Skate

I think you'll be impressed and I look forward to hearing your reports. I also think the MI-6 is freaking brilliant. Mine is 5 years old and works seamlessly with the D2. It's so nice around people to not have the pinpointer telling everyone to look at me for the next minute while I fiddle in the dirt. Have Fun!

You're lucky your fall occurred at the beginning of your hunt. All those coins would have buried you if that had happened at the end. That is an epic evening and I'm well aware they don't come around like that often. Things are shaping up here up the coast from you as well but we just don't have the mass of humanity that you do in your area to build up those kind of numbers. Congrats on a great day that would really be most peoples months if not year.

I'm intrigued by the new coil and I wonder if the improvements on the dive shaft in terms of firming things up would help this coils extra weight on the wet sand. I'm hoping someone on here gets it and gives us a report on the balance and weight. I'll take any advantage I can get in the wet sand. I haven't seen a price but I'm assuming $400+. That's a lot of money in this economy to experiment with. I may have to wait for the used market to open up on the coil to try it out.

Gold can warm the heart! Good minus tide today thru Friday afternoon. I sense you need to rest from the sickness that will overtake you around 4pm. Cough, cough, cough.

That is correct. She is their dog's trainer and unlike the teenager at PetCo teaching your dog to sit Gerrie teaches your dog to protect. The owners allowed me to come on and search for the ring. There was no expectation or promise of monetary exchange. God is good for sure!

Haha. Somehow I think there is less to me than meets they eye.

I've never done drugs so I can't speak to the high but the adrenaline rush of finding a ring for someone has got to be close. Thanks for coming along for the ride. On to the next!

We actually discussed that very thing. Lightning rarely strikes twice.

Haha! As a pirate you would have loved the location. You could see all the way out to the Channel Islands from the yard. I felt like the lord of the realm for a few minutes.

Hey everyone- I sometimes post a ring recovery on here when it's really cool (at least that's what I think) and I had one of those today. I'm always amazed at the impact that metal detecting has had on others and myself. It may be a hobby but I think it's sometimes better known as a re-connection device. I got a call Sunday evening from Gerrie, a professional dog trainer in the greater Santa Barbara area. She had been training a dog at a private residence in Montecito which is a small town just south of Santa Barbara. She was getting ready to leave when she noticed that her deceased Father's fraternity ring was missing from her right hand which was the hand she was using to throw objects and train the German Shepherd. She trains protection dogs so the work can get quite physical as you can imagine. When Gerrie called me she was crying and for a few moments I wasn't sure who was on the other end of the call and I wasn't sure if auto warranty had expired or I'd won that long awaited 3 day trip to nowhere that I usually win. She was finally able to explain all this to me as you can tell she was just beside herself having lost the ring. She went on to explain that her dad had one ring his whole life, a fraternity ring he had received when he became President of his fraternity at Penn State university back in 1942. He was very proud of the ring and it actually doubled as his wedding ring. Gerrie's dad developed Alzheimers back in 2008 and from that time on Gerrie trained dogs full time and became her dad's full time caregiver which if you have had to deal with Alzheimer's you know it's all encompassing. In 2021 Gerrie's dad passed at 99 years old and Gerrie kept his ring as he wanted her to have it so he could always be with his beloved daughter. She had worn the ring every day since but on Sunday afternoon it went flying off somewhere in Montecito. I met her at the home this morning to do a search and to see if I could find the ring. Talk about pressure. I don't know who slept less last night she or I. When I got there she mentioned that a random Iphone pic came up on her phone of her dad and the ring, a picture she hadn't seen in years and today of all days it shows. She took it as a sign I was going to find the ring and I took it as "oh crap I better find this ring." I said a prayer for us and turned my sensitivity down on the D2, put it in Park(my favorite go to program) and began to grid the yard where she was primarily training. Unfortunately there were freaking targets everywhere and it became evident that this hillside property had had fill dirt brought in right where we were searching. There were targets everywhere and at one point I put my own wedding ring on the grass just to see if I could distinguish it from all the junk and on some swings over it it got masked. (Not sure about this XP!) I decided I'd turn back and try and find some ground without any targets just to get my brain tuned into the soil. I'm an auditory detector not a TID guy so I wanted to hear the ground. As it was the area to my right was quiet and to my left there had to a pipe or something long running parallel to me and I finally got a tone that was isolated from anything else. It was repeatable and had that familiar clip to it (for those D@ users) and I got down and began to poke around with my pinpointer and followed a tone right to the ring. The grass was super thick and acted like a canopy over the ring and it being gold you couldn't really see it with the naked eye. I pulled it out of the grass looked at her and said "God is good" and showed her the ring. As I was standing up I got the biggest bear hug I think I've ever received. If it was an NFL game they would have flagged her for roughing the detectorer. In college football she would have been suspended for targeting. As for me, it was the best feeling ever. I got to use my detector to re-connect Gerrie and her dad. I think it was probably a good minute before she let go as the two days of panic and frustration just had to work itself out. There were tears flowing and even one of the staff members of the house (this was a 21 million dollar estate so they have "staff") was crying. It was an amazing moment and one I just had to share. As have most of you, I have been finding peoples rings for a long time and it never gets old. I spoke with Gerrie for nearly an hour afterwards as she walked me through the life of her dad, the ring, dog training and of course I got to share some photos of my wife and my two kids as well as some recent recoveries. I now have a new friend in Santa Barbara and if I ever get big enough to require 4-legged protection I got the connection. Best Dave

I found the Silver slayer program a couple of months ago and have been using it ever since during most of my hunts. It is an excellent program and what I like the most is that the notching doesn't screw up the tones like notching did on the Nox 800 and I think it's because of the 0-99 instead of the 0-39. I'm no engineer but that's my theory. Anyway, if you are looking to hunt for high conductors it is what you need. If you don't find silver with it it's because you're in the wrong location or you just haven't put your coil over it yet. I'm going to use it in an avocado orchard this week that at one time was a labor camp of 30+ homes that is now planted to 30 acres of avocados. I've had to wait until the weather cooled a bit so as to not get bit by a rattlesnake. I want to slay silver, not snakes. HH Dave

I'd turn the sensitivity down to around 55-65, operate in Park, two tones and set the discrimination up to 30-35. Surface and 1-3 inch targets will be easy to spot. Identify target, confirm with pinpointer and dig. Do some testing in your yard and see how low you can take your sensitivity because the last thing you want to do is dig non seeded targets that are deeper than 1-3 inches. Bury a dime at 2 inches and see how low you can go before you don't identify it. You should do exceedingly well with the D2.

I'm going to sound uneducated here in that all I use are the stock programs. I don't change the out of the box tones. I use PARK almost exclusively and it's defaulted to two tones, I believe one for iron and one for everything else. This allows me to focus on matching the tone to an ID over and over again and match the beginning and end of each target response to the ID. It's muscle memory for the brain is the way I look at it. The only saved program I have used or created is Silver Slayers silver program where you're just cherry picking high tones. It's excellent and I've had a ton of success with it. The only other thing I do is decide ahead of time what I'm hunting for, gold or silver and then stick with the plan. If it's gold I only dig good gold tones in gold ranges. Doing this has upped my gold count which is kind of "duh" thing but so many people dig two bottle caps and then quit because it's a waste of time and then they start hunting clad.

I'm not sure it's a learning curve but more of a tone curve. The D2 is unique in the way it sounds off on a target. I have learned with mine to identify the "end" sounds of targets at least that's how I describe it. To me a coin or a ring has the same sound to the left and the right on my swing. It's like a word that is spelled the same backwards and forwards (palindrome). Identifying targets via tone has helped me limit the amount of junk I dig and I will always dig a couple with awkward tones just to get my mind to connect with the detector at the beginning of every hunt. In terms of visual ID in parks I only really get excited when I get a good tone and a number below 50. I've recovered many rings on the D2 and if it's a females ring it's always in the 40's with the best number being 44. 68-72 is the range where most of the mens rings have been that I have recovered. I've yet to pull one in the 80's but I dig every tone 80-86 when searching for gold. 65 is almost always a pop top. 74-76 is almost always a bottle cap although a really rusty one will hit in the 40's but that's where you can hear it bleed on the end of the swing. If you keep digging everything you will eventually get gold and lots of it because most won't dig it. My father in law brags he's been detecting for 40 years but has found only one gold ring and it's because he won't dig anything that might be trash. One other thing to do when searching a park is to turn down your sensitivity if it's a newer park. Most targets will be 1/2 to 2 inches deep. Locate with detector, use pinpointer to narrow it down then use a screwdriver to pop out. Also if the grass is bermuda then all objects will likely be shallow as it's root structure goes horizontal and things won't get deep there as it's like a mesh. Fescue grasses the roots grow vertically and that's why things are deeper in those grasses/parks. There's room to sink. Hope this wasn't too winded and obvious.

Awesome! You are part of a very special club. You got to make a difference in another persons life metal detecting. No better feeling.

This. The eurozone economy is collapsing based on all reports. For me gas just hit over $6.50 again, up $1.25 in the past week. I love testing and using new tech and am almost always an early adopter but not this time just because of the economy. I can't imagine though what winter is going to be like in places like Germany and France. It's not going to be XP vs. Minelab but rather food vs. heat.

I've had mine completely submerged in fresh and knee deep in the salt surf and have had zero issues. Just make sure you thoroughly rinse everything after each use and you should be fine. Also, Michael Oliver has a youtube jewelry recovery site and he has shown many vids of him with the D2 in salt fully submerged. I don't think he's reported any problems.

I share the same lament about a lack of history where I hunt. Usually my oldest find is an RC Cola bottle cap. Great job on the recoveries.

Great job! I know what you mean by getting "foiled". It just proves that the only way to get the good stuff is to dig everything. Awesome recovery.

What a great day of detecting. Well done.

Timing is everything and releasing this in the winter (November to February) in Europe is likely to be a disaster. Most of the European Union has seen and is seeing their energy costs rise by 80-100%. People in Hungary are waiting in lines miles long to buy coal and the Germans are out cutting down trees in order to try and stay warm in the upcoming months. I read last night that 70% of restaurants in the UK may close for the winter or longer due to the choice between keeping things warm and serving food to people who likely won't be coming to their restaurant due to $$. How much of this actually comes true is unknown for the moment but I'd bet that sales will be slow enough that a reduction in price just might be around the corner in 2023.

Congrats! Always good to get a ring x2 in the scoop. I got out this morning and while it looked “ringy” it was really skunky.

That's an awesome cap to the story. First you hunted for the ring and then you hunted for the owner. This is worthy of a FOX news special.

That's a great hunt and that gold ring is sweet. I hope the fake one turns out real for you.

Sometimes you just miss it. I watch a lot of detectorists swing and truthfully they are lucky to find anything. Their swings are more like a pendulum and rarely scrape the ground. Depth is an issue at the beach and your coil height may be a reason you miss the gold or any other deep object. The other issue on the beach is pace. If your step measures 24" and your coil is 11" and you're walking as you would normally you will miss targets. There will be a gap in your swing. When I detect the beach and get into a coin line or patch of targets I become the old man at the deli, I sample every piece of sand and shuffle oh so slow.