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My Culpeper Take With The 800


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Just got back   Not a lot of relics for me.  Some round and minie balls but other then Twelfth GA flat buttons (some deep, old, and partial, others amongst thick iron) and some modern bullets and casings, I hit no period brass but plenty period lead and iron.  I have confidence the Equinox would have pulled me a button if I had gotten my coil over one or two.  So as a relic hunter...disappointment.  I have a chance to redeem myself in a couple weeks.  As a detector geek, it was a really good time.  Some of the below is "repackaged" from abenson's thread, so if you are having Deja Vu...   I wanted to start my own thread with all the info consolidated but also directly address some of abenson's issues based on what I observed, hence the repeat info.

EMI, Ground Noise and Coil Noises:  1) Manual Noise Cancel helped on some occasions when Auto didn't pick the optimal channel IMO (a feature the 600 lacks).  This was ESPECIALLY important here where you could have up to 25 - 50 GPX's within a few hundred feet.  Only once or twice, though, was interference really bad such that I had to pause detecting.  Never had to reduce sensitivity below 17 and tried to keep it around 20 and no higher than 22 (again, try to stay near the presets folks, they do appear to be optimal for most situations).  2) Did not use GB tracking (except in Gold Mode which has tracking on by default) but Auto GB'd frequently and found GB (in Field 2 mode) varied anywhere from 4 to 6 in some spots and between 44-56 in other spots.  This variability could result in some adverse performance if you just went with the defalt GB setting or did not rebalance frequently.  I also noticed a strange phenomenon when GB was set high (i.e., in the 40+ range)  that the coil would false on impact with corn stalks or even if you just shook the coil in the air.  This did not happen when GB was set close to zero.  When I first experienced it I thought I had a loose coil connection or imminent coil failure until I cycled through the modes and noticed that it did not happen on all modes.  I finally figured it out when I had re GB'd to a lower number and it went away.  Will try tracking at the next mineralized site but did not want to "chance it" here.  I have more confidence in it since using gold mode - one of the things I learned from gold mode.  Also note that I did not really have a chance to actually gage mineralization because I never pulled out a detector with an Fe302 mineralization meter on it to correlate the GB readings to mineralization.  3) Very important to run the Equinox fast near its defaults on recovery speed.  In this soil, 7 worked well on "ground noise" and sometimes 8.  This is where the 600 maximum recovery speed limit might make a difference.  I did not have a 600 to compare but I know I would not run Field 2 below its default of 7 which is higher than the max setting equivalent setting on the 600.

I ran my Equinox 800 in mostly Field 2 and it was great.  I used it all three days and only used the GPX for a few short hours in the morning of the third day.  I forced myself to stick with it and while I did not score any Eagle buttons, did get some minie and round balls.  One round ball was deep 9+ inches and ID'd clearly though the numbers wavered between 14 to 16 and you had to have the coil centered and wiggled to lock in the ID.   I found one minie not deep but in highly mineralized and trashy ground under a tree root and the ID was very choppy as a result but dug and was rewarded.  Iron tones (ground noise) abounded in the mineralized soil

I set up two Field 2 programs.  One I kept in the user profile which was basically the default Field 2 50 tones with Recovery at 7 (Very Important to note that this is slightly higher than default on the 600 which is limited to the 800 equivalent of a 6 setting max) and Iron Bias at 0.  I used this program when in thick iron and wanted to be sure I did not inadvertently mask non-ferrous or to interrogate targets that gave off choppy high tones in my "main" Field 2 program (described below) to see if the high tone was falsing or wraparound (if the high tone increased in the presence of a ferrous tone then I could pretty much confirm it was an iron target and not a masked non-ferrous, this technique is not foolproof, however).  The other I ran most of the time which was exactly the same but without much fear of masking in the open fields, I ran Iron Bias up to 6 to limit falsing on nail heads.  I sill need to experiment with Iron Bias but I felt this set up well for how I was hunting.  I also dialed in a little threshold.  This enabled me to not be completely in the dark on iron if I chose to run discrimination.  I made liberal use of the AM button either to flat out search in AM or to interrogate choppy high tones as describe above.  Threshold kept me apprised of the iron situation full time regardless of the disc mode I used.

In a thick bed of nails house site on the property, I experimented with Gold Mode and THAT was very interesting and promising.  More on that later...

Not a great DIV for me with respect to finds (and believe me there were plenty of great finds to be had, they were just concentrated in a few specific couple acre camp areas on 1500 acres of farmland), something I did not figure out soon enough, lol.  However, it was a great opportunity to learn the detector as I put nearly 30 more hours on it and learned a hell of a lot.  To be continued...

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BTW if my relic hunting ineptness makes you doubt the Equinox capabilities in hot Culpeper ground, beside abenson's finds, doubt no more.  I met a fella with an Equinox 800 who basically cleaned up at that bed o nails house site with two large cents, a 2c piece, and a CS buckle wreath.  After chatting with him, found he was running Field 2 and frequently GBing, also. At least I independently had my machine running just like Mr. Success...and no...we didn't find the dang CS buckle tongue ... but oh how we tried.  Lol.

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My buddy just got back as well.  He had a GPX 4500 and the Nox 800.  He said his GPX battery died towards the evening of day 1, and that he hadn't dug a single keeper relic up to that point.  He swapped over to the Nox and ended the day with several Sharps bullets and round balls.  The next day, he decided not to even go to the hunt site, because in his words, "that place sucks, everybody I talked to didn't have anything more than a couple bullets".  I talked him into going to day 3, because I told him that it usually takes a day or two for people to dial into where the relic concentrations are on a new property and that it always seems like nobody is finding much until the relic display on day 3, and then you see just how much was found.  He said he didn't even bother with his GPX and hunted solely with the Nox on day 3.  Found more bullets and some brass odds and ends. No buttons though.  He did end up finding more than all of his carpool crew combined.  He said there were several display cases on the trailers, but most of them didn't have much in them.  He said he thinks most people brought them to show and tell due to the raffle for getting into the next hunt without having to sign up, otherwise they wouldn't have brought them at all.  In any case, he said if he finds out its gonna be back at that farm, he is not even signing up for it.  So it may have been there just wasn't a lot of stuff in the ground to get a coil over....I guess we have been spoiled with the past at some of the dug in winter camp farms when they were in their prime.  

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4 hours ago, Daniel Tn said:

My buddy just got back as well.  He had a GPX 4500 and the Nox 800.  He said his GPX battery died towards the evening of day 1, and that he hadn't dug a single keeper relic up to that point.  He swapped over to the Nox and ended the day with several Sharps bullets and round balls.  The next day, he decided not to even go to the hunt site, because in his words, "that place sucks, everybody I talked to didn't have anything more than a couple bullets".  I talked him into going to day 3, because I told him that it usually takes a day or two for people to dial into where the relic concentrations are on a new property and that it always seems like nobody is finding much until the relic display on day 3, and then you see just how much was found.  He said he didn't even bother with his GPX and hunted solely with the Nox on day 3.  Found more bullets and some brass odds and ends. No buttons though.  He did end up finding more than all of his carpool crew combined.  He said there were several display cases on the trailers, but most of them didn't have much in them.  He said he thinks most people brought them to show and tell due to the raffle for getting into the next hunt without having to sign up, otherwise they wouldn't have brought them at all.  In any case, he said if he finds out its gonna be back at that farm, he is not even signing up for it.  So it may have been there just wasn't a lot of stuff in the ground to get a coil over....I guess we have been spoiled with the past at some of the dug in winter camp farms when they were in their prime.  

I don't want to turn this thread into too much of a DIV discussion in an Equinox forum, but I get why you are saying what you are saying.  I will say this, you are right that this hunt was not focused on a dug in winter camp, but a few summer time camps where the units only stayed a few weeks.  One site also had a small camp that had been accessed over the years but the DIV allowed access to other areas not previously accessed by a lot of folks.  Local relic hunters definitely had the advantage and some inside knowledge about the sites once they became known which was the day before the hunt.

I know you know all this Daniel, but for the benefit of others, just wanted to paint a picture.

This is one of those deals where most folks are completely unfamiliar with what was there and have to spend the entire DIV figuring out what's what.  You only have three days to do that and if you don't happen on any of the hot spots then you are toast.  It takes A LOT OF LUCK, patience, perhaps some research and talking to other folks there about what is going on, and some hard physical work that involves more than wandering around a corn field with your fingers crossed and you were, perhaps, rewarded.   It was like solving a puzzle in one of those puzzle rooms full of clues but you have only a limited amount of time to solve it.  This is not a comment on Daniel's buddy because I don't know the particulars of his situation, but I know of entire car pools that went away nearly empty handed who are comprised of experienced diggers and worked hard.  But I think a majority of what I would call "casual" relic hunters who typically have an easier time at most DIVs were indeed disappointed.  The site location is withheld until the last minute to prevent night hawking before the start but it also prevents you from doing any pre-hunt research on the location unless you are already familiar with the site once its announced because you have local knowledge.  While some displays did have few finds, others had plenty so I am not sure a whole lot can be concluded from the trailers except that getting a farm permission anywhere in that area guarantees you will find CW relics (!).  I also know that large parts of the site were not touched because they would involve long, long hikes to the outskirt boundaries which included the Rappahannock River that surrounded 40 to 50 percent of the property.  Yeah, that Rappahannock River.

If DIV does return there in the future, I know exactly where I am going (beside taking a hike to the river).  It is a 1.5 mile, hilly hike and it involves moving rocks, roots, and logs in thornbush and poison ivy thickets and fallen tree hollows full of barrel bands and ration can pieces.  What's my point?  If it does happen again, that site, full of buttons and corps badges based on the finds so far and sets up perfectly for an Equinox with a 6" coil...hope that coil becomes available before the next DIV.  lol.

I am pretty confident the relic hunter who knows the site "hot spots" who is swinging the Equinox will do better with it than with just about any other VLF - with Deus, Impact/Multi Kruzer [multiple frequency choices and speed] very close behind and the F75/T2/MXT/AT Gold etc not too far back from that.  I give the edge to the Equinox because I think it gives a reliable tone/VDI the deepest in that hot soil so it gives you a fighting chance to make a good dig decision.  The others will likely "see" the deep (>5+ inches) targets but you are probably guessing as to whether it is ferrous/non ferrous for the most part.

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I didn't mean to muddy up your thread with DIV talk.  I was just saying that some people might attribute this hunt to being slow (compared to past hunts) due to your choice in machines for the hunt.  There are people out there foaming at the mouth to kill off the Equinox and have it dead and buried.  They will take any approach they can to use for their base line of argument, no matter how far fetched.   

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