Borrowed my friends

Minelab Explorer SE again for a change of pace. I've put only about 40 hrs on it over a year or so ago along with reading Andy S's book. Read the book again and had the SE out yesterday for about 6 hours.
This time I changed settings whilst over targets, to get a first hand understanding of their function....I actually had a blast. The area was a farm but the farm house (built 1858) was demolished by the township, leaving the big barn standing. Guessing, there is about 40 acres to hunt.
For me, the SE isn't the easiest unit to learn, but things started to click, Ahha! Takes going over a few times for things to sink in.

I purposely stuck with the smart screen, staying away from the fe & co numbers that I'm use to, numbers and meters that is.
I did a lot of testing and dug some deep iron to see how the machine operates, watching the cursor, how it jumps and so forth.

Many of the settings are for your personal preference, the rest are site set. I like how you can use the nulls to your advantage. Always loved the noise cancel.
I jumped in and out, from iron mask to the coins program, hunted in iron mask for a while, switching back anf forth from semi to manual sens to see the difference.
The site, for the most part picked over, but found a 12 star half cent 1828, and a large flat button shank included.

At about 3 pm, a guy comes walking out of the woods, says ' hello, what are you looking for?' I told him and he said 'really, pretty neat ' He said him and his buddies are ready to set up a deer hunt along the tree line and wanted to let me know. Well I got the hint and said I can come back another time, good luck on the hunt. It was the last day for deer season, I can come back anytime.

Anyway, it was one of those days where you're not anxious to find the goodies. Nice and relaxed and learning the detector......Again, had a blast.

Good deal Ozzie!!! I wonder how the Explorer SE would do in my dirt. I tried the Etrac turned up, open screen, and after 8 inches it called a silver quarter: "Hey!! There's some iron down there!!!" But I keep reading about the SE being a bit more powerful than the Etrac. I've hit a dry spell. (And from the overall lack of posting on this forum, many others have too)
I just went out with my F5 (11 in DD coil) and XP Deus and tested a standing liberty quarter at 7 8 and 9 inches. 8 inches is cool. At 9, iron grunts with occasional chirps. I hate my dirt. If I knew for sure that the SE could handle my dirt better, I'd order one tomorrow. The only thing that has kept me from it is the way the Etrac was shut down. I am testing coins via a little set up I devised by digging a deep hole in an area free of metal and boring holes in the side about 9 inches. I then slit a half inch dowel and slip coins into the slit and slip them into the hole making sure (with index marks) that they stay flat. Still not "real world" but best I can come up with. I wish that I knew someone around here with an SE that I could get to come down here and wave coil over my targets.
Anyway....glad ya had a great day.

Thanks, Kevin,
My guess is that if the ET didn't work well in your soil, the SE wouldn't either.These type units, although can be turn on and go, need to be studied, understood and used, so you can get peak performance out of them.
I get the feeling you are not giving many units a chance, I could be wrong, maybe you catch on better than most.

When I am finished with the SE, I'll give it back to my buddy and swap it for his E-trac. Very generous friend. He has a 3030 also.
He dosen't detect much, but he likes to get the latest tech. I'll be teaching him how to use his own equipment before long.

He asked once to borrow my 1021 cz, well I hesitated too long, he jumped all over that. I finally said, ' You would be the only person I'd lend it to.... and that's because he returns things in better/cleaner shape than when he borrows them.

Ozzie, there stands a very good chance that you are correct. Since I had my Etrac, (It was my third unit) I have had many and learned quite alot. But by no means am I one that learns quicker than others. Not to degrade myself too bad, but in the interest of being accurate, I am probably one who learns slower than others. When I had my Etrac, my philosophy was this: "Learn how, by reading and talking to Etrack users and reading Andy's book several times, to make the machine as hot as can possibly be, and then swing over my buried targets".
So I might actually get different results now than then. But I also read of others who has ground a bit hotter thn mine, like DanielTN, who has talked of the Etrac and it's performance and his ground and it seemed on par with my experience. But I am seriously thinking that my ground might not be quite as hot as Daniel's ground.
And on the other hand, and I cannot dismiss the fact that there are alot of pleased Etrac owner's out there. There has to be a reason. I'm sure that many of them have ground like mine. I am able to see now, after making a semi-elaborate test garden technique by digging the deep hole and boring 9 inch holes in the side of the dirt at various depths, that, at 8 inches, on a dime, the F5 and the XP Deus struggle. The F5 is about an inch less (it seems) in depth capabilities. And too, there simply may not be very many deeply buried coins at the sites I hunt. But something tells me that there are. I surely cannot be exempt from the same sink rates that others claim. As long as hard pan clay doesn't stop the sinking. Or something similar. I wish that I had kept the Etrac longer, but frankly, I was making more finds at my sites, AT THAT TIME, than with my Etrac. On one day in particular, I had covered every inch of an old homeplace in town and found a zinc penny with my Etrac. I put it back in the truck and took out my AT Pro, shortly thereafter I found a round cattle ear tag (brass with 1919 Hardin County) stamped on it. And then two wheaties, back to back, in the same area...almost identically. It was then that I asked myself why I gave so much for a machine that was getting whooped by the AT Pro.
But rationality has never been the main reason for my buying. There's no use in me trying to pull wool. I just like the feeling of having a new detector on the way to fiddle with. It seems to add zest to life. I'm get hooked to that feeling of having something brand new and nice with a big ol tracking number to keep an eye on it while it works it way down the Eastern seaboard to my grubby paws.

I get ya.

If a unit can detect a coin at a true measured 8"-9", that's great in my book. That's a big barrier between the coin and coil.