Deus 2 Pacific Northwest Begs The Question

[SeaScene]

I have a D2.  I detect black sand beaches British Columbia ... similar to Washington coast I would think.  Beach mode Sens 92, Reactivity 2.  For a test I buried 2 gold rings 10 inches down and one silver, well spaced out.  On the ground gold IDs at 62, silver at 90.  Buried 10 inches down wet sand the D2 gives a high pitched response plus iron grunt for all three..  In other words dig everything it seems.  I tried out all the factory settings and Beach was "quietest" .  So my question is:  Why not just use a PI (if I am digging everything) as I understand this tech works well in black sands but goes off on everything.   I do point out that I only hunt beaches.  So would a PI be a best bet for me as opposed to the D2.  Thank you

[strick]

I vote for using both... why does it have to one or the other ? Different shoes for different terrain....trashy spots PI Good luck with that. Open beach detecting PI is great....Not all targets will be 10 inches deep and you may find the VLF helpful in a lot of scenarios. Even in the worst ground conditions a vlf can be helpful picking out shallower targets. Digging everything every time you go out looks good on paper till you actually do it 🙂

I have a whites TDI Pro...I only use it for beach hunting but not all the time just sayin...

strick 

[SeaScene]

First.. thanks for posting "strick".  I sold my TDI pro.  Hindsight is 20/20.  Good suggestion though.  Good hunting out there.   Cheers...

[midalake]

14 hours ago, SeaScene said:

I have a D2.  I detect black sand beaches British Columbia ... similar to Washington coast I would think.  Beach mode Sens 92, Reactivity 2

Your reactivity is too high. 

14 hours ago, SeaScene said:

On the ground gold IDs at 62, silver at 90.  Buried 10 inches down wet sand the D2 gives a high pitched response plus iron grunt for all three..  In other words dig everything it seems. 

Now you know what some of us experienced beach hunters have been talking about. Tracking GB and a lower reactivity might help in the D2 throwing you a number on deep targets. Pay close attention if the machine throws you a number even if it is only once in 5 or 6 swings. Also do not be afraid to put the D2 up two or three points of sensitivity just to look at one target. 

14 hours ago, SeaScene said:

I tried out all the factory settings and Beach was "quietest"

In the wet sand you should be able to run Beach Sens. but in the water, you will be lucky to get away with beach. Beach is not very good on gold chains. Try to hunt Beach Sens on the wet sand and water contact go to Beach Mode. 

 

[Doc Bach]

39 minutes ago, midalake said:

Your reactivity is too high. 

Now you know what some of us experienced beach hunters have been talking about. Tracking GB and a lower reactivity might help in the D2 throwing you a number on deep targets. Pay close attention if the machine throws you a number even if it is only once in 5 or 6 swings. Also do not be afraid to put the D2 up two or three points of sensitivity just to look at one target. 

In the wet sand you should be able to run Beach Sens. but in the water, you will be lucky to get away with beach. Beach is not very good on gold chains. Try to hunt Beach Sens on the wet sand and water contact go to Beach Mode. 

 

Not a beach hunter here.... But I very much like and appreciate your advice about increasing the gain to take a further look at one target.That can be very benificial and effective at relic sites as well.

[CPT_GhostLight]

This is why I'm not too interested in a PI for beach hunting unless I was after pirate treasure. @schoolofhardNox uses a PI and a SMF detector on his beaches and check out the trash to treasure ratios on each. SohN is a digging machine, but I get tired just looking at phtots of his digs! 🤣

 

[schoolofhardNox]

On 7/21/2023 at 8:51 PM, SeaScene said:

I have a D2.  I detect black sand beaches British Columbia ... similar to Washington coast I would think.  Beach mode Sens 92, Reactivity 2.  For a test I buried 2 gold rings 10 inches down and one silver, well spaced out.  On the ground gold IDs at 62, silver at 90.  Buried 10 inches down wet sand the D2 gives a high pitched response plus iron grunt for all three..  In other words dig everything it seems.  I tried out all the factory settings and Beach was "quietest" .  So my question is:  Why not just use a PI (if I am digging everything) as I understand this tech works well in black sands but goes off on everything.   I do point out that I only hunt beaches.  So would a PI be a best bet for me as opposed to the D2.  Thank you

A PI shines mostly when a beach has already been hit hard by others and there is at least moderate mineralization.  Non mineralized soil and that D2 would be a better bet. But when there is mineralization, then the PI may be the answer.  Time and energy are great factors in which machine you should choose. Health issues may limit your PI experience dramatically, although there are some PI's that are a better weight than the one I am using 😄 You can't fly down the beach with a PI, so consider that as well. But with ideal conditions the PI may get you more gold and silver than ever. For me that was when the beach was stripped of all but 20" of sand. Most machines could not hit that 16" -20" layer where all the old coins were at.  On my PI they were whisper targets, but I could hear them. Digging them continuously was another story 😆....🤕 When in doubt, fine tune your D2 to the faintest target you can find before digging it up. That way you can get some discrimination in the mix and not dig nails at 12+".

[ColonelDan]

I tested a number of PI machines when I was doing that for Kellyco.  Two issues I had and never got over with the PI:

1. No useable discrimination… no matter what the advertisements claim.

2. I got real tired real quick of digging 20 inch holes for a Bobbi pin!!😡

[SeaScene]

1 hour ago, ColonelDan said:

I tested a number of PI machines when I was doing that for Kellyco.  Two issues I had and never got over with the PI:

1. No useable discrimination… no matter what the advertisements claim.

2. I got real tired real quick of digging 20 inch holes for a Bobbi pin!!😡

Thanks for good post. Yes.  A real drag digging trash.  I guess the point is that with my D2 testing on 2 gold rings and 1 silver ring down 10 inches  (all well spaced apart as a test in separate holes) on a beach with heavy black sands  using Beach Sens and Beach modes (Relativity and Sensitivity tweaked in the many was suggested here) the response was high chirp and then iron "grunt" on all three rings.  Previously another poster here mentioned the same thing so he notched out the high tone and the grunt tone.  Replies from others to this poster were both yay and nay.  So, what I learn from my test is that if I do not dig everything I would miss gold and silver rings.  So ... that was the reason for my post.  If you have to dig everything anyway because discrim on the D2 fails at 10 inches in beach with good degree of black sand then why not a PI?....  I am still new to the D2 and I am certainly not denying perhaps more experience might sort out the discrim on the D2 .  I am going to try this same test again perhaps using a different factory setting such as General.  Good hunting! 

[CPT_GhostLight]

You make very good points. It took me a while to learn the fact that the D2 is a very nuanced sound machine depending on settings. While I don't think I've completely mastered it by any means, I've been hunting and experimenting with it for a little over a year and my ears and brain are getting trained to the sounds. And now, with the arrival of update V1.1, the sound has even better options and I'm really starting to understand its language. I mainly land hunt and relic hunt on shredded iron ghost towns (with permission of course) and I rarely look at the TID unless the audio is doing something weird, which can mean commingled targets. I mainly use Full Tones in High Square audio and can pick out a lot of useful target info with that. The sounds will alert me to a good target more than the TID does.

Of course, as I tell my wife, I need more training, and what better way to train than to go detecting! 😏