Rick K - First Member

It will take a while - seems like everything does at FTP, but they will back up the AQ and all other products 100%. One of my AQ customers found no AQ at his place after FedEx showed delivery. Several emails back and forth and (me worried that I might be “on the hook” if it had been nabbed by a “Porch Pirate”) - the first thing was that El Paso reassured me that if it was indeed “gone” that they would deal with it. As it turns out, it did turn up at the buyer’s place (unsolved mystery how). But - all’s well that ends well and I had received immediate reassurance from FTP that in any case, I was not on the hook and neither was my customer. Good in my book!

First Texas makes Fisher, Teknetics and Bounty Hunter. They also produce a wide range of industrial detection products and two lines of night vision equipment. In addition to all that, they actively solicit production work for their board level plant. Tom Walsh is the President and I’m pretty clear he has no notion of getting out of the metal detecting business. The company is “closely held” so there are no stockholders to please. They have a large engineering staff. Dave Johnson is still there and they also have Carl Moreland (previously Chief engineer at Whites till he moved to FTP 5 or so years ago).

Just for clarity - Alexandre, when you write “when only the new searchcoil is in the water” do you mean when the coil is submerged, but the control box and coil connector are not -

Jim P. - you wrote “my machine is no where close to slight retune of the Mr Tartar kiddie pool or slight sounds in video” Can you explain what you meant by “no where close to slight return”? - what you wrote is not entirely clear - to me at least. Thanks

TERRY, I sold you and Deborah your AQ’s If you want a refund, I’m the one to talk to, not Alexandre.

I am forwarding the Seeker’s last post to FTP.

No customer has two that I know of - of course two owners could get together but I am not aware that they have done that yet. Willy can chime in as to what the “Impulse Team” has done in that regard

“Half the settings are just for show”......not correct. Not all beach hunting involves wading in running salt water. The range of adjustment of the controls, the all metal and 3 modes with iron reject - all these things are there to make the AQ adaptable to a wide range of localities and techniques.

The connector is not metal, it is some type of high tech plastic like glass filled polyamide or similar. My statement about changed or added capacitance is based on a discussion I read on Geotec forum a while back - it is NOT based on any deep understanding I have of electronic or electrical stuff.

It’s not water intrusion into the connector, it’s the capacitance added by the presence of the salt water on the exterior of the connector - the PI causes a hell of a spike when the current is cut off in microseconds.

AQ - no ears!!!!

I like that - “match the hatch” Of course I know as much about fly fishing as I do about quantum physics, but I do know what it means!!!

The noise when the coil to control box connector is immersed and then comes out of the water is apparently due to a change in capacitance due to the water. Running salt water is tougher than still water as far as noise. The 12” coil may not be ideal for wading where the constantly changing volume and velocity of salt water makes it hard to detect with “normal” settings. The more users, the more usage, the better we will all understand how to use this tool. It is not for everyone or for all conditions/targets. Fisher is well aware that any beach detector is a niche machine. Now we will learn what niches (plural) this machine excels in and some will learn how to extract previously unreachable jewelry.

Alexandre said it best - our newest user in FL has posted her issues and they are discussing it. One thing worth mentioning is that there WILL be an 8” coil for the AQ. I expect to have concrete information on availability and price within a couple of weeks (I hope). Not sure it it will be an “alternate” or just an accessory. It will definitely react less to the salinity, but note Steve’s comments above - no free lunch

South East, Middle Atlantic and CA. I am obliged to do my best to distribute these early ones so as to maximize the feedback to Fisher from experienced folks in different environments. Doing my best - not infallible. About 60 on my list and if they ever are able to produce these at a normal rate, I expect to be able to fill the bulk of those orders. Over and above that - perhaps no more AQ Limited - the final configuration will launch at some point. Full price, probably normal distribution internationally. I have no inside info on that.

Three more shipped last week. The failed unit had a bad potentiometer. It has been repaired.

When I bought my Nox 800, my dealer gave me the military discount and explained that the 15% was in effect split 50/50 between ML and the dealer.

Great news about Todd on two counts. it's great that service will be available and it's good that Todd still is doing it - he is an extremely competent guy and very helpful one as well. It will be interesting if he will be able to provide out of warranty repairs as well.

None released this week. The one sent back is with QA and hope to have some word next week.

Planned AQ LTD (AQ Mk 1 is my preferred name) is intended to be about 100 - more or (perhaps) a good bit less. That will take all summer and perhaps a good bit more - COVID19 - learn as you go - possible ugly surprises from the field - all of the above. My list is a bit over 60 and at a few more, I will have to start a new list - because I don’t want to stir up false hopes. If I wanted to do that - I’d start a circus - accept pre-payments, deposits - you name it. I am not nearly well organized enough or greedy enough to do anything of the kind. I shall do the best I can with the instructions I have been given about getting a wide and serious spread for the early units and then I will likely review my oldest list then move to the newer ones.

FTP is working on a lighter 15” coil for the F75 and for the T2. I weighed a prototype and it was 800g (about 28 oz). Hopefully it will reach production status.

I think it probably makes relatively little difference, time and experience under different circumstances will tell. Remember on this however. This applies to mute and tone modes only. The Rejection control has no effect in all metal.

Phrunt - the squeal when the coil is lowered to the ground is characteristic and is just the AQ sensing the ground signal then the ATS restoring the threshold. The AQ is not “balanced” to the ground in the usual sense of a TDI or a GPX.

No units were shipped last week and none so far this week, so the total still stands at 8.

Interesting thought. Since the AQ Iron modes seem to work best with relatively “clean” ferrous junk, it might turn out that freshwater use is interesting after all.