Forum Members Hunt Together Sometimes

[Jeff McClendon]

5 hours ago, phrunt said:

Always good to put a mug to a name. 

It's a shame you didn't find anything worthwhile but Jeff's crazy soil doesn't really help with that.

We found the usual for a big public park our club has hunted before. There were 12 of us. Luckily this park is on the east side of Denver where the dirt is only moderately mineralized South Platte River sediments.

[GB_Amateur]

On 6/3/2022 at 4:52 PM, Jeff McClendon said:

Great to see you again today Chuck and good luck!

Thanks, Jeff, and I know you are headed back to see your Mom.  I hope she is doing well and that you get some time to detect while there.

Regarding my experience with the Deus 2 w/9" coil (and thanks again for letting me use it for 2 hours), I really am not in position to say much in terms of my evaluation/review of it, but here are a few comments.

1) Because I was swinging the lightweight Tesoro Vaquero w/6" concentric I didn't notice a contrast with the weight.  I likely would have if I had been swinging the Equinox, though.  But with 9" coil I found it nicely balanced.  I had no problems reading the VDIs (small format) nor did I have any trouble viewing them before they disappeared.  I didn't notice EMI except when other detectors were really closeby (a few feet).

2) Jeff set everything up (General program, 5 tones, 95 gain, 2.5 reactivity) and I never touched any of the buttons other than increasing the volume of the headphones.

3) I wanted to see what the VDIs corresponded to so I dug a lot of targets when that was 60 or above.  (USA 'nickel' 5 cent hits at 62.)  Jeff warned me that pulltabs can be all over the place, and they were!  Beavertail-only were ~60 and ring only were in the mid 70's but modern 'racetrack' seemed to be in muliple places.  Ring+beaver had different VDIs depending upon how the beavertail was bent, whether or not anything was broken, etc.  That is more/less typical with my other detectors.

4) The square tones were much more pleasing to my ear than the PWM tones, but I don't know which (if either) conveys more information on the target.

5) Jeff mentioned separation, which is what most interests me about this detecctor.   In one case I found a copper Memorial cent (VDI = 91) and a Zinc cent (VDI = 84), each about 2" deep, separated by 4.5 inches.  The distinction (both audio and VDI) was super clear regardless of what direction I swung the coils.  Obviously this result means I could have distinguished them if closer but it's nice to get a real world example of separation as compared to a test setup (which has value, too).

6) The headphones were surprisingly comfortable, at least for a 2 hour hunt.

7) My main disappointment was with the signal strength/depth indicator which seemed to show everything as weak/deep (assuming I was understanding it).   Jeff pointed out that the grass was kind of thick but the ML Equinox does considerably better (although it's not perfect, either) in my parks with even thicker grass.  But please don't take this criticism too strongly as maybe I wasn't reading it correctly or ??  The proportional audio did better, IMO, at indicating signal strength.

I only scratched the surface of what this detector is capable of.  For me it's all about the separation and that will have to impress me (so far, so good 😁) in order for me to invest $1600.  Thanks, again, Jeff for letting me test drive your new hot rod!

 

[kac]

Single discriminator with a concentric can be tough in a trashy park unless your just chasing the coppers and silver and have everything else disced out. Looks like you guys had a blast.