I Finally Get To Join The Club!

[Flbchbm]

(Finally) received my 800 yesterday after a very long wait. First impression: wow, what a small box! Opened it up, assembled and put it on the charger. Took about 3 hrs and 15 minutes to charge. Also charged the headphones and the wm08 - they took about an hour each. Only had time to go in the back yard and try it out. Headphones paired without any trouble. Delay is slight but noticable with the headphones. Shaft is solid with no wobble. Felt very nose heavy until I shortened the shaft by one adjustment hole, then nicely balanced. Arm cuff is very wide but not uncomfortable. Menu and adjustments are very straight-forward to use and navigate. Brought my bucket of targets out to try and see what the detector had to say about them. This is my first Minelab, so gonna have to learn the language. Played around for about an hour and then had to stop for the day.

This morning I had a chance to do some detecting in a couple spots around town. Decided to try the wm08 module with my Skull Candy earbuds. No trouble pairing. No noticable delay with the wm08 module and worked great with my earbuds. I am going to have to be patient learning the language. I hear very subtle differences in the sounds but it will take some time to understand. As expected, my junk to coin ratio was not good. I expect this will continue until I understand what the detector is telling me. I was using park I, mostly sensitivity of 20, noise cancelled and ground balanced as needed, sweep speed 6, iron bias 3, 50 tones. I hunted in more out of the way places because it is Saturday and the parks are full of people. I mostly dug TIDs that corresponded to coins. More often than not, I got non-coin items. This detector is not as precise in tid as I would like but from what I have read, once you understand the sounds you can improve the treasure/trash ratio. Detector ran very quiet, even under the power lines and near the transformers. Surprisingly, my Garrett carrot caused no chatter on the detector (it does with all my other detectors). I forgot to turn my cell phone off but it never caused an issue, maybe because it was on the opposite side from the detector? Most targets were 7" or less. Couple dimes, couple pennies, bunch of can slaw, some brass shell casings, screw tops, heavy foil, brass compression fitting, a big aluminum gutter nail.....nothing exciting.

I think this detector is going to grow on me. All new detectors are an adjustment over what one is used to using. I am planning to hit the beach this late afternoon. Supposed to be scatterred showers but since both the detector and I are water resistant, what the heck!

[steveg]

Good report, flbchbum.  Yep, it takes time, ESPECIALLY if you have never swung a Minelab multi-tone machine before.  But, give your brain time to learn the language, and YES, your ratios of trash to treasure will definitely improve.

I'll be interested to see what you think, on the beach...

Steve

[Flbchbm]

Well, I spent about 3 1/2 hours on the beach - Atlantic side. Not a lot of targets. Used beach 1 out of the water and beach 2 while wading. Tid was very accurate - correctly called all the coins before digging them. Sensitivity was 20 - 23. Detector was very quiet in and out of the water. Pinpoint was very accurate as well. Had several targets that were deep - took several scoops to retrieve. Most were less than 6".  Just for the heck of it I toggled through the other programs to see how they reacted in the damp sand. I was able to use Field 1 on sensitivity 17 as long as I was not in the water. Did retrieve one very small target while in that mode. None of the other modes would play nice on the beach. Take for the day was 3 dimes, 3 pennies, 1 quarter and a nickle. No jewelry. A couple square tabs, part of a screw, and a little unidentified whatzit that may have been some kind of earing back. I would have liked to spend some time at the low tide dropoff but surf was up and no waterproof headphones so did not risk it. All in all, an educating and interesting afternoon.

[steveg]

Interesting.  Good stuff.  Sounds like it ran pretty well at the beach...

Hopefully, waterproof headphones are close, for you beach guys...

Steve

[Flbchbm]

Third hunt today. Weather is cloudy with scattered showers so fewer folks at the park. I went to an area where I have found some older coins in the past. Between the large number of people that metal detect in Florida, and the rapid sink rate in our sandy soil, old coins from a park are something to celebrate. Today I managed to grab two, both wheats- one a 1930 at a measured 7", and the other a 1918 at a measured 7 1/2". Both were masked by iron. Park 1, default settings but with -9 thru 9 and 14 thru 18 disced out to give my ears a rest. Both hit TID of 24-25. 

I was really looking forward to finding a bunch of nickles, based on what I have read but I have been digging only trash so far. Amazing how many targets of various shapes and sizes will ring at a solid 13 from all directions - which was my criterion for digging. Gotta learn the sound nuances!

 

Some observations: On shallow targets, the horizontal detection range of the coil is at least as wide as the coil. However, as the target gets deeper, the horizontal detection range rapidly decreases to only a few inches in the center of the coil. This is normal for any DD coil, but is more pronounced on this coil than I have seen before.  Hence the ability to separate very well for a relatively large coil. However, this means if you desire deeper targets you need to have good sweep discipline - go slow and make sure you overlap your sweeps. Also, despite the fact that this is a very "fast" detector, you definitely want to follow the owners manual direction to sweep 2-3 seconds for a right-left-right cycle. Especially in a trashy park. Finally, as a noob to Minelab detectors, I found it very helpful to disc out non-coin ranges in my trashy park. Once I understand the sounds that desirable targets make, I will back off on the disc, but until then I found it far less taxing on my ears and my brain. Oh, one last thing, as with most detectors, the higher you crank the sensitivity, the smaller the targets you will detect. One area I was in allowed me to max out the sensitivity. Had a great sound and was expecting a deep nickle. Took me about 10 minutes to locate a shallow split shot that was about 1/8" in diameter. Oi!! Sensitivity went right back to 20 after that.