Legend at the beach

A few years back I found a honeyhole at a beach loaded with silver coins. Its a large beach and this particular area of it has fallen into disuse, its as far as you can get on this beach from the parking lot and there is really no reason to walk that far unless you are seeking solitude. For that reason I [and other guys that detect there I assume] have ignored it for years, very little traffic means very few drops. They did have a volleyball net set up back towards that area, one day a few years back I was detecting that for jewelry and decided to keep going, didn't take long until I found a Merc, then I just kept finding old silver and nickels/pennies, most from the 1920's to 1950's. Needless to say, I beat that area to death and continue to do so, convinced that you never really find it all. Alls it takes is one sloppy overlap or rushed swings and you will miss out.

Anyhow I found these dozens of old coins with the Ace 400, which I prefer for dry sand. Its simple, accurate, a coin/ring magnet and I know it like the back of my hand ,, But we all know, its not a depth monster. So now that I got a Legend, this is a great area to learn its capabilities. [Don't know if there is or can be much difference between depth in sand vs dirt] And also worth pointing out, this is a campground beach that opened in the late 40's and they don't allow detecting there, but I have known the people who run it and work there for years and some are good friends, so they usually let me slide and that obviously keeps competition down. I occasionally see guys there giving it a try, mostly in the water. Gotta say I get a warm fuzzy when they get booted, but that means they will also boot me to keep up appearances. Passed by one guy and asked if he had any luck, he just grunted and gave me a dirty look, another guy I asked what kind of detector he was using just to be friendly, he acted like he couldn't hear with the headphones on, a trick I use sometimes for annoying kids, so I'll know not to try to have any dialog with these guys again.

Anyhow back to my spot, used the 2nd program which I believe is park, only prep I did was the thing where it searches for a "quiet channel", not clear exactly what that does but I did that, dropped recovery [which some seem to call reactivity] to 2, and thats it. I find ground balancing a waste of time, could be wrong, so I usually don't bother with that. Sensitivity was jacked up near max.
I scooped a hole in the sand about 10" down and placed a quarter in it, seemed to hit best on multi2 so I used that. Like any detector, when you are seeking deep targets you have to sweep real slow. Target id. any iron/ferrous visuals will be spotty or non existent so what you are searching for is faint, repeatable signals, and if they pinpoint you have just confirmed that something small and metal is down there. [I use the same technique with the Ace, but in practice the deepest you will ever find a quarter sized metal object is about 7"] So I managed to find a merc, a wheatie and a few bottlecaps at 10"+, found a buffalo nickel at at least a ft, came out in the 4th scoop which by far is, after 15 years or so, the deepest coin I have ever dug.
Found very small metal objects around or less than the size of a bb past 5", so I consider my 1st test here a success and I found coins that the Ace simply could not see. So easy digging targets in sand compared to soil, so hopefully I can apply some lessons learned here to soil detecting. When targets do id seems anything less than 20 was junk mostly foil. Bottlecaps as always are tricky especially deep ones, since target id is so unreliable at depth, best to dig any repeatable signal at a spot like this.

Looking forward to see if I can tweak any but to be honest, not much of a tweaker unlike most of you guys, and I am very happy with these results, nearly 2x+ what I am used to. I did see a Cabash video and for whatever reason, he was getting deep quarter hots the best with 4kz but that wasn't the case for me, I cycled through all the freqs and M2 was the best. Oh btw, when I first discovered this area I started digging up what looked like little concrete footings or foundations, and the ones I found seemed to be generally in a row. I didn't want to ask the camp personnel what used to be back there as I wasn't supposed to be detecting so best I could figure, maybe they had a pier or some party platform that ran back there back in the day. I eventually discovered a period pic of this very area and turns out they had a row of old school changing huts there, so that explains why this area is, or was, loaded with lose change ,, But I gotta believe there is more, along with a few 1930's class rings. Also are some grassy hills behind the beach that gotta be loaded but will be a bottlecap nightmare as thats where the picnickers go, I tend to stay away from areas that give a 500 to 1 ratio so I don 't think I'll ever get serious about the hills.

Nice report on your experience with the Legend. Glad it is working well for you. I am quite impressed with mine on difficult inland sites.
You might want to have at look at that area using Historical Aerials website. They may have some images that go back to the 1940's. You can get close GPS coordinates to put you on spots of interest.

Chris

I have been scoping for historical sites for years, am on the trail of a horse stop tavern [yes before trains] in the Detroit area, great thing is is its location was right by a river so alot of the area is still pristine but there has also been alot of construction in the surrounding area, condos, parking lots, widening of streets, but close to the river is still green overgrown and wild so I stand a chance. Also stumbled upon a street tearout last year and this area was once a huge arsenal from 1830 to around 1890, with a couple of the original buildings still standing. Found all kinds of CW era bullets, some medals, lots of buttons [ and a cent from 1832, my oldest yet], was quite a thrill for a guy in Michigan no less to find stuff like this [used a Simplex for that, which is why I was attracted to the idea of a jacked up Simplex which the Legend basically is] But yeah, one of the keys to success in metal detecting is you cannot try too many places - Research plays a part, luck plays a part but at the end of the day, its persistence that will fill your keeper box.