Flowdog

I appreciate the reminder using the 6 incher to quiet things down if necessary. I have been using the 11 every time I go out lately, and wouldn't have thought about switching if, in fact, these unfamiliar emi/ground conditions force us to cover less turf per swing due to noise. Not so severe a penalty, especially if we can find some silver coins ... 1 would be great. 9 is off the charts! Funny you should mention desert Stage stops. We were talking about how fun it would be to hunt the Pony Express trail.

Tometusns, Your simple advise is much appreciated. The noise cancel function got bigger as soon as I read it. BTW, I can assure you that my friend and I are going to have a TON of fun. Thanks!

Thanks Tom for this useful information. I am so used to running my machine quiet/hot that I would have not considered sensitivity level as part of the compatibility equation. You probably saved us an entire day if not more!👍

Fred, That would make two old coots loose in the same park. But it is the goal. I may give the WM08 a try. I believe one unit can pair with 4 headsets. My only hesitation being Our attention span when linked. 7 to 10 seconds max.⏳⌛️I think it's worth a try just because it's doable. Maybe for the first target just to see if my version of setup is tolerable to him. Will PM you if we need bail. It was your idea to turn him loose.😊

At last, I am meeting an old friend for our first detecting session together. We bought our Equinoxs last March and I have used mine a lot. He hasn't used his very much. It just dawned on me that I don't know how to adjust our machines to reduce/eliminate interference with each other. The manual says to keep about 45 feet apart. That is my recollection, but I will check that simple factoid against my simple memory. But I am hoping to stay closer if it is possible to adjust settings. My instinct would be to go through my normal routine first- before turning on his detector. Recently, I have my pinpointer on before I turn my detector on (thanks Steve). This has nearly eliminated pinpointer jitters in my headphones. I plan to turn both pinpointers on before I set up my unit as usual. Once all is set, then I will have him turn on #2 and.set it up and noise cancel it against the competition. Any and all suggestions to revise my plan are welcome. Last consideration, which is highly improbable, is using WM08 to share audio on a single machine. The one time we shared audio was in the cockpit of his Cessna, and we reverted back to 5th grade behavior at 5000 feet. We barely made it back. I have high confidence that it would be extremely unproductive to be linked to him for any amount of time. He would be in full agreement. -curtis

Gerry, that key doesn't look familiar, but those nuggets look exactly like the ones I've been looking for.

I will put in a plug for Gerry from Idaho here. Based on Steve's general advice that a good dealer is one you can call for help after they have your cash, Gerry has answered the phone and will take his time if you need help. He helped secure military discounts for a pair of 800s for my friend and I. Gerry made sure I had what was necessary to get started, but not more. A gentleman dealer.

That ring is hazardous duty pay Mitchel! Hell, I'm a fisherman and you won't find me in Fisherman's Park. I would be too worried about my car being broken into. Metal detecting there is quite an invitation for trouble. I am really glad that you moseyed through unscathed. Ditto what fredmason said about Hwy 49. Last winter my neighbor said she was going to Holister from Portola during the height of a snowstorm. Donner Pass was closed, so she asked about using 49 as an alternate route. She's just got back yesterday. 😳 I tried to warn her. Exaggerated, but she swears off 49 even though she survived that icy sob. I would have liked to meet you and taken you to a couple of permissions. You went through Portola and just so happens on the day you went through town, I found my first old token (Good for ONE cigar or drink) while you were waiting for Hwy 70 shuttle to proceed. I have contended with the road work ALL summer - going and coming from Reno for shopping, etc. Grrrr. If you're coming back this way you are welcome to PM if you are so inclined. Curtis

Dan- Gonna miss your NM posts as they are always a pleasure to view. Looking forward to see what you come up with from the Lone Star state.

Steve - Thanks for your UK trip report. Reading it made for a perfect start to a leisurely Sunday morning. Your discovery of that Bronze Age axe brought about a deep connection with how you must have felt finding something so ancient. Your feeling of a completed bucket list is evident in your "it cannot Ever get better than this perfect moment" expression in the picture of you holding it. A moment of metal detecting nirvana. Then the Roman bust takes you one step farther along history's path. How fortunate for anyone to be able to go someplace where so much world history intersected. I hope you bask in your well-deserved good fortune. And may it last until the items in your "bucket" settle enough to create just enough space for your list to grow by adding to it another perfect find someday.

If you don't mind answering a couple questions about your coin program, are you using any disc, or do you run with horseshoe engaged? How many tones also. I was experimenting varying RS between 3 & 2 and IB from 4 down to 0. After the county sheriff arrived my concentration was shaken, even though he decided I was on my permission. I had no concentration remaining whatsoever when after the sheriff left, I had a concerned citizen honking his car horn at me. After explaining myself yet again, I was too frazzled to resume my experiment with F2. But my aborted experience with recovery 2 and low F2 coupled with your experiences, gives some clue where I'll start when my state of mind is right to go back to that particular permission or my next hunt in a different spot.

Tom, good job sticking it out with that wheat cent! And thanks for describing your outing using F2. The wheat TID 17 is unsettling. It will make mandatory a return trip to the old site in my post. I recall getting TID 17 three or four times that resolved pure and steady. I passed. In the falsing cacophony of F2 on low I covered an old harmonica reed @ TID22 that was rock solid. Same TID with an old set of keys, but not from every angle. The purest tone that day was on a very old crimped bottle cap. I think it may be made of brass? Non-ferrous, heavy, and clean. Possibly copper. The point being, the lower range in F2 seems, at least to my hearing, to produce moving/falsing audio for every iron, alloyed, corroded and/or irregular shaped target. However, all that activity came to an abrupt, steady and very welcome tone on a both circular and irregular shaped non-ferrous targets amongst heavy junk. Simply the lower scale of F2 doing its job: Unmasking to the greatest extent possible. I believe ML turned loose Tom D on the F2 project to advance the cause of tackling the unmasking physics we all suffer from. Steve H has more than once pointed to Tom's article, "The Painful Truth", showcasing Tom's current F2 passion to make masking a bit less onerous. Meanwhile, back in the dirt, I will be digging those 17's that I walked over. Maybe wheaties or may be Indian Heads! Either way, thanks Tom for the heads up on the weird TID. Curtis

That graphic settled for me some of the complex Fe/f2 "equivalence" scale, It also got me curious The F2 scale shows it to be broader than Fe, therefore F2 must have courser iron bias adjustments than Fe. However, according to Tom, given that F2@4 is identical to Fe@0, and further given, that each downward adjustment in F2 below 4 are finely stepped decrements of -.25. This must indicate that changing bias in the center range - near default - will have a greater impact on processing and much finer processing on the lower end. Tom did not mention much if anything about the higher end properties, but I would guess that In reality, the graphic may be more accurate if was drawn as a bell shaped curve. For giggles, I'd like to see the undisclosed Fe and F2 bell graphs superimposed. FWIW, three days in the field totaling about 10 hours, I went way out of my comfort zone with F2. Aa few hours in lighting and snow and foil-lined fleece jacket probably didn't help on the first night, but when I covered a dime there was no doubt. The rest of my hours were spent in bed of iron conditions. Sticking with F2 was very harsh, and the gap from hunting park/school to an old homesite had me making quite a few adjustments- not only iron bias. I will say that when running quieted, running F2@9 sounded like I had cotton in my earphones. F2 @ 0 was falsing off hundreds of iron bits, square nails, rusted cans, but would sometimes resolve the TID into a dig tone without benefits. Nevertheless, just like I got comfortable running Fe@0 I will be leaning toward operating F2 with no-to-low bias as the norm.

I cannot help with ID, and also cannot help myself comment on the beauty of the artifact you saved. It is stunningly beautiful! Best wishes in your quest to discover it's provenance. I have no doubt it will be very interesting. The members of this forum have a collective body of knowledge that they generously share, so you have come to the right place. Thanks for posting and welcome to this forum.

During your Gold Mode testing you may have inadvertently (or intentionally) set your detector to operate at 40MHz frequency, which completely disables iron bias - both Fe and F2. Stated on Page 52 of the manual, "Iron Bias is only available when the operating frequency is Multi". This is not any different than previous firmware versions and applies to all modes. With that in mind, it would be interesting to see you run your tests over again in Multi using the same targets, various Fe vs. F2 equivalents, and, if available, a hot rock in close proximity to your gold targets. All prospectors have a pet hot rock, right?🕍⛏ Thanks for making the effort to conduct, video and post your original attempt. I hope you adjust and post again.