Nox And The 6" Coil... First Hunts

[digger1955]

Nox plus the sniper...so far

Got my Nox way back in June but too hot and dry to hunt around here in the SE. in the summer.
I received my 6" coil a few weeks ago, in my mineralized, iron infested devil dirt mess I believe this is the game changer accessory mounted on the detector that might just be a game changer itself in my challenging dirt.
it does deal with my major masking challenges better than anything else I have used around here...it seems.

It finally cooled down the first week of this month and some rain loosened up the dirt so time for the second part of my 2018 hunting season to begin.
Here are a few of the better things I have found with the sniper coil in the last couple of weeks.
All found in areas I have scoured in the past, most severely masked which was why everyone missed them for decades.

The other day a Susie B dollar coin.
I find lots of Sacagawea coins but very few of these, this one is important because I believe this was standing straight up on edge and the Nox hit it hard in Gold 2.




These were found in a neighbor's lawn that I have hunted often and continuously for more than a year.
I opened a hole, dug down and saw not just one shiny disc but two...one seemed to be laying on top of the other.
Not real deep, about 5" down directly under a 1" diameter root.
Jumpy signal from high 20's to mid 30's in Field 2 I believe, 5 tones.
I hit the area uncountable times previously with my F70 and 5 coils, a Mojave, a Vaquero and a Red Racer.
Not an inkling of a peep out of these coins from any of them ever, for several months since the good finds dried up I have been digging even the iffy signals I am finding but never got enough of a clue to dig these coins using anything else.
The Nox and sniper alerted me on my first scan over this spot, not a great signal but one I noticed and listened to.
Some sort of big iron in the area down deeper throwing a huge masking cloud over the area, I believe.






A very old park in a grassy site near my parking spot again I had been over this spot many times.
This buff hit like a truck from several directions, can't believe I missed it before.
Lucky I got the tiny coil over this particular spot.





This "Bama" Zippo lighter was found in a park I walk to in my neighborhood all the time in an area I found a Barber quarter previously.





Since I found that quarter early in 2017 I have practically lived in this spot looking for more great things but nothing so far.
This was found on the first hunt after I upgraded the software on my Nox.
While playing with my detector in the house after the upgrade I turned the sense down to 12 to quiet it down in Park 2.
Somewhere along the way I also turned the reactivity down to 1...in this ocean of iron I hunt in I generally never go much below 6, usually.
When I got to this spot and started hunting I forgot to check my settings and just started hunting.
Didn't notice much, some signals seemed unusually long, not exactly short precise and sharp but I never put 2 and 2 together.
Then I got a non ferrous signal and went after it.
Using my Carrot I scanned the area and discovered there was something huge laying under the area with the non ferrous numbers going out for several inches in all directions.
I pinpointed with the Nox and dug in the area with the strongest signal and in the sidewall of the hole I saw the bottom of lighter sticking out.
The Carrot in the whole went off everywhere I moved it loud and fast.
I have no idea exactly what was down there throwing off this massive masking iron signal but finding that lighter using these settings opened my eyes.
Was it the lower sense that helped me notice the higher signal?
Can that really slow reactivity speed have some advantages over the faster speed most believe are more advantageous in heavy iron?
Don't know, but some of my greatest insights have been the result of serendipitous "mistakes" I have made in the past.

Way more to learn, experiment and experience with this great setup.
I like the standard coil but I believe I am in love with the sniper.
Pretty much been that way with every detector I have ever owned since I hunt mostly in extreme trash or iron infested sites.
Don't plan on changing back to the standard coil for awhile.
I will post more great finds if I find them.

[Mark Gillespie]

Great report?

[GB_Amateur]

40 minutes ago, digger1955 said:

Was it the lower sense that helped me notice the higher signal?

Interesting thought.  Large non-ferrous (desirable target) not particularly deep doesn't require a lot of gain.  But gain can be your enemy when nearby (including deep) iron is present.

41 minutes ago, digger1955 said:

I like the standard coil but I believe I am in love with the sniper.
Pretty much been that way with every detector I have ever owned since I hunt mostly in extreme trash or iron infested sites.

Sounds like my standard sites, and until I got the Eqx with 11" coil I fed off the small coils with all my VLF/IB detectors.  I've done well with the Eqx 6" in the few hours I've had it.  Now I have two sharp tools in my toolbox!

Thanks for showing your finds and reporting your settings, and particularly for experimenting out-of-the-box.  Several (Steve H. being one) have said the Equinox is far from understood given all its 'knobs'.  You are covering nearly virgin space.

 

[digger1955]

Thanks. I am known as digger27 on most forums, REVIER on FM, I sold tons of F2's for Fisher after many read how deeply I explored that one, I coined the phrase "Church of the Compadre" after starting a thread that kind of went viral, I have been called an "expert" by Dankowski and many others because of what I discovered and posted about how the F70 works and the huge amount of settings I have experimented with.

I am no expert...I just have the patience to explore new ideas, (mine and others),  and the curiosity to keep at it until I get them to work...or find out they don't. The Nox is new to me and with so many settings and adjustments available I will be happily exploring them for awhile. Experimenting with these out of the box and all settings are great fun for me, about as much fun as finding great treasure, but there is another reason I am forced to try so many things attempting to be successful.

I live and hunt around Birmingham Alabama, we have the mineralized red clay soil, the black stuff is also highly mineralized, we have all the ingredients to make iron and steel naturally occurring in our soil and that causes us problems, the iron and steel industries were everywhere and were predominant from the 1800's way into the late 20th century and they dumped slag into landfills for decades for some reason and that infested dirt was spread out all over the city as it was built up in both commercial and residential areas.

Then most if the public areas I hunt, parks and such, were old home sites or residential neighborhoods so hunting in most sites is like hunting old cellar sites...millions of nails, wire, screws and iron of all shapes and sizes. Oh yea...Not to mention the 100-150 years of trash because as far as I can tell nobody around here ever understood what a trashcan is or how to use one. We have massive masking issues, major depth issues, a huge amount of trash and iron issues and hunting around here ain't for sissies.

I wish things were different but they are not so what are you gonna do....we either deal with it all and figure it out or quit the hobby.I lived and hunted for 3 years out in the almost perfect soil out in Kansas and Missouri, I started here then moved out there and thought I was in heaven...but we ended up moving back a few years ago, I cried when I realized I had gone from hell to heaven and I was going back to hell again. Short of using a PI to combat our devil dirt, an option I considered and then rejected because digging tons of trash just ain't my thing anymore, the only other options we have is to pick tools that seem to work decently and then learn them to the extreme in hopes we can get just a little deeper or unmask just a few more hidden pieces of treasure.

THAT is why I got an Equinox and so did a couple of hunting buddies. It seems to deal with our challenges better than everything we have used before around here. It goes quite a bit deeper or at the very least ID's targets better and more accurately at deeper levels, it unmasks better, it seems to be finding us more than the Garretts, Whites, Fishers and Tesoros we have experience with not to mention other Minelabs like the E Trac...it makes it easier to find the great stuff, anyway. I don't know why this tech appears to work better than Minelab FBS tech plus all those others in our dirt but it does. To us this thing is no hype, I never even considered getting one until a friend got one and I saw it do some pretty shocking things right in front of my eyes...till then it wasn't even on my radar.

If I still lived in Kansas I never would have thought twice about this thing, out there everything worked and worked well but here any tiny advantage we can get might make the difference between success and failure. Game changer...maybe, I really had my eye on the new Manta technology that FTP is working on. A true PI with a working discrimination feature and ability, that really might change things for us around here but with just with few hours standing behind the Equinox I have been shocked and awed...and that is saying something.

Now my job is to figure out how best to utilize this thing, find the optimum settings, learn the language better than just well and dive deep into this thing as best I can to see what it is capable of.Like I said this stuff is fun for me, luckily I am still finding great things on this journey as I learn and I expect that will continue as my journey continues. I read all posts I can find about how other owners set the tools up that I am attempting to learn and what they know and discover and I can't tell you how grateful I am for that. I learn from others and that really speeds up the learning curve.

I consider it a privilege so I have always paid it forward and posted about anything I think can be helpful to the community and help the next guy out. It takes a village...and the metal detecting community is a great one!