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Finds & Findings On First Eqx800 Hunt


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Except for about 15 minutes in the back yard, Saturday's 4 1/2 hour hunt is my first experience with the new detector.  I've decided (unless some chance I can't pass up comes along) to do several hunts in previously searched sites.  I started with probably my easiest site that has produced old coins.  I've described this previously -- a small lot the city acquired early last summer and promptly raized the 1920's house, but did a great job leaving most of the yard alone and just backfilling the house's footprint.  Fairly certain I'm still the only person ever to metal detect this property.  My notes show I've been here 7 times, mostly with the Fisher F75.  With a few exceptions (more on that below) I've searched the entire area at least twice, and in some spots 3-4 times.  Previously it's produced 50+ Wheaties and 5 silver coins.  For the most part it's fairly clean in terms of iron trash, with more/less the usual amount of aluminum.

Park 1 default was my plan for the day, including the default ground setting, mostly in 'all-metal'.  Right off the truck I was having trouble with EMI.  I forgot how to auto-adjust the frequency so I just went manual, 19 channels to choose from but none was perfectly quiet.  Switched to other modes with qualitatively same result.  I was getting the least noise at the extreme values (never good in the [-5,5] center region).  Having also forgotten how to adjust gain (won't ever again!) I decided rather than walking back to my vehicle and consulting the operations manual I'd just try and hunt with the EMI noise in the background.  That started out OK but by the end of 1.5 hours it was getting worse.

Before reconfiguring I covered some previously hunted ground, finding mostly ring&beavertail pulltabs (at least 2/3 of the day's catch) one copper cent, one squeeze tube, a bronze threaded bushing, and a few other 'interesting' but non-valuables.  Most of the non-pulltabs were along an alley where I had not previously searched.  The penny was from a lightly searched spot as well.  Turning down the gain to 17, the EMI noise disappeared so on to the next 2 hours.  My next dig was the silver Roosie (1954), only about 3 inches deep.  Then I hunted the part of the lot which had been used to dump/hide/burn trash.  Amongst a lot of noise hits I got a decent high signal and 1 inch deep uncovered a copper penny.  Next I found the nickel (1949-D), only about 4 inches deep.  The ID was solid 12-13 in one direction but 90 degree angle-of-attack gave less steady values, 11's and even 10's.  I guessed some kind of aluminum (slaw?) and was pleased to get the nickel.

The last hour I moved to another part of the park (not on the house lot) where I (and others?) have hunted many times with multiple detectors, best find having been an Indian Head penny.  I shifted to cherry-pick mode and dug a crown cap (not shown) which ID'ed steady near nickel.  The badly corroded zinc read 18 (was hoping for another IH!).  Two more coppers were 5 inch and 6 inches deep, sounding a bit iffy but giving repeated high conductivity ID's.  One photo below shows the 'trash' -- ring&beavertails plus iron -- those latter were biproducts of digs which contained higher conductors, not mid/high tones by themselves.  I did dig a bit of other trash not shown, including some aluminum bits of roof flashing, a total of 3 crown caps plus of couple pieces of aluminum foil.  The 'goodies' photo didn't come up so well, but four of the five copper pennies are Wheats (1925, 1945-D, 1952-D, 1954-D).  The top row in that photo all read in the 23-25 ID range.  I don't know what that is in the lower left (jewelry?) -- it had an ID of 11.  The bronze bushing hit at 32 and the copper ring thing (some kind of electrical connector??) signaled a solid, strong 33 -- I was hoping for a large coin :unsure:.

Why did I miss all of these mostly shallow targets previously?  Likely a few I missed because I just didn't get the coil over them.  However, that doesn't explain the full story.  I may be a bit premature in my conclusion but I'm thinking superior target separation with the Eqx.  And note all this running Park1 with a gain of 17.  The other thing I noticed is that anything above 20 very likely is non-iron and worth digging,  no iron wraparound or vertical nail high tones so far.  Those theories will be strongly tested as I next move to trashier sites.

 

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Great report and great finds. You said you were digging AM mostly.  Did you get the telltale iron tone along with the mid tone when digging those crown caps?  Also, practically anything above 2 without any telltale iron tone is very likely non-ferrous, I've found.  I have gotten high VDI wraparound on occasion but it is always accompanied by a an iron tone in AM.  You may also be knocking down the nonferrous tone component of the iron because of the high default iron bias setting of 6 for the EQX 800 in Park 1.

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Well done GB. The great thing about the Equinox is it gave you confidence to go back to this old site that you had hunted 7 times previously and pull stuff out of the ground. 90% of dirt hunting is getting permissions and having a machine that will allow you to go back to old permissions  is awesome. 

Thanks for sharing and I look forward to your next hunt.

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4 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

You said you were digging AM mostly.  Did you get the telltale iron tone along with the mid tone when digging those crown caps?

Honestly I wasn't listening that closely nor was I trying to avoid crown caps.  In my sites they aren't typically a problem (only 3 in 4.5 hours this hunt).  I can certainly understand why some develop methods to avoid them.  There were a lot of iron grunts in some places yesterday and I was just trying to concentrate on the more/less consistent mid- and hi-tones.

1 hour ago, Skate said:

The great thing about the Equinox is it gave you confidence to go back to this old site that you had hunted 7 times previously and pull stuff out of the ground.

Yes, this machine builds confidence rather quickly.  At least that has been the case so far.  I hope I don't faceplant on my Eqx when I go to trashier sites next weekend (weather permitting -- fingers crossed).

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