough good, repeating numbers to trigger my digging instinct once I homed in on them.
Eventually I will clear out most every signal I get because...masking, but right now I am still cherry picking hoping to get lucky.
I got fooled on a few things in this hunt, this house like many of them around here was eventually covered with aluminum siding to cover up the older wood they had originally.
Two aluminum nails came in solid like dimes, a few other small pieces of aluminum too but that happens when you hunt around aluminum siding structures.
A few signals were high, fairly decent but dropped down to iron a lot and I knew better to go after them but I still had energy to do it at the time and in these lawns you just never know.
Those holes just had iron, chunky rust covered nails and screws but no Xray vision so you never know until you try.
Most times on signals with high tones but a lot of drops to iron I just avoid them but because fortune favors the bold I dug them...in the wild away from virgin sites like this I usually just keep on walking because they are usually just iron 99% of the time so I can live with doing that.
Again I tried a few things on this hunt, coin settings with thresh in the negative and gain from 60-80, jewelry settings with thresh at +5 and gain from 45 up to about 75 attempting to stay as quiet as possible, my silver slaying settings with disc maxed and nickels and zinc notched back in after I wasn't getting many good signals for awhile and found coins with all of them.
I tried D1 and D2 but it was much more enjoyable to stay in D4 so mostly I did that.
I even tried all metal for awhile but tons of constant iron growls on every swing started driving me crazy so that didn't last long.
Just the dirt can trigger those low growls here in this soil so, darn.
On my F70 all metal works best around here but I am hoping with this one much quieter disc settings will do the job for me just as well.
I think I had less of that iron showing up with the DD Nel than this concentric so DD's being able to handle mineralization better appears to be a real thing.
A couple of things I noticed on this hunt.
When I blasted the disc to max and notched in zinc and nickels I also notched in iron but that didn't work on the iron.
The other areas it was good but no iron growls at all when I did this.
I tried this on the Nel coil hunt too and the same thing happened...or didn't happen.
I wonder why, maybe the disc and notch system just works this way?
I believe doing this exact same thing on the F70 iron does show up but I will have to try it to make sure because older brain, that memory thing, again.
Not a huge deal, I only do this to see if high hits will drop down to iron when the wiggle and pull back method is utilized over suspected bottle caps, swinging over targets in crown cap heavy sites this behavior and method is priceless, saves a bunch of time and prevents expending energy on tons of useless digging.
If this is just the way it is when using these notched settings a quick thumbing down of the disc knob to all metal will accomplish the same thing over suspected bad targets and quick and easy to thumb back up to max disc again so I will deal with it.
Many, many hours thumbing knobs on my Tesorsos prepared me for this so not so very different at all.
One more great thing happened in this hunt...
I recovered a coin, one of those wheats I think, and it was in a hole near a foot...with that tiny sniper coil, yet.
I KID YOU NOT, IT HAPPENED!
Don't believe me, here is that foot.
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Gotchya!!!
Sorry, had to do that, sometimes I just crack myself up.
This appears to be a lady's Victorian shoe/boot from I think is an old lead figurine or toy.
Could be from a lead soldier...hard to tell.
Far as I can tell this was hanging out about an inch deeper than the coin I recovered directly beneath it so, cool.
Still has some paint on it, I searched for the rest of that lead toy around the area but no luck.
Maybe it was mutilated by a mower blade and flung further away so I might eventually find it on another hunt.
Funny thing is I found another boot around the side of the house near the driveway but this one is wood and came up in the same hole as another coin.
Says Noel, I assume part of a Christmas bracelet or older tree ornament.
So another decent hunt, maybe one more today in a few minutes after I have breakfast before it gets to hot with the sniper and then another coil will get its turn.
Or I might take a short break and go back to that Barber site again instead...I am kinda itching to see what else is there.
I have 5 coils total that will fit in this thing, 6 if I count the F70 DD sniper and two big DD ones also, so I might find different stuff at different depths with all of them...everywhere.
Forward Ho!
Hunt 2....68 cents, 5 wheats and two boots...to boot!