small land area - hunts with Relic and F75

Folks,
My exposure to detecting is obviously not as varied in ground or detectors as many of you, but here is my attempt at evaluating a Nokta Relic over 2 weeks, 6 times over my lunch breaks in basically one small plot of ground that I have used my F75 in extensively.

The first couple times out, I tried to swing it like the G2 or F75...out in front. Cant do it. My wrist hurt so badly I was tempted to just not use it. This week, I kept my elbow further back and just used small radius swings, and it didnt bother me at all. To me, that means less area covered in swings if I was out in fields, but for the application around this house, makes no matter. I like using my F75 with an extended lower shaft, and out in fields, extend it all the way, and shorten it up and use the 5" coil in the high trash/item areas like the one under discussion.

Build: I really do like the solid feel to the unit, lower shaft especially. I also really like the solid molded handle WAY better than the Fisher foam covered ones. Much easier to clean. The Cam locks are very strong and solid.

Display: The teeny thumb display is plenty big if you hunt by tones first, and ID 2nd. It does not seem to be as quick as the F75 display. I worked very hard to not look at the display at all until I had what I thought was a good tone. Then I normally circle it to see just how jumpy the numbers are even while listening for the tone quality to change. Sometimes, it didnt seem like the screen was keeping up with the high tones, and was still showing me a low tone while the high tone was sounding off. It is possible it was my setting onthe iron tone, but I mostly just kept it at 3. Another possibility I just thought of and don't know the answer to is whether the high tone ID was not showing because the low tone may have been stronger, even though my volume of iron was set to 03. Conjecture, so take it with that nice grain of salt.

Lag gripe: The thing about the F75 that bugs me the most is when you change a menu setting like process, it takes those 7 looooooonnnnggg seconds to change the screen again so I stand there with my thumb up my nose to check a deep target in multiple processes sometimes. So that makes me like the complete lack of lag that the relic has within the menu and when changing processes. The Relic lag that i don't like is when I press the pinpoint button, it seems to take a moment or two to find the target and actually start letting me pinpoint.

Pinpoint: I didn't really get to do much with simultaneous use of the relic and F75. With the relic though, I had a hard time pinpointing a target that ended up past 12 or 13cm. I know that on the F75 5" coil, I can routinely pinpoint a target at 8 to 9 inches, but since I couldnt do direct testing, this might be just my lack of that range targets, or some other.

Tones: I only used the 2 and 3 tone. 3 Tone, I tried a couple times, but ended up switching back to 2 tone pretty shortly. soooo much mixed metal with the iron in the two patches of ground I worked in, that the 3 tone just seemed to make things more blurry for telling when I thought I had a good target. Time probably fixes that, but I enjoy the equivalent 2 tones on the F75 as well in high trash. Some deep nails sounded only so good, but I was pressing for deep targets.


Finds: I definitely was pushing, trying to find deep targets in that messy area, so I dug a lot of trash, but digging is excercise, and I enjoy it. For coins, I did dig an additional wheatie, zincoln, and a nice condition greeny 1890 IH. That IH was in a spot that both ozzie and I detected although with our11" F75 coils, I think right next to the water pump. Depth of it was about 5". I also dug TWO aluminum play dimes, dreaming of a nice gold coin by the readouts. I had run my 1, 2.5 and 5 dollar gold coins under the relic before detecting.

Overall: I like the relic. I am not quite certain swinging it out in the open fields I would like it as much due to the box underneath, but maybe just an extended lower shaft takes care of that, too. I like the tones, and the difference between them. I do like the nice crisp tones, and I am sure that with more practice I would better hear those nails as nails. I did decide to clean out holes with my pinpointer once recovering the main non-ferrous target, and my highest number of nails in the hole was 9, so the accuracy of the tones searching out non-ferrous is quite nimble. Aluminum and old balled up or mashed up foil seemed to register very high on the TID compared to the F75 usually did for me. I have a feeling that the relic would work in the majority of my sites keeping the larger coil on longer than the F75 and potentially still get the deeper targets.

My F75, I LOVE in my mild soil to go deep in fields and get me some really cool coins and buttons. I am encouraged that I didnt find a whole bunch of coins wih the relic that my F75 did not. I did learn to go slower with the relic pretty quickly with the constant tones than I was with the F75. Yesterday was the first day out with the F75 since finishing up with the relic last week, and I found a nice old senior class ring very close to one of my existing holes at a different site that I obviously walked over before. So going slower with the relic has made me a better going slower F75 user

I am not looking for a new detector, but if I go away from the F75 in the future, I am fairly certain that Fisher will have had to come up with better technology or I will go for a racer2 or relic type machine to get those quick tones.

Thanks for reading.

Rod

Rod, The Relic would be better than the Racer for a simple reason and that is because it has the control box at the back which helps to balance the machine when you use larger coils, that is one reason I like the MXT's although the balance is not perfect it is better with the 14x10 than it is with the factory 12" coil. and Like the Racer I would think the F75 suffers the same fate, where as the ML GP / GPX and the Relic and the MXT's etc have that little extra weight at the back which helps balance out the machine,

Anyways Something to think about.

Good luck.

John.

Au

Check the F75 - batteries under the a** end of the rod - beautifully balanced.

Rick Kempf
Gold Canyon AZ- where there is no gold

The F75 may feel well balanced, but the Racer feels a LOT lighter. Over the summer I was working a site, almost exclusively with the Racer2, and when I switched to my F75 LTD2 one hunt, it felt like it was ten times heavier (clearly it's not, it just felt much heavier).

I found my Racer2 heavy up front, my current detector weighs 2.9lb and with 10 batteries is at the rear it's very well balanced. There's no excuse for manufactures these days, with light materials and good ergonomics we shouldn't be swinging overweight detectors.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/12/2016 01:39PM by ghound.

I found the Racer felt front heavy and also less comfortable to swing then my F 75 LTD2 HH jim tn

Good report Rod....although I was hoping for a "blow your mind" report about how the blendy bleedy tones surgically found you old coins in high trash areas. Maybe not enough time on it.
I think you're in love with your f75, lol....with good reason. It's one of those units that you feel well equipped when going out...like you have all you need for all circumstances...Great all around detector, especially the latest 75 that you have.

lytle78 Wrote:
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> Au
>
> Check the F75 - batteries under the a** end of the
> rod - beautifully balanced.

Yeah Rick it is, But what I am saying is that machines with the control box fitted at the rear have a better balance when using larger coils, Having the batteries mounted at the rear is a help but not quite the same. the Minelab GP/X series are a classic example of this,

John..

auminesweeper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> lytle78 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Au
> >
> > Check the F75 - batteries under the a** end of
> the
> > rod - beautifully balanced.
>
> Yeah Rick it is, But what I am saying is that
> machines with the control box fitted at the rear
> have a better balance when using larger coils,
> Having the batteries mounted at the rear is a help
> but not quite the same. the Minelab GP/X series
> are a classic example of this,
>
> John..

Rubbish, my detector has 10 batteries at the rear and with the 15x12.5 coil is perfectly balanced weighing in at under 4.5lb

Yeah well the weight of 10 batteries would be a Great Improvement because it adds 8 and a half ounces or just over half a pound in weight under the Arm Cup. Where as the F-75 only uses 4 AA Batteries and they weigh 3.4 ounces or less than Quarter of Pound, which means your machine has over 5 ounces more weight than the F-75 does past the point of Balance which means your machine can and does handle bigger Coil better than most,

Using NiMh AA rechargeable batteries adds more weight.

You Clearly did not read my post Correctly



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/12/2016 03:34PM by auminesweeper.

auminesweeper Wrote:
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> Using NiMh AA rechargeable batteries adds more
> weight.
>
> You Clearly did not read my post Correctly

Are you on drugs or something?

ghound Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> auminesweeper Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Using NiMh AA rechargeable batteries adds more
> > weight.
> >
> > You Clearly did not read my post Correctly
>
> Are you on drugs or something?

Theres None left on the streets since you took up the Habit, So that counts me out.,

Well then, you should get back on your meds......

ghound Wrote:
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> Well then, you should get back on your meds......

Lol, the world is not ready for that,