schoolofhardNox

The 6000 exists only on paper 😄 Now we're relying on you Tom to show us some of them silvers. 👍 I'm out of the game for a bit until I can find another good location. NO pressure 😉 It is a good feeling when you see one come to light though. Then you know you are in the right place!

I'm fairly resilient 😄 It's a 4 hour round trip, so I think I need to befriend someone that lives next door to the beach, so they can report conditions to me. I'm thinking maybe that GPX 6000 would do the trick??? But how would anyone know, since everything is top secret and information only trickles out on what it can and can not do. By the time the GPX 11000 comes out you will not even be able to speak it's name.....shhhh (Top, Top Secret). 🤣

Thanks, Joe. It makes you feel like a kid again. I couldn't wait to get back there every week. The drive is what killed me. As for cleaning them........🤔 I'll leave that for the next of kin 😄 Thanks Tim, It always amazes me that a coin can be struck so hard that the image remains, even if the coin is paper thin. The ocean can really dismantle coins when they are trapped in certain areas.

And so it ends for my little silver spot. 😭 Went out yesterday hoping the rain would hold out long enough to see what I could still pull out of that spot. Rain came in a bit early, but long enough to let me know that the rest of the goodies are still out of range. A bit lazy this morning, so no pictures of the iron or other non ferrous. Still, a lot of coins came to light, but the Memorials outranked the Wheats by a lot. That usually means less silver, and that was the case. Did manage a very degraded Indian Head, and a 1925 Buffalo, and 3 Canadian cents. Silver was way down from what was flowing from the previous hunts. I'm pretty much done there, and taking the next week off from beach hunting. It was great while it lasted and I appreciated the generosity that the beach gave me. Beaches can be stubborn sometimes, but very generous at other times. It all balances out in the end. Great to get out and do what I love to do. Maybe next week a relic hunt?????

Translator issue I'm assuming

Thanks GB. Using the wall as a shield got rid of the wind chill. The wind was coming from that direction, so I felt very little wind being so low to the ground. I bought a big pair of gloves, I guess they are like ski gloves, and they are pretty warm. I wore those. The key to staying warm on the beach for me is that I usually double glove it, with an additional vinyl glove on top to keep the wet from reaching my hands. But if you get your hands wet from the sand or surf, all bets are off. You will be extremely cold, very fast. The good news is that Thursday's temperatures are going to be in the 50's. The bad news is there are going to be more people bothering me 😢 Cider makes the world go round 😄

Sounds like a good spot to dig those deep, iffy signals. You may have a lot of coins at depth there. Great '42D half!

I really do not want to take any shots of the beach, as there are enough things on it to ID it. If this was a private, member's eyes only forum, then I might do some shots. Anyone, anywhere (including my area) can view these posts. But I can tell you the beach is exposed directly to the ocean and is a rather slightly sloped beach from top to bottom. Going from left to right is a gamble, as I have found clay at 6" on one section, while the other section next to it, I have yet to hit clay, (so more than 24"). We generally have slight layers of light black sand and regular sand followed by cobble and fake bottom layers of rust colored pebbles. It can play havoc on VLF and multi machines, sometimes they go deep and sometimes being limited by the sand layers. I also believe there are V's and maybe even Seated coins, as I found Barber, a V, and Indians there recently. That's not true! If you look up Poor, you will find my picture next to it 😄 Iron needs to go, plus if anyone ever wants to ban detecting I can bring their iron and junk back to them. Thanks. I did hide myself detecting in the area I was in. It was freezing in the parking lot though. Yep, you are right behind me. 😏 That's ok - it will give me motivation to do even better on this Thursday's hunt.😉 This pin pointer method really only works in target rich, close proximity areas. I will know better when I do the next 10-15 linear feet, if I can repeat it. I do want to say that in digging like I did, I made sure that there were never any open holes, except right where I was digging. I also smoothed the sand out and just sprinkled the dry sand over it. I don't want to ruin it for anyone else.

Really nice looking ring. Maybe Burmese Garnets? Sweet find!

I did the same thing at an inland village site. Because the GPX can not operate in coin/relic mode, as it react to the ground with even the slightest swing speed, I decided to try the AQ, but it did the same thing. I also found volcanic mode to be usable, but felt I was losing too much depth (even though it was unproven). I may revisit it again looking for very tiny brass beads. Maybe it works more than I thought, but probably not nearly enough for the deep items I was hoping for. I too am looking forward to the gold version to see if it will work in that soil. Since the GPX 6000 doesn't sound like it will be what I want (also unproven 😄), I would possibly gamble, price dependent, on the AQ gold.

So, I had a delayed start for yesterdays hunt. Between turning the clocks forward, and the cold temps, I did not make it to the beach until around 10 AM. It would have been 17 degrees out with a 20 MPH NNW wind, but lucky for me it warmed up to 23 degrees by the time I got there. 🥶 I did have a big cement wall that I was planning on hunting next to, using it as a wind shield - it worked well. This is also the wall that I can not get closer than 5 feet from, or my GPX goes nuts from the iron inside of it. So, I had a plan. Since there are so many targets in this area that are exposed, and I assumed that most detectorists would be annoyed by the iron in this wall as well, I would try something else. I took the worst detector I had and got close to the wall, dug a small 15”x15” square, and layer by layer used my pin pointer to find targets. Yup, just the pin pointer as my detector. So, the 5-foot barrier turned into about 4”, any closer and the pin pointer would detect the wall. The first picture shows all the nonferrous dug with that pin pointer, (including 5 silvers and the gold partial plate). The iron I dug is mixed in with the other iron for the day. 2 Mercs, 2 Roosevelt and a Barber were found that way. I only a path about 10 feel long. I will be revisiting that system again this Thursday to see if the next 10 feet produces anything. The rest of the hunt I used the GPX, going over the same area as previous visits have. Still found a decent amount of silver, but it was much harder to hear. This area is going to die fast for silver unless I can come up with another way to find it. Even though it was cold, it turned out to be bearable. If you dig quickly, you warm up fast. Total silver from 2 different patches on this beach so far this season is 146 coins. It been a while since my luck has run this well this long. Looking forward to the next visit.

I would have never found any of this without a pulse machine. I don't hunt during the beach season, so here is the total for about 7ish hunts - 146 silver coins from this beach, including yesterday's hunt I'm getting ready to post. I think my days are numbered for more silver unless I can find another spot on this beach to hunt. It's starting to get harder and harder to find them. Just keep that guy away from my beach 😄 I don't need anyone vacuuming up my silver. We are just getting able to hit the 1.5 foot mark and the results are starting to show. My layers hang right around any ware from 1he mid 40's to the mid 70's, so I get a mix of clad too. When you hit a true 50's and older layer, all the better change is silver - no clad. Must be heaven 🤔 Some great ideas, Love the jet dryer and snow blower idea. But sadly, I am a working man and not a man of leisure, so I am destined to use manual labor ☹️

You're on to something Joe. I will let you know how it goes. Start a go fund me page so I can get out of jail.

😄 I have silver fever...... that's the equivalent of gold fever on a budget! Us east coast guys don't get enough of that gold, so we have to substitute.

Oh no.... no dredging the beach....they shoot ya!😄 So far, mother nature has removed enough sand to make it fun. Now if I could only get her to do it again, then the gold has to show up. I just found out for tomorrow's hunt it is going to be 19 degrees with a 17MPH NNW wind. That should make it interesting. 🥶

It's that gold radar you have in your head 😄 Nice size too.

Unfortunately it is not close to me, about 2 hours away (2 1/2 now since the police are doing a lot of radar recently 😄)I've got some new ideas on how to try and get the deep gold, that I will try out tomorrow if I go there. If they work, you will never hear of them 😉 but you will see the results. Although I would love to hit some gold, I'm really enjoying the silver ride, so not finding gold is ok with me. Thanks. Every manufacturer at some point produces a well thought out, killer machine. That was Minelabs moment. There other machines are all excellent for what they do, but the 5000 is the most versatile of the bunch, at least for what I do. All that digging seemed like a good idea at the time 😅. I actually enjoy the exercise and I just take it easy the next day, so I can recover. I have to do something to try and stay young. I'm hoping I have another 10 years of decent detecting before I have to concede. You never know when it's over, so make the best of every hunt, even if it's only an hour or 2.

Thanks. This spot has produced about 110 silvers in 6 or 7 hunts I think🤔. As soon as my headphones are fixed for the AQ, I'm bringing it out there to see what it can find. I'm going to really hunt it hard before that, just to see if the AQ finds anything after the GPX is done with that spot. There is a bit of EMI there that the GPX responds to, so it will be interesting to try the AQ, which handles EMI much better. I sleep well after every hunt 😆 It's odd that there is no gold there. With all those silver and copper coins found, I'm sure it's untouched territory. The only explanation for no gold I can think of, is that it is still deeper. Maybe that AQ can get some deeper layers. I'll try 7 us, 0 ATS, sens 7, all metal - if that doesn't do it, then I don't know what will 😐 There is a pattern to those coins as far as the types of sand layers I cut through to get to them. They are about 12-15" deep and come in after I get to a crunchy layer of very small pebbles. I have yet to hit clay though. That is where I think the gold is hiding, just beyond my reach. There is also a fair amount of iron and I've dug a lot of it. Should be easier next time out. Actually, I can't wait, so I shifted work so I can go out there this Monday 😏 I'm not patient enough to wait! Thanks Steve. I know it's meant to be a gold machine but it smokes on the beach!! The GPX is a solid, well engineered, masterpiece for the type of relic and beach hunting I do. If they only improved the EMI I would gladly buy that version.

Thanks. Silver in this condition sometimes cleans up well. You can get it clean, but the damage is exposed once the black is gone. The worst ones are the ones that have the thick black crust. A lot of the detail is lost, once the black layer is removed. They sometimes do push sand up the beach for opening day, but after a couple of bigger storms, they are back where they started. I don't think anyone has hit this spot, and unless they have a pulse machine, I'm not too worried. Coins are still in the 12-15" range. Even if they hear some of these signals, they would probably be so sketchy or read as iron, that they pass on them. EMI makes them hard to discern from false signals. But even on the GPX, with max settings, they are faint. The hardest part of hunting like this, is locating an area that has just the right amount of sand removed. Too little removed and I can't hear them, too much removed and everybody can hear them. This is the 4th time I have found an area like this. You have to hit it strong until it's either empty or it closes up. I'm just shocked that there is very little gold but a lot of lead and nickels. 🥴

Found that headless horseman. 😲 Wonder how old it really is? 40's 50's?

Thanks, I may have to cancel work and play hooky before next Thursday 😄

I think there is always a trade off with every new release from Minelab. We always want our old machine with just a few refinements and added features...... and Minelab responds with something completely new 😄 In a way, you have to applaud them for not listening to us.

I could not wait to get back to my spot at the beach. The GPX was on fire!!! I had an idea that I would revisit the spot I did previously, and try and get the faintest targets that I could hear through the moderate EMI. I was hoping they would be silver dimes, as they are the smallest and possibly hardest to hear. I also wanted to remove some very big iron that took up a good section of this spot. I thought it may be masking a lot, since this is a target rich area. Even though I had reasoned my strategy in my head, I did not expect these results. When I did a lot of park/school hunting we would always shoot for type trifectas, I never did that on a beach since it happens rather rarely. I did not expect the cent, nickel, dime, and half dollar trifecta. Just missed the quarter as I did not get the barber quarter. Surprised with the Indian, V nickel, and barber half mostly. The big iron hid 3 silver dimes, some other cents and nickels and the Barber Half. I wasn't even mad about the 2 zincs that seem to always spoil my hunts 😄 If the weather holds out next week, I will hit this area again, mostly to see if it will still hold anything and because the rest of the beach seems to not have lost as much sand as this area did. I spent 8 hours digging and another half hour looking for a lost wedding band in the parking lot for a nice old couple. I could tell they were very sad, since they were pacing the lot. I did not find it and they were not sure if she lost it there or from leaving the house. If they lost it on the boardwalk, it would easily be spotted by someone walking. A great day, very warm and sunny and as always, it’s nice to get out and hunt for the day.

I'll start with the easiest for me. Target separation is like night and day (with a little gray area thrown in). The Equinox separates targets way better than the other two. But the E Trac and the CTX can, if you go real slow, find targets in the iron (null). I noticed this on the E Trac especially when I did cellar holes. It would null for the iron but then pop out a target tone like on an old one piece button, very clearly. But only if you crawled. So I can't say it actually separated the two targets of if it just reported the non ferrous one. As for the condensed range on the Equinox, I can tell you I rarely dug any zinc cents that were corroded as low as (and as many different numbers) as I do now with the Nox. Zincs can read in all gold numbers where the would not read that low on the CTX or E Trac. Also tinfoil would not read high enough to be in the gold ring range where they do now with the EQ. I guess the easiest way to say it is that foil, bottle caps, and zincs are way more stretched across most of the target ID range below copper pennies. Above that, the targets are more consistent with what we are used to. Degrade a bottle cap and it drops way down. On a beach, you can't rely on the numbers as well as you could before. I know some are going to say that you can tell the difference between a piece of foil or a degraded bottle cap or a ring, but I for one liked it better when the numbers were more consistent.

Each machine has it's pluses. I've had the E Trac, and still have the CTX and the EQ 800. The E Trac with proper disc settings, long tones, in multi is a killer in trashy parks. Silver dimes at 9-10" at least (New England soils). Target ID had some really nice quirks (bouncy numbers). The CTX was really a beach machine for me - relic hunting, it was good but iffy on deep targets. On the beach with the large coil on wet sand slopes, it would bang quarters at 12" like they were at 6". Number system was still good like the E Trac. Equinox is a different beast. I like some aspects of it, but absolutely hate the Target ID. No matter how you slice it, spin it or ignore it, grouping many items in the low to mid-range numbers is not Target ID. 😄 If it wasn't for the fact that it is really good at chains and small gold targets (studs, charms, etc) then I would probably sell it. Of course that it's wireless, waterproof, and has almost no weight are all pluses from the earlier models. But really for me, Minelab's design of the GPX 5000 is where I would trade all 3 of those for. I know some people don't like a lot of settings, but for me when companies make things easier for us, I lose the ability to push the machine into depth regions that I could not have gotten to without the ability to tweak the machine. I did a beach hunt yesterday that I know I would never have had the success I had if they had limited the GPX's controls. I think the best thing already said was you have to be comfortable with whatever machine you use and be happy.