Equinox= True Dirt Fishing

[Skate]

I'm sure now we're all secure in the fact that the Equinox is the next big thing in metal detecting but man, I can't get over some of the things I'm seeing. I went back to a worn out permission this afternoon because I only had a short time to hunt and I thought I would start in on an area I have beaten to death with all my other machines over the last 5 years. My plan was to start there, walk a line and to start a grid if I found something. It's an old ranch area where small shack type homes were demolished 40 years ago and had been there the prior 90 years. I've pulled 10-15 wheats, 20+coppers and a few silver in the area I started. 

In about an hour and a half I looked back and I'd ended up gridding an area about 30'x30'. I have a tendency to get lost in my own little world out there especially if I'm pulling coins. I dug 17 coins and a key out of this area. 3 were wheats (1910, 1919, 1957) 64 Rosie, 68 Quarter and a bunch of coppers. Many of the targets were mixed signals with just a chirp that required an investigation and that is where this idea of true dirt fishing came to me. I know the idea of dirt fishing has long been a detecting term but the Equinox takes it to another level. I liken what I'm seeing with it (my hunts and others reports) to what a good fisherman can do when they have the right equipment. If you have proper coil control and you're patient, you will be rewarded with diggable targets. 

The other side of the coin is that maybe I was just an average detectorer prior to the Equinox and I'm cleaning up now because of it. Either way I'm just amazed today at the number of coins I got out of an area I had hunted many times before. The separation allows you to literally pull the good target out from the bad and you don't even need a repeatable tone once you understand the sharpness of the tones and how they hit when it's a coin.  My next thing is to come up with a jewelry set up based on the #'s  I'm reading others are getting. I hope everyone is having as much fun as I am. 

[Guest calabash digger]

amazing!

[Tiftaaft]

Nice Skate!!  I'm going to cast my line tomorrow and see if I can pull in a lunker.  :)  

[Redneck]

The 800 is truly an amazing machine.  Saturday  I detected a 10 x 30 ' area at one of the parks.  Over the last 5 years, I checked it with at least 3 different detectors.  I pulled out another 19 clad, in an hour and a half.   I think its due to the fact the 800 handles my nasty soil so well, and seperates  very well, and was getting great depth besides, and its fast.  This is just a fun machine.  I always come home with a pocket full of goods.

[Tometusns]

 Way to go skate! Now you're going to have me listening for that nonrepeatable signal that says better dig me.. Lol.. Hey, I believe you man!! You know for what we had to pay we got one heck of a machine!! Fun and Equinox just go together.  Crap, I'm sitting here right now thinking in my head about the sound I'll be listening for.??

[Norm S]

Skate you hit the nail on the head, what you said is exactly what I am experiencing. It's the sharpness of the tones I pick up as well and I only have about 6 hours on my machine

[Tiftaaft]

It is threads like this that have me donning my headlamp for a night hunt... just to get my Equinox tone fix.  Lol.  

[flakmagnet]

I'm having fun too. I have almost entirely gone over to careful listening without particularly relying on the meter. I'm gradually learning the chirps and the tones that mean 'dig here.' Sometimes I miss having a bit of modulation on some of the targets but then I tell myself, 'get over it and just learn this detectors language.' So far it's working. This 800 thing works.

[Skate]

Just now, Tometusns said:

 Way to go skate! Now you're going to have me listening for that nonrepeatable signal that says better dig me.. Lol.. Hey, I believe you man!! You know for what we had to pay we got one heck of a machine!! Fun and Equinox just go together.  Crap, I'm sitting here right now thinking in my head about the sound I'll be listening for.??

Two of the pennies were in with chunks of iron and were one way tones. Kind of a grunt chirp. No matter how many times I walked around it i could only get a chirp in the single direction but the chirp was solid enough to get a dig.  I had done my initial dig, removed about 4 inches of dirt, stuck the pinpointer in the hole and got the tone and scraped it and of course it was iron. I stood up, re-swept the hole and pile out of habit and got a clear two way tone. Bingo, there was the coin. I had walked over these coins before before because they were masked. Another one was masked by so much trash I could only get a tone right on top of the center spoke on the coil. If I moved an inch away the target became junk. It was literally squeezed in between junk but I knew as I bent down it was going to be a coin.

In thinking about this further I would really advise against running in auto tracking (I think that's the name) because as you really stop to investigate a target you run the risk of having it disappear if you sweep it too many times. I find myself literally walking around a good chirp on an axis like a dart board trying to find the angle that says dig me. If you do that with auto tracking on you'll end up masking the target.  

[Skate]

Just now, Norm S said:

Skate you hit the nail on the head, what you said is exactly what I am experiencing. It's the sharpness of the tones I pick up as well and I only have about 6 hours on my machine

I still get fooled but the sharp tones are deadly accurate. They don't have any bleed over. It's like they have a pop and you just know that's it.