GB_Amateur

So over the years I lost track of the decimal point? 😁 Thanks for pointing that out. Another example (besides your microwave oven 'window' covering -- a good one) is comparing radio telescope surfaces to those on optical telescopes. The latter (optical) need to be smooth to 1/4 wavelength (for amateur instruments) and smaller (for professional instruments) and thus appear flawless to our naked eyes since their sensitivity is to EM radiation of less than a micrometer (millionth of a meter). The former (radio) are reflecting long wavelength light (wide range but think centimeters) and are typically made from metal screens.

IMO, that last part "...as long as..." is true of all detecting, not just that with entry-level detectors. I still am of the opinion (apparently not shared by many) that learning detecting with a high-powered multi-featued detector is counter-productive. Digging everything (regardless of what the discrimination system tells you) is quite valuable. Experienced detectorists know this and do just that when they get new detectors. Yeh, a person can drive his/her Corvette ZR-1 at 30 mph for the first few thousand miles. How many do that??!! This reminds me (here we go again) of a non-detecting story which I think is related. I picked this up from a documentary movie (can't remember the title). The accomplished actor Paul Newman had a passion for auto racing but didn't get involved in that until about age 40. He was a smart guy and recognized that he knew next to nothing about how to race. He sought out a good teacher/mentor who (wisely, as you will now see) put him in an underpowered car. For at least the first year (maybe two) Newman drove against experienced drivers with faster cars while he learned how to make the most out of what was underneath him. To even stay on the track he had to use finesse -- valuable skills which would carry over to his future endeavors. It takes a person with a lot of self-confidence but also humility to be able to consistently take a beating like he did and stick with it. And the techniques he learned in that under-powered car paid off in spades when he finally moved up to the more powerful racing machines that his competitors were driving. (They subsequently found that out, too. 😁)

Thanks to all for your replies. This was (as you may/should have surmised) somewhat hypothetical. OTOH, even the simultaneous multifrequency IB/VLF detectors lose discrimination as targets go deeper. Of course eventually they lose all signal from the deep desired target (nothing profound there), and more quickly than today's PI's. Sounds like on raw depth for small objects the Zed not only has no competition (even from the PI's) but nothing is close. Another well-known fact (pointed out by Simon above) is that there is no such thing as a trash-free site. In an overly simplified way, the Zed can be thought of as a non-discriminating IB/VLF with a huge coil (and decreasing the simplification, also better able to see through ground minerals). Its zone of detection not only goes deeper but also increases laterally (the other two dimensions). In a practical site it's going to react to the deeper targets but also more shallow targets, specifically those in the neighborhood of that deep target you seek. That's another property that is true for all detectors but it's exaggerated with the Zed's strength. I remember my first detector, the Heathkit GD-48. It had one knob (on/off + gain). I think it operated near 100 kHz which was common(?) for the early IB detectors (called T/R detectors back then). This was ~1970 and I found old coins in the 6+ inch depth. I don't even remember being bothered by trash but I'm sure I dug plenty. We weren't spoiled with all this ground balancing and discrimination back then, just glad to find treasure. I am a bit surprised no one has come forward with a story of a deep coin showing up while using the Zed. We occasionally hear about digging two feet down to recover a lead bullet or brass casing. Yeh, those are more common out in the wilds but there have to be a few coins out there in washes, etc. I specifically posted this in the general (main) forum instead of the coins and relics sub-forum, hoping those just interested in natural gold (and thus the GPZ users) would share a story or two of a deep coin that showed up. Maybe one will still appear.

Well if Minelab (or any other manufacturer) can get better separation/unmasking without sacrificing (too much) depth, I will get excited. In the old sites I've hunted it appears masking is the biggest problem. I really like the Equinox's separation abilities but significant improvements would be welcome in my corner. If they're going to charge CTX 3030 prices it needs to be way more than an incremental step up to get my $. But that's just me -- I'm a cheapskate; ask my wife if you don't believe me.

I assume the CTX 3030 was (still is?) considered the Minelab's flagship IB/VLF detector. How much better was it than its predecessor? (That isn't a rhetorical quesiton -- I have no idea what or how good its predecessor was.)

Damn, strick, you sure know how to find rare quarters! Your 1918/17-S is still my favorite -- you're going to have to find an 1873-CC, not the Arrow-date variety which is a rarity but the no Arrows version (retirement time) to suplant that on my honor roll. But back to the 1864-S. The condition looks pretty darn high (VF-25?) with the eagle feather details. I know where I'm spending next Christmas Eve.

Great photos, Glenn. But you've piqued my interest regarding the 'disasters'. Any photos of those, or at least a description of what you've had go wrong?

Yep, that's Randy Horton who wrote an excellent monograph (good reading for any coin detectorist -- heck, maybe any detectorist!, not just ML X-Terra owners):

I thought that was your Cointopia? If you don't have such a spot I doubt anyone does.

I think (could be wrong...) a rough rule-of-thumb is that an opening in a conductive shield should be smaller than the wavelength of the incident wave in order to be effective. A 2.4 GHz EM wave has a wavlength of 0.125 m (=12.5 cm = 125 mm). That's the Eqx transmitter frequency. (Following cut and pasted from p. 67 of the Oct 2019 Eqx User Guide 5): So does this mean that both the WM08 RF signal and the Bluetooth RF signal are strongly attenuated by a good shield whose largest opening is the size of the Eqx control module display? (FYI, the relationship between frequency and wavelength is: wave-speed = wave-frequency x wavelength. Wave speed is 3.00x10^8 meters/second.)

Thanks for that photo chronicle, Chase. The gold coin (well, all your finds for that matter) is well deserved. I'm curious as to what %-age of time you spent in battlefield/encampment sites, given all the military artifacts you show. I like the silver 1/2-Real. No need to downplay finding one from the 1st Republic of Mexico. Heck, weren't a lot of the Spanish ones coined in Mexico?

Welcome, 2bit_digger! That's quite a collection of oldies (including 2 halves). How many years is "a few"? Hmmm. That's pretty valuable research info you're broadcasting there, VL. You may think everyone knows that, but I didn't, although I did know that Vandalia was the first capital of Illinois. (Pretty long drive for me, though. I did meet up with your grandfather at a halfway location when he was first learning his Eqx 800. We both found old coins that day, too, in a park we had no idea would produce.)

Much of what you showed in those photos are called 'relics' by some detectorists. I think the cliche' one man's trash is another man's treasure was created by a relic hunter after a long backbreaking day without so much as a coat button. Many a day I've gone coin hunting only to end up with some of those priceless relics. Come to think of it, that's probably why Steve named a subforum here with dual title "Detecting for Coins and Relics". 😉

That's my favorite coin design of all time but I've yet to find one while detecting (nor any other silver half). That's a trophy case find for sure thanks to help from your Simplex. How about posting a photo of it here or better yet on the Coins and Relics sub-forum?

I can't remember this being discussed but maybe I've missed it or forgotten it. Given how deep the Zed has been known to find small nuggets it seems to me it could do well on coins. Any experience (or reliable hearsay 😁) on this? As a distantly related sidelight, a couple weeks back on Curse of Oak Island (TV show) Gary Drayton is seen with a GPZ-7000 and it had the ML 19" coil mounted. It's impossible from watching alone to know how long he swung it but in terms of air time it was minimal and I don't recall any footage of them digging a target he found with it. Later he was back to his trusty ML CTX3030, so maybe just a publicity/advertising stunt. (It's also risky to interpret scenes on these shows as reliably chronological, so maybe we'll see more of the 7000 in later episodes.)

Plat maps (which show property ownership at the time of issue plus other landmarks) have been produced for well over a century. I have a digital copy of one for my area from the late 19th century. Those can be really good at showing old roads, schoolhouses, etc. Again, your library probably has them and your county records office might also have old ones. A detecting friend has a book of them which someone compiled and published. It covers many counties. You seem to be going at this the right way. Old coins are there awaiting your detection.

Is that even possible?

You're off to a great start. Just like real estate, the 3 most important aspects of detecting are location, location, location and you've shown that once again. That's a nice collection and displays. Thanks for showing the photos. You will be best off if you can find old maps and newspaper/book articles that show the locations of long gone hot spots (churches, schools, gathering places in general, homesites,...). Local libraries (and the associated helpful librarians) should have plenty of reference material to lead you to those juicy hunting grounds. You mentioned 200 acres the farmer has given you permission to detect. That sounds like a gold mine but you won't be able to search it all properly. That's where research pays divdends.

You've gotten a lot of good advice although I hesitate to agree with all of it. At the risk of not giving credit where credit is due (i.e. repeating something already said but not specifically acknowledging it) I'm going to start from scatch -- answering as if I hadn't read any of the other helpful posts. 1) The ML Equinox is a complicated detector. IMO, the people who are able to turn it on from day 1 and understand it are rare, and those who can are extremely experienced with detectors in general or at least quite experienced in some of Minelabs earlier simultaneous multifrequency detectors (sMF). It took me over a year and a half (~400 hours in the field) to get comfortable with it and now with twice that much time under my belt I'm still learning things nearly every time out. 2) You say it's quiet at the beach and noisy on the turf. That's good evidence and (IMO) quickly points to two things -- ground balance and trash in the turf location. 3) Ground balancing isn't as critical on the Eqx (when in sMF) as it is in single frequency detectors because the detector itself takes advangate of the different frquencies (two of them, anyway) to adjust for the ground. However, in my experience it helps to do a ground grab (not a term ML would dare use ) -- what they call automatic ground balance (pumping method). That can be a challenge in trashy ground as you want to have the coil over a clean (just ground) spot. If you're not sure, do it in more than one place that seem quiet and compare the values. In my ground if I'm within 5 units on consecutive/multiple grabs I consider it balanced. (That takes advantage of the sMF properties -- you don't have to be dead on like you do with some single freq detectors.) And here's a tip going forward. Mentally rememeber (or even write down) your ground balance values at sites in your area. This can give you an indication if you're GB'ing over trash sometimes. There are places (e.g. Denver) which wildly varying ground over distances of miles (maybe less) but for example in my area I usually get somewhere around 30, but not always (I've gotten 15 and I've gotten 60). Also, ground balance for me is pretty consistent in the same site from one occasion to another. Soil moisture may play a roll but around where I live that is minor (and we do get considerable ground moisture variation over the year). 4) I find the pinpoint function on the Eqx to be quite helpful but it's quirkly and it takes time to really figure it out. A large effect (issue) is turning it on over a piece of metal. Also, if you have a deep target with trash nearby, the trash can partially or completely mask the good target when pinpointing, pulling you away from the intended target. I always try to pinpoint close (laterally, meaning front/back or left/right, not vertically) as I can. Think of the center of the coil as the hotspot (because it is!). For most targets if the coil center between ~3 inches away to the edge of the coil distance (5.5 inches) from the target that's a good place to hit the button. That annoying muted sound happens to everyone, from what I can tell. Sometimes just moving away from the target (not more than a coil radius) to quiet it and waiting a couple seconds will cure it and you can go back to over your target. Sometimes you just have to exit pinpoint and start over. Another annoying (to me, but obviously they made it this way because some people like it) is the ballistic effect of the pinpoint. As you swing back and forth, somtimes (particularly noticeable on strong signals) is that the detector's 'brain' will intentionally adjust the volume. If you have a quiet (weak) target signal with another loud (strong) one nearby the loud one can completely mute the intended target. Reset (turn off pinpoint, then back on) and start over. 5) Don't expect good targets to fit into any simple pattern. If coin-sized targets are near the surface it's easy to make rules to decide if it's a good one or not. If a site is void of trash and every (even deep) target is alone/isolated then you probably also can makes rules of thumb. But every site I know of (I don't hunt water or beach so this doesn't apply there, at least may not) has trash. People (not all, but too damn many) intentionally throw trash on the ground but only accidentally drop 'treasure'. As much as we'd like pristine detecting sites with only good targets, that doesn't happen on this planet!! I have parks in which one expects aluminum trash (and s/he'd be right) but also find plenty of nails, screws, wire -- different kinds of iron trash. Why? Sometimes I can find a reason and sometimes I can't, but it's always there in every park site I hunt. (BTW, I require a site to be over 50 years old because I'm after old coins. Sometimes my parks were residential or agricultural before they became parks. Regardless, they all have iron trash.) I can't emphasize point #5 enough because it's the one piece of misinformation I've read on DetectorProspector.com forum, accepted, and then had to unlearn. Consistent TID's (tonewise or digital-readout-wise)? Nope. Good signal from multiple directions? Nope. Lack of iron grunts hints) while sweeping over a target? Nope. Clean pinpoint? Consistent readings from different modes? Consistent tonal/TID tendencies when changing to single frequencies? None of these tells you the target is good/bad. Yes, for shallow/strong targets, probably. Those typically aren't the ones I pine for. It's the deeper and masked targets that pay in previously detected sites and their signals are the ones that are hard to figure out. (If they were easy then the previous detectorists would have gotten them.) Good coil control helps and is important but it doesn't make deep, masked targets magically sound sweet. Be persistant and don't expect to master the Equinox early on, if ever. It's like a race car. Anyone can drive it on the Bonneville Salt Flats but take it to a crowded Watkins Glen and you'll separate the true experts from the pretenders.

Jeff, would you please elaborate on this distinction? Particularly what are the implications (e.g. advantages and disadvantages) of each type of threshold.

Now all you need is an F75 and you can add data to this thread. 😁 Regarding the discussion of air gap, I just remembered I have some (four, I think) ziplock bags with soil in them. Each one is about 1" thick, so short of having more targets buried at increasing depths as you have, I can utilize those to get a more realistic ground effect. I'm not ready to throw in the towel on the Detech Ultimate. Simon would never forgive me if I did. But today is another one with good enough detecting weather that I probably won't get any testing done until later.

One more question and one more request: Request: could you post the ferrous/non-ferrous break VDI values for these detectors? Question: a couple of the MK boxes have a single number with a minus sign in front of it. Are these actual negative numbers or does it indicate something else?

Great tests! I'm still absorbing that table. I was also wondering the weights of the materials but ElNino77 beat me to it. Now for the plastic bin -- is this something you can point to on a website (e.g. Amazon or one of the big box lumber/hardware sites)? Short of that could you post pictures of just the bin with a ruler/scale in view? I can see these tests expanding and rather than putting all the burden on you, we can help with that. I have a particular spot with quite a bit of charcoal or burned wood. I think your tests with the broken up coal pieces will help me better deal with that site. Thanks for the effort and for sharing with us.

So you have every date+mm in the series except the 1877? Did you find all of them with a detector?

Yes, I should have said that. But I'll go one further -- don't use a tool like this in a publicly (government) owned site, ever. It's for farm fields, wood&forests, and other private property where you know (because you've gotten the OK from the landowner) that it's allowed. Even if a park superintendant were to give the OK I wouldn't use it as it will negatively excite someone eventually -- just not worth it. Even hand diggers (one handed garden tool) are a bad idea in some parks. There is a lot written on this site of recvovery methods. Here's a good one: