midalake

I am in Canada next week. Find a dealer between the border of Michigan and Trenton Ont. and I will pick you one up!

I was in Beach Sensitive yesterday. I was on a different beach yesterday and could work this beach at 91 +/-. With an AR of 6. Now my primary beach which I will hunt today I had sensitivity between 85 and 92 the day before. Yes, I have chatter. But is where I am comfortable. My disc. setting of 22 helps with chatter. Because I am hunting with the 9" coil my reactivity is .05. If I raise it past .05 the audible detection signal really narrows up with that 9" coil and I am uncomfortable with that. I have used the 11" coil and you could raise the reactivity some with that 11" to help with chatter. Slowing sweep speed helps with chatter. Lowering your iron volume helps with chatter [mine is 3] Since I cannot hunt in water contact at all right now in either Beach or Beach sensitive, I am keeping the machine in Beach Sensitive because it more effective on gold chains. Normally I hunt high beach in Beach sensitive and turn around and hunt in constant water contact in Beach mode on my return. Another item that needs to be covered is Magnetic accept/reject.. I have done quite a bit of testing of that [including this trip] and it seems there is better performance with the accept mode.[regardless of the amount of black sand] The detector reacts choppy, and nonferrous signals are even worse in reject mode.

Well I completed AR testing today and it did not take long to see where strengths lay. To sum it up before the longer version: Keep your AR high and control detectability with sensitivity. Went to a second beach today and was able to work slightly higher sensitivity 91-92 in beach sensitive and AR at 6. Still could not work in the water without the Black Sand crippling the detection field. Buried two different sized targets a Mex ten-peso coin and a coper Canada penny at about 12"> Wet Sand, slight water contact. Both sounded good with a solid TID reading with sensitivity at 91 and AR 6. Changed the AR to 1 and sensitivity to 97 and could not hear either target. It was not until AR hit 3 that the target had a good response you would not walk by, but the TID was not reliable. At an AR of 4 the TID was better but read a bit low for both targets. AR of 5 had good TID lock. I do not think it is wise to turn AR down from 5 or 6. There was nothing to be gained in a sensitivity boost from 91 to 97 and a lower AR. Clearly, reducing sensitivity to get to your desired huntable level with a high AR is a winning combination.

Interesting idea from your thoughts. I was finally able to get out post Hilary yesterday. The Black Sand is really bad here with the large waves. I regulated my sensitivity from 85 to 92 to deal with different black sand concentrations, also tracking GB was used. It was tough conditions. I learned about a half hour in that the wave wash moving Black Sand was so severe if there was any water going over the top of the coil there was no detection. For example: If there was still 3 inches of water rushing over my coil, I could not hear my aluminum scoop handle passed over the coil 4"away. ANY found target I had was not to be heard with any amount of water passing over the coil. It made for very slow progress detecting. Today I will bury a few fringe objects and test lower sensitivity higher AR, and lower AR with higher sensitivity. Even though conditions were some of the worst I have seen, the outcome was not too bad. Wrist chain 10k, ring 18k.

The new forecast has multiple sources showing this thing coming on shore mid-Baja peninsula. Might not work out for CA beaches.

Funny how so many keyboard types thought the D2 was going to be the bomb at a salt beach for finding micro gold. Oh how thoughts fade. Since I have both the Equinox and D2 for some time now, I can say with 100% confidence. the Equinox will out hunt the D2 on small targets and small gold. Add Black Sand into the mix and the D2 only loses by a larger margin. I could not believe the loss of performance I had with the D2 today in tough black sand conditions.

With a Rare Earth magnet, I can get build-up like that in two scoops. Full magnet in 5 scoops.

How is the beach working out? Any new settings?

That is an awesome find!!!! I hope that becomes some kind of fad in Mexico!!

Was there any Royal Maiden's flocking around?

Yes and YES!!!! Sometimes 360 degree look!

If you are talking about Beach Hunting? Dig EVERYTHING +1 and higher. No need to dig Iron.

Therein lies the possibilities. All of my testing tells me you will not miss deep targets when running sensitivity in 90 as compared to 96. In fact, on fringe testing, it was not until the D2 had a sensitivity of 88 did I lose depth capability. We ran that test Mutiple times with different targets in different locations.

I have been thinking about all of the testing I have done. It makes me lean to running your Audio Response high 6-7 and controlling the detector with sensitivity. Even in my black sand conditions I find Audio response is not the lone culprit when looking at stability. Depth was affected by both sensitivity and Audio Response. It would be nice to see a good test garden example of a lower audio response beating a high audio response in ANY condition.

Now you are in my wheelhouse! Good work. You need to go back soon!

The build of the two is very different. The Deus 2 is just a stand-alone pod, attached by a mount. The Equinox and Manticore is an integral mount including handgrip. Much more inches of seam to fail in the Equinox/Manticore design!

Been doing this a long time and never found a silver chain that was gold colored. Just make sure you acid test it before sending it down the road. I just got done acid testing about 35 unmarked pieces I suspected might be gold. Over half were, but this is common for Mexico.

93 Sensitivity is still high for a mineral environment, MHO. Would have liked to hear it at 89-90. I don't like how he swings. Everyone MUST do their own depth testing to see how the audio response reduces depth in their location. Depth loss WILL happen. Did I say I don't like how he swings.

While I really think Dankowski is a master on a detector. One has to always watch their own settings. Where I hunt, there are black sand concentrations on dry sand that are higher than at the wet sand or water contact. I am not sure Dankowski has ever set foot on a black sand beach from how he speaks.

I think you did ok and you put in your time. I have gone several weeks without any gold or good finds, hang in their trooper!

Many know, but I only hunt beaches. I have found very few hunters that have black sand. I call my conditions moderate, so our hunting conditions may be close. For others who have followed my talking points, I have stated in the past that the D2 may not be the best MF machine in Black Sand. I know for a fact, that east coast hunters have different results than what I see. Couple that with a Deus 2 machine that has many settings that can affect performance and there is a large space for a learning curve and mistakes. One thing I would NEVER do is notch high tones. This is a major mistake since the D2 can throw gold all over the TID map. In the picture below is a 18g white gold chunk [stamped 14k] and acid tested. It rang a solid 98 TID on the D2. I have had several other high value gold items over 70 TID too. I do set my discrimination high at 22 and will be experimenting more with notching at 22 when I get back on my machine and that does help with Black Sand some. There is NO reason to dig every fringe target. As stated in the past, watch those numbers, do a 360 look at the target and bring your sensitivity up 2-3 points. It is not 100% fool proof, but if that D2 does not throw you a good gold number on a fringe target say 32 to 68. It is a pretty good chance that target is iron.

Humm, a few experienced users with issues. Maybe a good thing I have 3 800's tucked away now? When you say unstable TID's, is this for looking at one target or say a TID range for all Pulltabs.

Not entirely true. Did we get the short Chase version. 😁

Yes, it can be left on all the time. Yes, you can use it to discriminate. You will hear ALL targets with the horseshoe mode on. Deciding on what to dig can be done by the TID of the machine or by sound. The Equinox does a fantastic job of separating the ferrous and non-ferrous bins with the horseshoe mode ON. Many targets that give iron-wraparound sounds will go completely iron when the horseshoe mode is turned on. A couple advantages of horseshoe mode> You can figure out the target center with the horseshoe mode on, you can also recover the target without going to pinpoint mode. This is a huge time saver!

Awesome dime!!!