Quick Summary Detecting With The AQ

[KENNE-BILL]

I received my AQ 1-1/2 weeks ago and have been out with it twice so far, my first hunt was last week Sunday for a combined 5.5 hours between 2 batteries (I purchased an extra battery).  I hunted at a beach where I detected the previous weekend with my TDI BH so didn't expect much as far as finds but just wanted to get a feel for the new detector, I hunted in the water from shoreline to chest deep with the AQ in all metal mode and presets on the rest of the knobs except for the pulse delay which I tried out from 7 - 11.5.  Running with the pulse delay at 7 was a bit noisy especially when swinging the coil away from the shoreline into deeper water but was actually quite stable with minimal falsing on the return swing toward shore, increasing the pulse delay resulted in as expected less falsing/chatter, I ended up at 10 microseconds.  I was able to find a bit of change, fishing lead, tent spikes and a stainless steel ring I estimate was dug in the 10" range.

My second hunt was yesterday in Waikiki in the bigger of the 2 ponds for those familiar with Waikiki, again strictly in the water and in all metal mode but was able to run the pulse delay at the marked preset 8 with minimal falsing, found some change, pull tabs and a titanium ring.  My battery lasted 2 hours 40 minutes which was 10 minutes longer than its first run last weekend, I opted not to swap batteries to hunt longer as the tide was really coming up and ended up calling it a day.  As mentioned I also detect with a TDI BH and find the AQ to be very similar so far in performance and audio but again have only 8 hours of detecting time with the AQ water hunting, I have yet to try any dry/wet sand hunting and modes other than all metal.  In the pic are the SS and titanium rings, hopefully some precious metals are right around the corner.:)       

Physical observations - The AQ seems well built quality wise and feels well balanced, I find it easy to swing in the water even with its 12" coil.  I'm 6'1"  tall and am okay so far with the stock rod length fully extended - I can see where hunting the wet/dry sand a longer rod would give a wider swath while hunting.  Others have mentioned the arm strap being short, the strap that came with my AQ seems fine too me.  I also secured the headphone cable to the top of the detector shaft with a small Velcro strap as a strain relief as suggested by OBN and others.               

[Beach Pirate]

Hi Kenne-Bill,

Appreciate your summary. Good to see the AQ is in the hands of another water hunter.

When fully submerged, do you think it is possible to keep pulse delay at 7 but reduce sensitivity to stabilize falsing? 

Thanks again 👍

 

 

[schoolofhardNox]

Thanks for the report on the AQ. Did the rings have a strong response? Any guess on how deep the Titanium ring was? I agree the AQ does have a solid, easy to swing feel to it.

[Skull diver]

1 hour ago, Beach Pirate said:

do you think it is possible to keep pulse delay at 7 but reduce sensitivity to stabilize falsing

I think You might want to try exactly the opposite combination...

 

[Tony]

Generally speaking, and with regard to PI performance, it is preferable to reduce any Gain or Sensitivity settings before any Pulse/Reject settings. I would rather hunt at 10uS and a low Gain rather than 15uS and a high Gain.

[Beach Pirate]

28 minutes ago, Skullgolddiver said:

I think You might want to try exactly the opposite combination...

 

👍 seems that is what he did. This machine has been engineered to operate at 7us, would be a shame to lose that ability, especially when searching for freshly dropped fine gold.

[Tony]

2 hours ago, Beach Pirate said:

Hi Kenne-Bill,

Appreciate your summary. Good to see the AQ is in the hands of another water hunter.

When fully submerged, do you think it is possible to keep pulse delay at 7 but reduce sensitivity to stabilize falsing? 

Thanks again 👍

Yes to this ⬆️ 

[Skull diver]

46 minutes ago, Tony said:

I would rather hunt at 10uS and a low Gain rather than 15uS and a high Gain

You're right...Unluckily I tried any way to set the lowest delay with scarce results despite 50% Gain.

I hunt in a strong salty area, where is really hard to keep quiet the machine even at 17uS.

I finally managed good results only raising up to 20uS and despite using GB on to skip coins, I finally used with full gain and rock solid treshold the Tdi.

Surprisingly, our loved gold rings don't disappear with higher delay with this machine...The scary thing is the GB knob cautious use regard the black hole!

[Tony]

I fully understand.....I will still always choose a setting that has both a good response to most gold and minimal response to salt. If that means running at 20us to 25uS then I’m okay with that. With high salt content and quick moving saltwater then sometimes it’s the only choice and it’s a smart move. There’s a reason why detectors such as the discontinued Tesoro Sand Shark had a minimum start delay of about 25uS......you might miss the really smaller gold but you’d always hear the bigger gold and with a nice even threshold to make hours of saltwater detecting pleasurable. Depth on larger and higher karat gold rings are usually not disadvantaged with a slower delay (typically around the 15uS to 20uS) mark. 👍

[Tony]

42 minutes ago, Skullgolddiver said:

You're right...Unluckily I tried any way to set the lowest delay with scarce results despite 50% Gain.

I hunt in a strong salty area, where is really hard to keep quiet the machine even at 17uS.

I finally managed good results only raising up to 20uS and despite using GB on to skip coins, I finally used with full gain and rock solid treshold the Tdi.

Surprisingly, our loved gold rings don't disappear with higher delay with this machine...The scary thing is the GB knob cautious use regard the black hole!

This is intelligent use of the PI detector......having a stable machine will get more gold rather than running quick delays that will have a PI screaming all day long. I don’t care if I miss some small scraps of gold because the bigger pieces won’t be missed.