What target depths are you guys getting with your pulse machines on the beach?

Do you hunt saltwater or freshwater beaches? What depths are you getting on coins and trash items? I'm not interested in the in water targets depths.
Thanks. HH

UNSUSPECTING loaded question! ((( But...... highly valuable...... and educational. )))

For instance.......... my top-of-the-line PI will only detect a clad dime to 10" (at best!) in the wet salt. (((And I'm VERY happy with this!!!)))

Tom, have you tried it on a fresh water beach?

I agree Tom....... since i hunt for gold, finding a quarter at 24" say wouldnt excite me much...... especially since that would tell me im in for a long day of iron digging. There may not be a lot of depth difference on targets here in Fl, but those targets like gold .... given the right PI, depth at 4" even can change the game just because of the salt setting. BUT...... time often is a bigger factor an how you spend it. Unlike a salt water beach .......... it can take years for targets to sink/be covered up/ or erode.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/27/2017 11:30AM by dewcon4414.

possum..... yes.......... just to verify a few things. There's not much performance difference/gain at a fresh water lake. Now.......... I can change the pulse delay to better settings for fresh water; yet, this would be comparing apples-to-oranges.

Here's another interesting thing. My pulse unit is also fairly poor at detecting a (much lower conductor) nickel. Current configuration has it detecting...... in wet salt conditions..... to approx. 11" depth. I'm (mostly) happy with this ALSO!

*****************************************************

Where am I going with all of this?
My unit is tuned/piqued for conductors that are much lower in conductance than a nickel. A couple of decades ago....... I had heavy speculation (with some supportive backing data) that most lost gold........ was 'foil' conductance ID gold. Eric Foster, Bill Crabtree and myself.......decided to 'push' the envelope of this AquaStar-II PI platform into an arena that (Would appear) to 'not fit the norm'......... yet, would allow me to test a personal/selfish theory. And what a euphoric, tuitional, golden epiphany this journey has been! This detector........ for the first time ever in history....... is "just starting" to tap into a 'world of the unknown'. This unit is finding 'small'..... and some 'tiny' gold jewelry (never micro-jewelry) in the wet salt. . . . . that no other detector can find. And 'small' and 'tiny' jewelry is lost at a much greater rate than large items (like engagement rings). Plus......... this 'small' and 'tiny' jewelry has been collecting on the beaches for decades............and there has never been a detector to start to clean it out.

My detector has a lot of conductive 'holes' in it. It has poor: 1) medium-low, 2) medium, 3) high conductor depth. It has good low conductor depth. It's going to take a PI genius to electronically figure out how to fill these holes/gaps. I would like to see good depths with the entire conductive spectrum; but.................... for now...................... I sure am enjoying this low-conductive education.

If there were ONLY ONE target that I could ID properly with a PI................ it would be the steel bobby-pin. This is on my 'wish list'. I'm happy/gleeful digging ALL other iron. . . . . and for many (justifiable) reasons.

PI's are not dead. ......

bobby pins....... right there with crab trap piece on this side of the island. Those babies drop in those loose holes even at neck deep.

"small and tiny jewelry" , could you post a pic of those gold items? Are they earing studs, small charms, etc?

I dont hunt on beaches as i am so far away from the coast that its just not worth me going for the day,a weekend would make it worth my while though.

Have used my TDI Pro and the 9x5 folded mono for ford crossings going back a 1000+ years and it has found me roman coinage that has been used for votive offerings,but the target that i am after are the micro gold jewellery that mums could possibly loose when taking the kids down to the shallow river for paddling and fisging with fishing nets,and of course its situations like this that the possibility of rings and other jewellery being lost.

Although i do have the 7.5DF coil for the TDI i find its not as sharp and deadly as the folded mono coil,the coil that i am stilling looking for but alas Razorback coils no longer make is a 5.75'' coil for the TDI,that i feel although wont give you massive depth it would be like having a laser beam on the end of the shaft and would hit very small micro jewellery targets.

For normal detecting either coinshooting or artifacts i use the Coiltek 14x9 Mono coil and also the Minelab 15x12 Mono albeit the Minelab coil is way too heavy,but for ultimate depth then i would and have used the 20'' Sierra Grande Mono which is mainly used for big targets but it will certainly give you a massive depth advantage over the stock 12'' DF coil.

Also have just started using my 'Mirage' pulse again with the 5'' coil on that was a design made my forum member 'Sven' from canada,that is also a superb machine for 'micro jewellery' as well.

Also own a 'original' Crossbow pulse one of only 13 made by George Overton who is the co owner of the Geotech forum,alas that pulse is mainly designed more for relic/hoard hunting than micro jewellery,but it is seriously deep with a Garrett seahunter 14x10 coil on.

possum............ somewhere along the line........... I posted this data............ maybe on the CZ Salt Training 101 thread. I'll have to see if I can hunt it down.

No rush Tom, appreciate your efforts.

From a GP3000 Field Test published some years ago:
"Wet salt sand - settings - Coil 11" DD - Level Adjust 100% - Boost Deep - Soil N - Coil Cancel - Balance Fixed: I will say a few things here. Don't be afraid to experiment with your settings. Essentially, with a detector like this once it is reasonably quiet, it is happy. You will find there are many different settings that will achieve this. Bear in mind that localised geographics will dictate different set ups.
In addition, and this is the most startling thing about this detector is, be prepared to recover many different types of artifacts you would never find with a 'normal discriminating VLF detector!'
Case in point: I heard a soft weak but repeatable signal and after digging down to about twelve and a half inches a small safety pin was recovered measuring 28mm by 6mm
I have never found a safety pin while detecting before. Several more signals sounding exactly the same produced other similar items: a thin hair clip from 10"
I spent a good deal of time recovering modern copper coated steel cored coins which would be normally rejected with VLF's
Several pre Euro copper coins were found with good repeatable signals at around 18" from the very wet sand. Estimating depth on holes in wet sand can be a tricky business because the holes can collapse in on themselves.
So careful slicing methodology was employed and removed to the side where they were quickly checked for metallic content.
Some coins had been on edge and pin pointing them can be 'off' if you are operating in any of the modes other than Double D. You may find some targets just very slightly to the left than you would normally be used to. If you experience any difficulties just change to Monoloop, re-ground balance and use the left edge of the coil to locate the target. If it is still not clear as to where the target is, change the Soil switch to Sensitive. Remain in Fixed.
An old Euro £pound coin measuring 31mm in diameter came up from 21" with a clear signal. Imagine the shock I got when a tiny rusted staple measuring just 12mm came up from 8"
The day wore on and the tide went further out than usual. I followed it out finding many items the entire time. I found more coins, pull tabs including old two-piece ring pulls and the modern rectangular ones, aluminium shards, hair clips, ear rings, a 50gram lead weight from about two feet which produced an enormous signal, very thin rusty fish hooks, a piece of ornamental silver chain and my favorite of all, a short gold plated chain.
That was a peculiar signal, sounding very elongated and I had difficulty in deciding just where the signal began and ended? When it was finally recovered, I saw where it had been laying in a continuous W to E tangent, not bunched up and this explained the wide signal on such a thin section of chain.

Copyright Desi Dunne



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/2017 01:31PM by Des D.

WHich currently manufactured waterproof PI or multi VLF would you say has the best detection
in the foil range whilst working in salt water?
I've been having good success finding small gold jewelry in fresh water with a compadre I waterproofed.
Lots of things that fall in between iron and foil on the discrimination settings.
Thanks for all the info you posted in regards to tiny/micro jewelry!

Noah


NASA-Tom Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> possum..... yes.......... just to verify a few thi
> ngs. There's not much performance difference/gain
> at a fresh water lake. Now.......... I can change
> the pulse delay to better settings for fresh water
> ; yet, this would be comparing apples-to-oranges.
>
> Here's another interesting thing. My pulse unit is
> also fairly poor at detecting a (much lower conduc
> tor) nickel. Current configuration has it detectin
> g...... in wet salt conditions..... to approx. 11"
> depth. I'm (mostly) happy with this ALSO!
>
> **************************************************
> ***
>
> Where am I going with all of this?
> My unit is tuned/piqued for conductors that are mu
> ch lower in conductance than a nickel. A couple of
> decades ago....... I had heavy speculation (with s
> ome supportive backing data) that most lost gold..
> ...... was 'foil' conductance ID gold. Eric Foster
> , Bill Crabtree and myself.......decided to 'push'
> the envelope of this AquaStar-II PI platform into
> an arena that (Would appear) to 'not fit the norm'
> ......... yet, would allow me to test a personal/s
> elfish theory. And what a euphoric, tuitional, gol
> den epiphany this journey has been! This detector.
> ....... for the first time ever in history.......
> is "just starting" to tap into a 'world of the unk
> nown'. This unit is finding 'small'..... and some
> 'tiny' gold jewelry (never micro-jewelry) in the w
> et salt. . . . . that no other detector can find.
> And 'small' and 'tiny' jewelry is lost at a much g
> reater rate than large items (like engagement ring
> s). Plus......... this 'small' and 'tiny' jewelry
> has been collecting on the beaches for decades....
> ........and there has never been a detector to sta
> rt to clean it out.
>
> My detector has a lot of conductive 'holes' in it.
> It has poor: 1) medium-low, 2) medium, 3) hi
> gh conductor depth. It has good low conductor d
> epth. It's going to take a PI genius to electronic
> ally figure out how to fill these holes/gaps. I wo
> uld like to see good depths with the entire conduc
> tive spectrum; but.................... for now....
> .................. I sure am enjoying this low-con
> ductive education.
>
> If there were ONLY ONE target that I could ID prop
> erly with a PI................ it would be the ste
> el bobby-pin. This is on my 'wish list'. I'm hap
> py/gleeful digging ALL other iron. . . . . and for
> many (justifiable) reasons.
>
> PI's are not dead. ......

Noah....... right now ..... I would say the CTX-3030 is reasonably/somewhat close to giving the AquaStar a run-for-the-money. . . . . in the (critically important) 'foil' conductivity spectrum. There are some (somewhat) tolerable 'quirks' though.

Thanks Tom.

Somewhat tolerable quirks would appear to be the foundation of this hobby.

Thanks Des D. Very Informative.

Here's a test - in France - of several detectors on depth for a large gold ring. A PVC pipe is sunk into beach sand and the ring lowered on a tape. All measirements in cm. A summary of each detector's depth is posted at the end of each run. You,could argue that since there is an air column directly above the ring that it's kind of an air test, but I don't think that makes much difference since the detectors are all reading the wet sand matrix throught the swing - besides, lots of folks consistently afgue that PI detectors go deeper in salt beaches than they air test. Notice that the background threshold warble or variation is the limiting factor on detection depth - the signal finally descends below the noise floor.

The detectors are a Goldquest SSV3, a GPX5000, a Deepstar 3, a TDI and a Manta prototype.

The Manta is a prototype developed by Alexamdre Tartar who has taken the basic concept of Eric Fosters PI detectors like the Goldscan 5 series (this is the detector the TDI was developed from). An interesting feature of the Manta is that prototypes have successfully run at pulse delays a short as 7 uS in salt water. This is a huge advantage for micro jewelry.

Here's the link

[m.youtube.com]

Rick Kempf
Gold Canyon AZ- where there is no gold



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/30/2017 06:57AM by lytle78.

From a GPX 4000 Field Test published some years ago:
"Day 2
A day was spent at a beach I test on regularly: it's loaded with iron in a few spots but lucky for me it's deep and never seems to move!
I have often hauled up all kinds of ferrous objects from two feet plus, usually parts of old boats and the like.
For the settings I selected the same ones as the land sites to see what would happen?
After a short while it was clear the unit wasn't happy so I made a few changes.
Search Mode - G
Coil/Rx - Cancel
Gain - 14 (an increase of 50%)
The machine was now as stable as it had been on the land sites.

Right away, the signals started to come in - lots of them - and I originally took some of them as false signals. But, no, they were real targets for certain! Deep too as I had to go to great depths - at times from 14" to 18" down into the hard pack and it was tough going! One deep signal was a small copper ring and looked ancient but it was modern and water rolled and generally pitted. The amount of modern coinage found was just amazing and it began to annoy me to dig so deep for rusted copper coins! In fact I could not get to two signals - my digger wasn't long enough!

At this point another very loud signal gave up a huge fist size piece of iron (the only iron dug that day) so I then decided to listen out for quieter, shorter signals and that proved beneficial.
A nice mellow signal revealed a tiny crucifix (metal type unknown) from about the seven inch mark. Shock was to follow as another nice 'mellow' signal first produced a single strand of chain and tugging at it more came up followed by what must have been a very nice piece of jewelry when new, an intaglio style necklace with a red stone set in.
The latter amazed and amused me because I had been on the same patch a few days earlier with a different detector and it either wasn't there or if it had been I missed it maybe due to being too cold and sweeping too quickly perhaps?"

Copyright Desi Dunne

NB: from re-reading my paragraphs, what stands out are repeated mentions of finding 'chains', so the PI will definitely increase the recovery of those when compared to 'a BBS' unit (Excalibur/Sov) that would ignore them?

I've also used and tested the GPX4500, the 4800 & 5000 in wet sand environments but didn't publish any Field Tests on them but they were just as deep, if not deeper seeking than the two machines alluded to in the text.
Memo: one particular GPX4500 test was carried out in preparation for a trip to Italy and I had buried my own '9ct Claddagh' ring at 24" and notes were taken and I was so busy with that I failed to dig it up and on reaching the office I realised I had left it behind. So I went back the next morning and the tide had been in and washed away all signs of where I had been so I didn't find it?
But several months later in the new year I was doing some 'routine coil tests' with the FBS machines and I found it and I estimated at the time the ring had travelled around 40ft down towards the water line!!!"

Des,

Your GPX data and comments are fascinating. The depth of a powerful PI at the beach himts at a potential game changer, lacking only iron discrimination to full depth to be realized.

Hopefully someone will provide that capability. The latest hint of that comes from the Manta series of prototypes which showed excellent depth and seeming full depth iron ID. With First Texas acquiring the Manta and hiring Alexandre, they seem to be well placed to take a shot at it. We will have to wait and see if Fisher can turn that potential into a production machine.

Rick Kempf
Gold Canyon AZ- where there is no gold

"The GP 3000 was tested around 2004
The GPX 4000 was written about back in 2007
It's now 2017 and not much has changed really with the exception of the GPX5000 and the SDC2300 with MPF Technology and GPZ 7000 [ which must be a monster over wet sand? ]
I haven't used the SDC or the GPZ but would like to test them both inland and at the beach but it's not on my list of priorities currently.

Re-reading the 'Land Tests' from the same articles revealed depth on large iron to be around a foot plus to 14" to 18" (large signals) small single coins (20mms in diameter) from 7" (clear signals) to 11" (feint signals) and tiny bits of lead around the 8" mark (smaller & weaker signals)

It would be almost impossible to achieve [ same depth ] inland and on beaches.
Reasons being would be, mineralisation levels higher on land and more difficult to GB out thereby resulting in target depth reduction, threshold interruption from ferrous targets [ underneath the coil ] and [ also adjacent to the coil's edges creating sideways detection ] and rapid changes in ground conditions causing erratic operation. EMI would be more prevalent too of course (resulting in an unstable Threshold) resulting in 'stopping & starting' to re-check those same 'false signals'. (Yes, one can work in Fixed but would still be prone to unstable from EMI and ferrous shutdown)

Depths achieved over huge expanses of salt wet sands can be greater because the detectors in question were less affected by salt, no variations in salt conductivity levels and a lot less ferrous junk and thousands of square feet of constant sameness!"

You guys are making me want to bundle up my GPX 5000 and hit the beach with it lol. I've hit quarters at 12" (barely) with the 17" coil on my CTX and always wondered how the GPX would do there?

Rick.......... thanks for posting that video. I like it.

Comments:

It appears that the Manta is using the largest coil; hence, should achieve greater depths/performance. But......... very worthy of mention.......... if the Manta can use that large of a coil..... subsequently; with that much of a "wet salt feedback" ..... and run as stable as demonstrated (and I can hear it's running on the hairy-edge)........ this is commendable.

Yes........ that gold ring used...is 8-grams......... which is a fairly large ring. I'd rather see a 1-gram (nearly wire-band) ring being used; yet, what was used....... still sets the stage for a reasonable demonstration/presentation.

And if we have (now achieved) the technology to run below (less than) 10uS in the wet salt with a PI...... we will soon learn: this is the wave of the future. It's going to open up unsuspecting/unknown doors. And don't think this would only be applicable/beneficial for wet salt. It'll also benefit relic hunters in bad dirt.......... gold prospectors.

If we see a breakthrough in just ONE new PI release....... you will witness a large followings from most other Mfr's.