My First Substantial Hunt With Equinox - Yeah, Gold But That Was Not The Impressive Part

[Chase Goldman]

After some button mashing in the back yard and a quick ball field hunt that netted me an earring and some change, I felt like today I could hit a local beach park primarily with the intent to try the beach modes and learn more about the Equinox 800.  This local park is hunted extensively and in the off season the pickings are slim so I did not have any expectations that I would find much of anything.  In fact I was willing to dig trash because that would just help me continue to learn the tones and get used to the routine of initializing the machine (mode select, noise cancel, GB if necessary, etc.) and get used to the routines associated with target ID, interrogation, and recovery.  The beach is nice because target retrieval is easy, just dip the scoop in the sand, shake, grab the target and move on.  Little did I know what I was in for.

With my multiple test garden runs and short park run, I felt comfortable navigating the menus and doing the routine things needed to run the machine.

Ergonomics:  I set out for an hour or two hunt, but it ended up being almost 4 hours.  I really had no trouble at all swinging the Equinox for four hours straight.  I have made no modifications but being short the Equinox is shortened for me and does not have a great lever arm that torques me so I am comfortable with it.  I have not even counterbalanced it AND I keep forgetting to install the arm strap.  Despite that, the Equinox was really a dream to swing AND that is coming from a Deus guy.  I guess I can go all day with the Deus if necessary, but I feel with the Equinox I can do pretty good  all day, if I have a nice lunch break.  

Performance (Beach Mode):  I put it in Beach 1, noise canceled and did nothing else to modify the program and started swinging away.  I intended to stay high mostly on the dry sand to see if I could pick up old drops near the beach entrances.  First target was a pencil (hit the eraser holder).  I next hit foil juice pull lid.  Third target sounded solid and was jumping a little but oscillated around 10.  Dug it and boom.  Gold in the sand.  It was a small, gold Christ figurine from a crucifix that looks like it became separated from the cross.  I could not find the cross.  But yeah, Equinox scores gold on the third beach target and I thought well this was worth the trip and I don't mind digging trash the rest of the way.  I did not hit much more trash or keepers other than a dime and some fishing tackle and then a few pennies on the high sand.  I encountered several random noise bursts throughout my walk and wondered if it was nearby traffic (the park is adjacent to the main thoroughfare across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge).  It was weird and I could not figure out the source.  I u-turned and started heading back at the tide line but was not going to get myself or the Equinox wet at 45F and a steady 15 knot wind.  The tide line is usually a sparky mess for the Deus but I can still hear strong coin targets above the din.  Equinox, not a peep except for those noise bursts.  I finally figured it out.  I had my phone in my right hoody pocket which put it in close proximity to the control head.  Moving the phone to my left pocket got rid of the random EMI.  I never thought it hindered performance, it was more just weird and a little annoying.  Anyway problem solved.  

As my made my way up the tide line I got a jumpy low 30's signal.  Though jumpy, the tone was repeatable and said dig me.  I honestly did not think I was going to find anything much on the tide line, just wanted to test the Equinox stability.  All I had was my dry sand scoop so digging targets in the wet sand tide line ment I would just have to take several two handed scoopfuls of wet sand out and periodically check to see if I got the target out of the hole.  This sucker was deep.  A good foot plus and it was still sounding off.  I figured I was chasing a phantom until the damn thing finally ended up in the pile.  Boom, clad quarter.  This scenario repeated itself several times up the tide line for quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies.  Each time I pretty much knew I was digging a coin and they were all 7 to 15 inches down.  Got fooled once with a sinker.  The nickels hit just as hard as the high conductors and tells me this thing will hit some deep gold at the beach.  I never worked so hard for a dollar plus worth of clad and never enjoyed it so much.  I even dug a wheatie.  I know these coins have been sitting there for awhile on this pounded beach and have been missed by a lot of folks because of their depth and proximity to the salt water line.  The water hunters don't bother with this area and the sand people's vlf detectors don't work so well at that interface point and now I know what the Equinox can do.  Also, lesson learned: always bring my water scoop for the wet stuff, there WILL be deep keepers found with Equinox.  Lol.

The other thing that was exciting were the very tiny targets that the Equinox had no trouble hitting (but I had a lot of trouble recovering, lol).  An earring fastener, a small gear, small small pieces of mid-conductive metal, probably aluminum.  These are the types of targets the Deus only hits when using the HF coils at 28khz or above.  Very cool.  [Note it is even more impressive to think that these tiny targets were mostly mid-conductors hit by the second least sparky program on the Equinox, i.e., lower frequency biased Beach 1.  The magic of MultiIQ at work].

Trash was not really a problem, pic of some of it.  Expected to dig the pull tab stuff but it was either 12 or 14/15 not 13. Ha!  And the "All Metal" iron grunt trick does work on the crown caps.

Color me impressed.

Up next (hopefully) some colonial era relics in central Virginia.

Thanks for reading.

Chase

[Skate]

Yay for Chase!! I was wondering when you were going to get your's and i see it was a success! Great little write up and I agree that the tide line is going to be fruitful for all of us as it's an ignored place between water hunters and other VLF detectorers. Glad you were able to get out as I'm waiting out the rain today.

I'm really interested in seeing how it does in the dirt in your neck of the woods. All I've ever heard of the Virginia dirt is that you need a backhoe because the dirt is so bad. Can't wait for report #2!

 

[Guest Tnsharpshooter]

Nice hunt and extremely good detailed reporting.

I had the same problem on freshwater beach.  Gotta have good eyes sometimes to actually find and see what Nox alerted on.

Nice gold find.  I like it.

[bado1]

Great report! Congrats on your first Nox gold.

Dean

[Steve Herschbach]

Great start Chase and gold!! Nice report - thanks!

[Chase Goldman]

Thanks all for the kind words.   It feels good to finally be able to contribute with some actual Equinox operational experiences like you folks who have already had the opportunity to do so with lots of fantastic info.  Now I feel like a full fledged member of the fan club.  Hope all those still waiting get their machines soon.

Couple of things I forgot to mention.

First - I cranked sensitivity to the max for the beach run and other than my cell phone induced noise which I ultimately corrected, Noxtradamus ran pretty quiet.

Second - I used the pinpointer frequently for deep targets, for finding the extracted deep targets in the dug sand pile, and for locating those tiny targets that slipped through the the scoop screen.  Shallow "normal sized" targets I just eyeballed with a coil wiggle and scooped.  The pinpointer accuracy and functionality was great.  However, I did notice the "low volume" effect on the several occasions.  It usually kicked into "normal" volume while positioning the coil over the target, but occasionally it would not kick in and would just stay at the diminished volume level.  There was no rhyme or reason for this behavior that I could ascertain.  It was really a non factor because I could just disengage and reengage the PP to get it to respond normally but I mention it for completeness.  Someone else noted that the PP peak volume seemed louder than target tone volume (i.e. , when directly over the target) contrary to the description in the manual.  I perceived this to be the case also but I did not find it to be so loud as to be uncomfortable.  Again, though this was a non-issue, I thought I would document my observations.  Bottom line is the pinpointer worked great for my purposes while displaying some quirky behavior that did not detract from overall functionalty.

 

[BeachHunter]

Excellent, clear, well written review Chase. Awesome post and very nice gold.

[mn90403]

Chase,

Excellent job of reporting what you have found.  It is a surprising machine.  Your study while waiting was rewarded.  Many of us have found gold and good items the first few hunts after we got it.

Let me just say stay close to the factory settings on most things.  It is easy to want to experiment and what I have found so far is that it is cause for a bigger adjustment than needed.

This reminds me of the early days of the 7000.  It took a while for everyone to share their exact settings but it sure helped.  This isn't a set it and forget it machine but maybe a set it and change the tones sort of machine.

Mitchel

[Chase Goldman]

I just thought of an additional observation: Don't sleep on the "All Metal" button.   Beside the bottlecap trick, I now realize how brilliant this implementation is.  This is set up different than most detectors in that it is not a separate mode but merely eliminates all discriminated/notched segments.  The underlying program settings are retained for whatever program you are using at the time you punch in AM.  Really no need to ever set up separate no disc program.  No disc (on the Deus) was a great way to search for concentrations of iron targets and then switch into a disc program.  Instant AM eliminates the need to to have separate disc and no disc programs.  If looking for the remnants of an old Home Site or building site, search in AM until you start hitting the nails, then cut out AM and start retrieving relics.  Can't wait to try this out (but mother nature with her serial Nor'Easters has different plans).

[Steve Herschbach]

I normally hunt in all metal, but for park hunts where I may not the first thing I do with any decent target is hit the all metal button to help verify that I am not on a ferrous target that is tossing some non-ferrous signals. Many ferrous items throw off mixed ferrous and non-ferrous signals, and blocking out the ferrous component is the easiest way to get tricked by these targets. A quick push of the all metal button offers instant verification, and another push takes you back to quiet hunting.