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Quest For Silver


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After finding my first Merc in a campground, I have spent lots of hours in every one I can find. The most productive areas is in the duff that has been raked off for a tent. I have also talked to neighbors and friends about detecting their yards and just about any place that is not off limits.          I have been on a roll lately.  The Merc in the middle was my first one

                                                                                        Norm

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  • 2 months later...

Having taken a run at this school over the past few months with my various machines... to no avail... I am hoping the Equinox will allow me to meet my goal of finding a silver coin at this location...  This will be one of the first spots I hit when my Equinox arrives... more to follow :)

Tim.

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  • 1 month later...
On ‎10‎/‎11‎/‎2017 at 11:10 AM, Tiftaaft said:

 

59de5de94e4e6_LincolnElem.thumb.png.e2703a355d209cb970f1435d48cd557e.png

 

Equinox E600 Update on "Quest for Silver"

I have been excited to get back out to this school in an attempt to complete my Quest for Silver using the Equinox.  So, two nights ago, I spent about an hour and a half covering some of the same areas I have had luck in my previous hunts with other machines.  The ground is interesting, and changes from area to area.  Where I found most of the wheats in the picture above... the ground is mostly dirt and somewhat hard at digging depths.  The ground on the lower right of the playground pad is hard packed and mostly gravel.  It takes work to get down even 3 or 4 inches using a digger - and all my machines, Equinox included, false something terrible in this area.  On this hunt, I found two wheats on the left side (where most of the yellow dots are) and one wheat very close to the lone yellow dot on the lower right side.  But no silver... yet.  Aside from the wheats, I also found several clad coins, dimes and copper pennies mostly... and in the same area I have gridded with other machines more than once.  I also found a thin silver ring, and a few pieces of junk jewelry.

My next trip, I will focus on the areas around the old school foot print, as well as in the lower left area of the grounds, where there is an old backstop and lined by old houses on the other side of the chain link border fence. 

As I have said earlier in my post... I am convinced there is a silver coin hiding somewhere in that picture above, and I believe it is just a matter of time before I and my Equinox find it :).  More to come.  HH Tim.

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I took some time on Saturday to run my Equinox 600 through the paces again at the site above.  Last week, as I mentioned in my note above, I focused around the areas I had previously found several wheats, and was able to squeak out two as I mentioned.  Saturday, I decided to spend some time around the old footprint of the school and on the right sidewalk strip.  I placed yellow boxes to show my areas that I spent most of the time.  I wouldn't say I officially "gridded" the area, but I did make several passes back and forth. 

Along with the two wheats I found last week, I located two more on Saturday.  I have shown the Equinox wheats as green dots on the pic. 

Another interesting thing is the area off the corner of the playground, to the left of the trees in the picture.  On Saturday I recovered several coins, including two quarters, two dimes and 3 or 4 copper Lincoln memorials - kinda on the edges of the two yellow boxes... I will be spending some more time in that area around the trees on my next visit.  But I found those coins by digging less than solid tones.  These targets were between 3" and 5" max.. as I said the ground is gravel mixed with dirt, so the digging is tough.. but the tones and id gave me a peep, and enough consistency to stop me... but it wasn't a banging target.  Along with tough digging, this is difficult soil to detect... lots of falsing, 3" coins giving iffy signals and id's.  Even the quarters required small short passes to narrow down...

The settings I used were:  Park 1, Noise Cancel, Ground Balance (tracking off), 2 tone (break at 20), Max Recovery (3 on 600), Iron Bias 0.

I also performed a test on my way back to the car on a clean patch of ground (which was difficult to find at this site).  I pulled 2 nails out of my pouch and a clad dime.  I placed them in the following orientation:  I   o   I 

I started with about a 2 inch space between the nail and the dime on each side... and I only heard the null of the nail, no matter my sweep speed.  I spread the nails out a bit more to about 3.5" on each side and was able to pick up the dime in the middle.  I understand this isn't necessarily a scientific test, but I was expecting to be able to pick up the dime a little easier between two nails, especially after reading and watching some of the test results by others. Any thoughts would be very much appreciated.

As I continue to learn the Equinox, I'm sure I will find ways to maximize it's abilities to help with this ground... because my Quest continues at this site.  HH. Tim.

Lincoln Elem2.png

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Excellent posts!

i feel your pain. In Tennessee I have done the exact same thing at a school built in the 1930’s. 

At first I did the “drunken sailor” detecting. Walking aimlessly around looking for silver. I did this with the Fisher f70, at pro, at max, deus, Vaquero. Etc.. no silver.

Enter the Etrac. 

I was determined to dig silver. So this area 100 yards x 400 yards long I started grinding. In the middle I ran a wide open screen and found a 9 inch deep wheat, of nice soft sandy soil..... clue 1.

This perpplexed me. Why was it so deep?

Well I went to the county tax assessor office and found an old platt of the area and the school.... low and behold a long gone baseball field was there!

in this area I dug 4 mercs, 5 wheats and 2 Rosie’s... only the Etrac AND Equinox gave me the depth and target ID to find them.

I had a buddy with an at pro.... I called him over.. “Think I have deep silver” he came over.... sweep .... sweep... nothing. The at pro couldn’t even get a signal.

This made me a believer in the Etrac. 

Im going back to this old school and regrid... painfully slow to see what I’ve missed.

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Thanks TD!  I have to say I have been guilty of the "drunken sailor" method of detecting.  Haha!!  

Your results just cemented my spending several more hours at this site...  With all the wheats I have found there... there has to be at least one silver somewhere... I will probably painstakingly grid that area where most of the wheats were concentrated.  In my first few hunts there, I also found several clad quarters from 2-4"... so that tells me it hasn't been detected recently... Might have been hit hard with an etrac when it first came out... and all (or most) of the silver was cherrypicked and the wheats were left behind... but it would have to have taken a pretty skilled cherrypicker to snag all the silver and leave copper in the ground.  

Anyway, I will keep hitting it as I get better acquainted with the Equinox... I think if any machine can find an oldie, the Equinox can.

HH.  Tim.

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  • 3 months later...
On 11/6/2017 at 7:32 PM, inthemountains said:

Oh by the way. No one can turn a detector on in the above photo because it is off limits. Just like to think what could be here and what a cool place !

Have you tried contacting the owner for permission to detect?

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