Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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| Hemingray No. 9 Insulator |
I picked up this insulator Monday. Always something to find even if you just take a little walk.
The green no. 9 Hemingray is in excellent condition.
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DJ sent this account of his 2/19 hunt at Turtle Trail.
Only found a stainless steel sweetheart ring but fun to hear a good tone. I dug one tone that must have been a stainless connector on the green bags close to the second flagpole and south of turtle trail access. I thought I was clear of them.
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| Stainless Steel Ring Found by DJ On Recent Hunt. |
So I cleared the top of a green bag and placed my pinpointer in it to judge depth. Seems like in that location, it was about a foot deep.
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| Photo by DJ. |
Other areas the fabric of torn bags could be seen but that is misleading.
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| Turtle Trail 2/19 Photo by DJ. |
Then I placed my NOX against a set of access stairs there as well. I figured after they reopen Turtle Trail I will go back and see how much sand has been added.
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For over a decade I've been telling you that I mostly detect in a non-motion or pinpoint mode. The past few years I used more discrimination because I had back problems and had to take it easy. Unfortunately cutting down on digging also cuts down on detector finds to some extent.
As I've mentioned before, I used pinpoint mode extensively with quite a number of metal detectors, which include an Excalibur, Sovereign, ATX, and several more, but yesterday I told you about using the Equinox on the beach in the pinpoint mode. Although I've told you many times about using pinpoint mode as my main search mode, I didn't get into it a lot, but today I'll give you some rough numbers that might surprise you.
Monday I went out in my yard where I conduct a lot of basic tests. I've described the site before. It is a thoroughly cleaned out area, but there is significant ambient electrical interference from nearby underground cables electrical lines etc. I've told you about that before too. If you turn the Equinox on there with the factory presets, you won't usually get much audible noise from the electrical interference but will hear it if you increase the sensitivity.
I took out the Equinox and three test targets, which included a modern zinc one cent coin, a thin two-reale with a broad flan, and a walking liberty silver half dollar, which I used in other recent tests.
Using the factory preset settings and in the normal motion mode I got about ten inches on the first two coins and more like eleven on the silver half. (Rough approximations are sufficient for this type of test because they won't be exactly the same on the beach or other settings anyhow.) Those numbers are very close to what I reported from my other recent tests at the same site while using the same factory preset settings.
Then I switched to pinpoint mode and swept the coil over the same test targets. This time I got fourteen, fourteen, and sixteen-inches average on repeated sweeps over the three targets. That is closer to what I typically get from other more expensive detectors when using a pinpoint or non-motion mode. Those numbers seemed to fairly represent my impressions of the depth I was getting at the beach Saturday too.
I've heard people say that the Equinox doesn't give enough depth, but how much depth it gives, like other metal detectors, depends upon how you use it.
As I explained yesterday. It can take some time to learn to use a non-motion or pinpoint mode on the beach, especially in the wet sand. You have to deal with the salt and other mineralization and learn to recognize the sound of real targets and the sound of mineralization. The metal detector has to process and cancel out the mineralization too, which is expecting a lot of a metal detector. The metal detector can do it, but there is a trade-off.
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| Source: MagicSeaWeed.com. |
Big tides again. Notice the negative tides, that along with the smaller surf will provide some opportunities.