AT Gold and Nel Tornado

I wanted some coil options so I ordered a Nel Tornado coil for the AT Gold. I know everyone likes smaller coils, and the 5 x 8 is a great coil for most of the stuff I do. I wanted something to cover some ground, I can always go back with the 5 x 8 if needed. The Nel coil arrived today and I still had a little daylight left for a brief hour and a half test run. I took it down to a school yard that has a little history to it. The original school building is no longer there but it was there in the early 1900's. I have found silver there before, it didn't give any up today though. Oldest quarter was 1965...

I don't have a test garden to compare between the 5 x 8 and this new Tornado, so I can't get too scientific :-) First impression....I like it. It is definitely more prone to EMI as one would expect with the bigger coil, so far nothing that wasn't manageable, had to take the sensitivity down 3 notches from max in one area. As I moved away from there ( maybe 40 yards) I could notch it back up. Ran most of the hunt at full sensitivity.

For this hunt I ran in disc 1 with iron disc at 35. I started out in All Metal mode but it was just too many targets that I didn't feel like dealing with at the moment. I ran in disc 2 for a little bit just to see. I really don't care for disc 2 no matter what coil I'm running. Too many chopped up signals for me. Just seems to clutter everything up in my opinion.

As far as depth...The main difference I noticed from the 5 x 8 is that most of the coins found, I had to do the super tune trick on the Pro Pointer. Usually with the 5 x 8 stock coil I can find the majority of the coins etc., without having to tune the Pro Pointer. Almost all of the stuff I found this evening was deeper than the Pro Pointer would find without tuning. I'm terrible about keeping track of how deep (measuring) stuff is. I just get it out of the ground and move on. Most of the finds tonight were not in the plug (4 to 5" deep), I had to pull more dirt out of the bottom of the hole. I know one dime was at least 8 or 9". Had one signal that surprised me, it was fairly deep and kept hitting 91 on the VDI. Turned out to be a quarter and a dime together in the hole :-) Thought I had a good one.

Pin pointing is really effortless and spot on with this bigger coil. Took about 10 minutes to figure it out. Pinpoint normally, then when over the target, let off and hit the pinpoint again to detune. When you find the strongest signal again the target will be right under the coil bolt. You can literally dig a 3" plug at the most. With the stock 5 x 8" I was always off a little. I got in the habit of using the Pro Pointer after pin pointing with the detector just to make sure I was over the target. With the Nel coil, I got to the point that I no longer had to do this.

I haven't had a chance to do any checks on recovery speed or target separation yet. I was in too much of a hurry to get out and play before it got dark. I'm sure it will probably be as expected for a larger coil. I didn't buy it to hunt trash piles with though, I have the 5 x 8 for that.

Kenny





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/06/2014 05:10AM by ddmk6.

Kenny,

Welcome to the forum............ and good report. Sounds like you need to find an area where the soil sink-rate is not so rapid (sometimes this is difficult to do)....... so as to find older coins/implements.

Thanks for the welcome Tom.

Your right, the sink rate is pretty quick at this spot. I have found silver quarters at 4" here though. No logic to it. It is one of the reasons I wanted to run this coil at this location. I'm pretty sure most of the older stuff is deep. Maybe after playing around with the coil for a bit I will be able to unlock some of this stuff. There is a lot more ground to cover here, I barely scratched the surface in an hour and a half.

I have another location that dates back to 1850's. It does not seem to be as deep but the downside is more trash and square nails. I'm going to give it a run and see what shakes out.

One thing I didn't mention in the first post. This coil/detector combo seems to agree with each other very well. The VDI numbers were pretty accurate even on the deeper stuff. I'm sure there is a point where it falls off, just haven't used it enough to find that point yet. There do not seem to be any difference in finding targets as you may notice fom the photo. It seems to like them all. Pencil erasers and pulltabs can be found really deep now :-) Overall it seems to run very smooth.

Kenny

A little update on the NEL Tornado. Went out to an old store site a couple weeks ago. I had intended on using the 5 x 8 coil due to the square nails etc. Parked the rig and started hiking in, got about half way there and realized I still had the Tornado coil on the AT Gold and had left the 5 x 8 in the rig. Instead of walking back, I thought I would just check the out lying areas with the bigger coil.

Well, I couldn't resist wading into the nail pile to see what would shake out. Much to my surprise, this popped out of the hole along with 3 square nails :-) It wasn't a great signal, just one you have to dig to see what's there.



Here is a pic after cleaning up a bit.


After searching for a bit longer I made the hike back to the rig and put on the 5 x 8 stock coil. Went back and searched around a bit more but no other keeper targets. Not a real in depth test but happy with the results for sure. It was also kind of a quick hunt from the norm, had the wife with me. First time she has gone out detecting with me. I set her up with a quick lesson with the propointer and handed her the shovel. She was excited to dig targets I marked with flags until about the fourth hole. Her interest waned quickly. I said she was lucky I wasn't using the GPX 5000, she would have quit after the first hole :-)

Kenny

Anyone have any ideas regarding the age of the buckle? I'm assuming it's a shoe buckle. I'm pretty sure the site dates back to maybe 1850's. Not sure when the structure actually disappeared. My guess is 1920's maybe. I'm new to this relic/coin detecting, not used to trying to figure out how old something is. Only detecting I have done is nuggets. You just pick them up and put them in the stash. No wondering how old they are :-)

Kenny

Great report. I have always wonder about the information reported. And have heard EMI was not that bad on the AT Gold.

Thank you RubyDarlene. EMI isn't much of a concern at all. Even with the larger coil. Rarely notice it at all, even if I run at max sens. It will pick it up a little more with the large coil running in All Metal Mode with sens at max. Sometimes have to drop it down a notch.

One thing I have run into is mineralization with this larger coil. I had to make a trip to Wyoming and brought the AT with me. The ground here has a lot of alkali or salts I guess. Kind of different. It ground balances really low around 30 or so. Balance at home is around 85. But it always seems to be a little off and noisey no matter where I set the ground balance. Doesn't seem to affect the performance though. I have found 3 dimes at depth so far. A Barber, Merc and a silver Rosie. The Merc was every bit of 9", Barber was around 6 or 7" and the Rosie around 4", so I think the AT is doing it's job :-) Those were all found in disc 1, iron audio on and set at 29. Pretty happy with the performance.

Kenny