Testing D2 Programs On The Land That Time Forgot

[CPT_GhostLight]

With the recent  tips, tricks, and comparison videos out there regarding unmasking in iron, I've been anxious to try out some ideas in what is my personal "worst dirt on Earth". I call it the Land that Time Forgot. I know that others probably have way worse dirt, but for my area, this is it for me. It is an old coal mining area close to home that is strewn with coal, coke, magnetite, hot rocks, all manner of iron from microscopic to huge, and man-made metal trash of all varieties. It operated from the late 1800s to the 1930s and probably began to be metal detected the week after it closed down. It is the proverbial beat to death, hunted out site. Most people I know won't even go there anymore. I imagine this place is probably what the surface of one of the moons of Jupiter looks like.

Of course being only a couple of years back into the hobby, I don't have the good sense to look somewhere more promising, so off I went trying to beat the weekly snowstorm on the only warm-ish day in while. Now I've been trying to expand my repetoire of D2 Programs and tricks to enhance my hunting experience in really difficult ground. For this hunt, I wanted to really explore F350's Relic Reaper program, variations of Fast in Full Tones and Pitch, Sensi FT, Park in Pitch, Relic, and Deep HC in Pitch. Now I didn't take the time to do anything even approaching scientifically controlled testing, I was on the hunt, so I just alternated using Fast Full Tones, Fast Pitch, and G1-F350 (Relic Reaper) to find targets and interrogated them with all of the listed programs. Now this was just my area in my worst case scenario and results will vary in your areas, so take this all with a grain of salt.

My main three hunting programs were as follows:

Fast Full Tones in PWM and Sens 94, Disc -2.0, Notch 00-00, Silencer & B-Caps 0, Reactivity 1.5, Audio Response 5.

Fast Pitch Tones in PWM and Sens 94, Disc 6.8, Notch 10-30, Silencer 2, B-Caps 3, Reativity 2, Audio Response 5.

G1-F350 (Realic Reaper) stock, but with PWM audio, Sensitivity 96, and Big Numbers instead of XY screen. FYI, for those interested in the Relic Reaper, contact @F350Platinum. It's his program and he might share it with you if you bribe him with Spanish Silver. 🤣

I hunted mainly by ear, only looking at the TID numbers when a target sound confused me or was very faint in the mix. That actually worked pretty well on most of the programs. I dug anything that sounded good and iffy ones as well. One thing I noticed was that Relic, Deep HC, and Fast Pitch liked to false loud on big iron. So did the the Park program in Pitch, but it was just too filtered to hit many of the targets in the iron matrix. The iron overpowered it, so I stopped using Park after a while. The programs with Full Tones seemed to false to a lesser degree, or perhaps it just sounded lower in pitch and volume, but they worked well to tell falsing iron from a non-ferrous target close to iron. I dug several iffies just to confirm. The programs with square tones made it harder for me to tell misshaped targets from round, in my opinion, so I switched all programs to PWM. That seemded to help quite a bit for me and why I mainly use PWM now. All of the programs seemed to hit good targets well, but for me, The Fast and Deep HC in Pitch hit the hardest even on the tiniest targets. The G1-F350 (Relic Reaper) was designed for use in very mild soil, but did amazingly well in my mineralization. It went deep and was great at separating non-ferrous from ferrous targets and I ended up using it to check all deep iffy targets in iron and it was spot on. I also noticed that full tones in PWM was great at telling deep from shallow and small from large targets. It may be because I tend to run a little hot, from 94-96, and larger targets and very shallow targets would distort in the audio like an overdriven amp. So for my ears, I still like Fast the best, but that's just me.

I also tried adjusting Reactivity from 0.5-4 to see if I could unmask targets. Anything over 2.5 just didn't sound off as well in this dirt and under 1.5 was just lost in the mix. 1.5-2 seemed to be the sweet spot in this beat up ground.

So to wrap up, try everything to learn what works best for you in your ground. You just won't know what will work best for a particular location unless you experiment. I did manage to unearth one sweet surprise in that scortched earth from hell. While poking around under some tumble weeds, I got a fairly faint 90-94 number peaking through the iron grunts and it remainded the same on all programs that I checked it with. Thinking it was a large bottle cap, I dug it because all 90s come out! It was actually a very weathered 1927-D silver Mercury dime! I coudn't believe it! Coins are scacer than hens teeth at this place, except for zinc pennies which must just rain from the sky in this state! Anyway thanks for reading and I hope my quests help others in some small way on their journey.

  

Buttons, bullets, and such.

Possibly Native American or Spanish hair or braid decoration.

Non-Ferrous.

The Iron.

The Glass.

The trashy trash.

[JCR]

That's a lot of targets. Quite a few decent finds & some pretty glass too. A good hunt & you learned some more.

[Digalicious]

Nice haul!

 

Quote

I call it the Land that Time Forgot. I know that others probably have way worse dirt, but for my area, this is it for me. It is an old coal mining area close to home that is strewn with coal, coke, magnetite, hot rocks, all manner of iron from microscopic to huge, and man-made metal trash of all varieties.

Sheesh. I don't think you can worse than that. Ok, maybe if it included snakes and scorpions 🙂

[Cheddar]

you should give beach sensitive a try. adjust the salt sens to get rid of the mineral chatter

[CPT_GhostLight]

55 minutes ago, Digalicious said:

Nice haul!

 

Sheesh. I don't think you can worse than that. Ok, maybe if it included snakes and scorpions 🙂

Actually the snakes and scorpions and tarantulas are just about due to wake up. I did find a freshly shedded snakeskin hanging out of a hole, so it's almost time to put the anti-snake gators back on! 🐍

But when the bears start waking up, it'll be time to move on. 🐻

[Doc Bach]

Those are the types of targets and finds that make a relic hunter as well as an early coin and token hunters mind run wild.The very kind that keep us motivated and chugging along and working to the point of exhaustion.Keep at it Cpt! Oh and I really like the piece with the diamond pattern.

[Ogliuga]

Nice hunt and outstanding photo, seems to be on another planet! If that  soil is mineralized, please try also with a program I did for my hematite area, called Focus1: sensitivity 94/97, audio response 5, reactivity 3, iron volume 3/5, silencer 0, ground stabilizer 1. It’s based on program 2 but with Pitch and PWM audio. If iron sounds too much high, set silencer on 2 and if machine isn’t as stable as you want, set ground stabilizer on 2. I have to say that I look for little, low conductive targets and this is program I use on mineralized soils. Bye for now!

[martygene]

What a great write up. Lots to try if I can ever get out. 

[F350Platinum]

Wow Cap'n, nice hunt. 👍 I'd call that place "The Land Where Time Moved On", but albeit desolate, here we are. Beautiful photos and great story. Love that you found a Merc in all that nothing! They do like to hide under bushes tho. 🤔 Many of your bits are cool as well, especially the jewelry and the old marine band harmonica which looks like false teeth 😀 that hair piece is a work of art!

No need to bribe me with the Spanish, guess I've been doing ok in that category 😎 Relic Reaper is for those that went to leave iron behind but hear it all.

In coming up with the Reaper, I wanted something that would pretty much bypass iron by letting me decide. All I ever seem to read are complaints about iron falsing, but after fiddling a bit with what made sense to me, opening up discrimination and not notching anything stood out as a way to let the chips fall where they should. I noticed Silver Slayer was very good at that, so I expanded the theme but eliminated the notch.

I don't have that problem anymore, eliminating one of the two abundant materials in most of my sites. A slight turn to a 90 degree will almost always cause that audible "dive". Guess it works well in PWM too, I try that from time to time but switch back to square.

I'll be trying it in Culpeper in a week or so, we'll see how it works there.

If I dug the iron I pass on, I'd have quite the collection of horse and ox shoes, but also enough plow parts to build a destroyer. 😀 While we don't have a lot of rocks here, I believe the clay and marl are enough to snap the toughest stuff. That and in some cases over 400 years of farming.

Great post! 🏆

[CPT_GhostLight]

Thanks F350! Your Relic Reaper program was the best of the lot for revealing iron with minmal falsing. It inspired my wide open Fast Full Tones program which acts very similar with iron. I can hear it all, but with the Iron Volume at 3 it doesn't overpower the good targets and reveals itself on the 90° turn. Most of the iron I only dug to verify or because it sounded like something interesting like a lock or spike.

I was also testing wide open vs notched programs. I found that using a low Disc (0-6.8) with low Notch (10-30) with Pitch audio helped to find good targets in the vast iron debris and switching to wide open (very low Disc and no Notch) with Full Tones and slowing down helped to hear the deep whispers and that seems to work really well. The D2's audio is amazingly descriptive.