54 kz Really Bangs Merc

[dirtlooter]

I was really feeling like detecting but the day was nice other than the wind blowing ninety miles an hour. So I hurried to my permission and prepared to hunt a hard hit area. I was really just hoping for maybe a deeper nickel or penny that I might have missed. The grass still hasn't been cut so it was thick but flattened somewhat in areas. As I figured, the signals were few and mostly non repeatable blips. Then I hit a very resounding target and out of curiosity, I pulled my remote out to see what the numbers might be. 95-93, I know better than to get excited at this place until the plug is dug but I figured it was just a clad quarter if it was a coin. Nope, 1940 Merc! I was amazed at how hard it hit it, it was almost 5 inches deep in the dirt plus the grass. Wow, the 54 khz really hammered it. My remaining targets before I quit earlier than I wanted to were, horseshoe, iron chain link, foil and a pull tab. The Merc was the only coin found and I am totally happy with that. The Merc was the 21st merc found here, The 18th silver for the year and the 39th silver found at this site so far. I have only found 2 or 3 Rosies plus the Seated and the Barber. I am definitely not concerned about whether or not the 54 khz will find small silver now. Love this coil! DL

 

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[vferrari]

You go DL you are tearing it up with that HF. HH.

 

[jdiggs_treasure]

Sweet find with that 54khz!!! Congrats brother!!!

 

[HuntinDog]

Anytime you can hunt... Wind, Rain,Tall grass or great weather and you find a Merc is a great day hunting in my book.
Congrats

 

[Ammoman]

Hmmm a merc....the other woman in my life! Gotta love her.

 

[Professor of Engineering]

Nice find!

 

[smokeythecat]

Yes, it's something of a myth that only certain kinds of targets can or will likely be found by a single frequency, or even a multi frequency. I found that piece of the cut reale very deep at 74khz. Blew my ears off. 2nd rule of detecting, have something under the coil!

 

[tabman]

Nice recovery! Thanks for the report! I just got my 9 inch round HF search coil today. I've been playing around with it a little in the yard and I seem to like 28kHz the best. It's smooth running.

tabman

 

[vferrari]

The HF coils have the added benefit of being more EMI resistant for whatever reason. Part of it has to do with the higher frequency which gives more immunity to EMI.

Tabman, I know you are a silver recovering monster, but do not be afraid to run that coil at 28khz to find silver even if conventional wisdom says you can get more depth with the lower frequency. As you are surmising, there is something about how smooth that coil runs at 28 khz and even though a lower frequency might have more raw depth capability, running the coil at 28 khz seems to be a sweet spot for all kinds of keeper targets, including high conductors. I suspect it has something to do with how quiet it runs at that frequency.

Smokey finds all kinds of stuff at 74 khz, also, with the elliptical, including silver (the 9" round maxes out at 56 khz). But 28 khz does seem like a sweet spot for both HF coils.

Have fun with it.

HH.

 

[dirtlooter]

The hardest thing is sometimes convincing or proving to yourself that something does work in spite what has been ingrained into your thinking. Part of you is thinking , yeah, it might hit the silver but at what cost? depth? and so you try it but your confidence level is just so-so and you may even go back to the lower freqs unless something proves it to you. Obviously Smokey needs no other proof and she has the finds to back it up. this Merc really opened my eyes on the higher freq setting. The supper cool thing is how easily you can switch between freqs over a signal that you think might be silver just to see how it reacts or hits. I can tell you this much, you are going to like it(the higher freqs). Jerry

 

[pepperj]

The hardest thing is sometimes convincing or proving to yourself that something does work in spite what has been ingrained into your thinking. Part of you is thinking , yeah, it might hit the silver but at what cost? depth? and so you try it but your confidence level is just so-so and you may even go back to the lower freqs unless something proves it to you. Obviously Smokey needs no other proof and she has the finds to back it up. this Merc really opened my eyes on the higher freq setting. The supper cool thing is how easily you can switch between freqs over a signal that you think might be silver just to see how it reacts or hits. I can tell you this much, you are going to like it(the higher freqs). Jerry

That's the thing would/could the other settings picked it up?
I'm the worst for not remembering to check out a different setting on a target not dug yet. Beep sounds great-dig! It's a keeper/photo happy dance in head, mental batteries charged to the fullest, sugar plums dancing in the head of another better possible keeper-oh crap I should of checked the other settings.
Oh this one while take this newb a while to learn-old habits are really hard to break sometimes.

 

[dirtlooter]

That's the thing would/could the other settings picked it up?
I'm the worst for not remembering to check out a different setting on a target not dug yet. Beep sounds great-dig! It's a keeper/photo happy dance in head, mental batteries charged to the fullest, sugar plums dancing in the head of another better possible keeper-oh crap I should of checked the other settings.
Oh this one while take this newb a while to learn-old habits are really hard to break sometimes.

I would believe that the other freqs would have picked up the merc, probably no problem if swung over at all. I was originally looking at the higher freqs for deeper mid range conductors like V-nickels and such, even some wheaties or IH. I was also hoping to find possibly some smaller or deeper gold that might be in the ground that I might have missed with the lower freqs. I was concerned that I would be giving up deeper or smaller silver in the trade off but I was happily wrong. it is easy to forget how small the beam of detector really is and how easy it is to walk over and miss a target. A person that covers a lot of ground fairly quickly, misses a lot of targets because they simply just don't swing over the target. you can swing a flashlight on the ground at your normal speed and at your normal gait and you will be surprised at how much you actually miss. That is why so many preach the slow go in an attempt to overlap your last pass. many people also swing upward at both ends of their swing and thus miss targets. Sometimes you have to make a game plan of attack for the day or a site and do your best to stick to it. A lot of people only grid one way while others grid 90 degrees to their 1st passes to look for targets hidden or on edge that are harder to hit on. soil conditions change and so does how it detects, so many variables to consider as to why one missed a target before. But the odds are that we simply failed to swing directly over the target before. My whole point of this thread was that I am not afraid that using the 54 Kz is going to cost me finding silver. Jerry

 

[HuntinDog]

Dirt,
You are so correct that while you think you are covering the ground well, in most cases you miss a bunch.
Hence the "it's never hunted out" saying.
Each time you go back to a site you hunt it differently and out pops a target...
Slowing down and paying attention to where your coil is helps, but you are still going to miss some.
I've hunted a site for years and still pull good targets.
Just wish it were like the first day I hunted it....WOW
Aw the memories....

 

[vferrari]

I too am a firm believer that lack of 100% coil swing coverage is the primary cause of lingering targets at pounded sites. Nowhere is this more evident than in beach contest hunts where yuou can often go into the contest area boundaries after the hunt and find left behind contest targets after 50+ coils just blanketed the plot. The other factor is the natural and man-made "forces" ( root action, frost heave, animal burrowing, plowing, mowing, fill dirt, etc. that all keep targets moving in the ground. Trash and ferrous/non-ferrous junk density is another significant factor. Detectorist skill (other than good swing coverage technique) and detector capability are small factors.

 

[smokeythecat]

Vferrari is correct. I have one spot a CW camp, I have been there a lot of times. Just leave it at that - a lot. I am still pulling items out of it, but it is getting harder and harder. And it's not that they are that deep, it's the soil is bad and there is a ton of junk small iron in the ground.

 

[pepperj]

I would believe that the other freqs would have picked up the merc, probably no problem if swung over at all. I was originally looking at the higher freqs for deeper mid range conductors like V-nickels and such, even some wheaties or IH. I was also hoping to find possibly some smaller or deeper gold that might be in the ground that I might have missed with the lower freqs. I was concerned that I would be giving up deeper or smaller silver in the trade off but I was happily wrong. it is easy to forget how small the beam of detector really is and how easy it is to walk over and miss a target. A person that covers a lot of ground fairly quickly, misses a lot of targets because they simply just don't swing over the target. you can swing a flashlight on the ground at your normal speed and at your normal gait and you will be surprised at how much you actually miss. That is why so many preach the slow go in an attempt to overlap your last pass. many people also swing upward at both ends of their swing and thus miss targets. Sometimes you have to make a game plan of attack for the day or a site and do your best to stick to it. A lot of people only grid one way while others grid 90 degrees to their 1st passes to look for targets hidden or on edge that are harder to hit on. soil conditions change and so does how it detects, so many variables to consider as to why one missed a target before. But the odds are that we simply failed to swing directly over the target before. My whole point of this thread was that I am not afraid that using the 54 Kz is going to cost me finding silver. Jerry

Your statement makes a lot of sense in the different ways a coil is swung will determine the targets found. I watch folks detecting in England on many of my trips over and there's one thing consistent is the amount of finds at the end of the day represents the true coverage of the coil to the ground.
Swinging like a banana is a sure way of missing targets, and running around fast walking is another. I've seen folks cross an entire field 4 times by the time I was a little more than halfway across. There was a report of the landowner or somebody finding gold coins on the field. The point is one may get lucky and hit a large target, but when I see small targets I know how they're detecting.
Near the end of the day when one s tired the swinging gets sloppy, the race starts, the targets get even less.

Using the 9"elliptical now for just 5 hunts it has shown me some pretty impressive hits and depth. I've ran it in 14,28,74 and each has given up things in well hit sites.

I guess I'm guilty of doing the drunken sailor type of detecting. But I manage to cover it pretty well in the end where I have a hard time getting one good target (a piece of non-ferrous).
Permissions get old, and the older I get I need a new patch of soil once in a while. I'll leave some permissions go for a few years let the soils get moved by frost then hit them again. It's a race out there now as the frost is out, we're in the double digits, the ice has gone from the waters. So now for the next 4 weeks that's it for us then the seeds are sowed.

 

[pepperj]

Vferrari is correct. I have one spot a CW camp, I have been there a lot of times. Just leave it at that - a lot. I am still pulling items out of it, but it is getting harder and harder. And it's not that they are that deep, it's the soil is bad and there is a ton of junk small iron in the ground.

Do you dig out the iron, or just trying to get things in and around the iron?

 

[smokeythecat]

Yes, our fields will be planted next week or so. Then it's beach season. And the three detecting rules are makes sure you have a machine that works, have a spot with targets in the ground and get the coil over them. I've seen people running through fields too. They don't do very well.

And pepperj, yes to all. I dig it and sometimes work around it. On the little stuff, I basically work around it.

 

[dirtlooter]

Vferrari is correct. I have one spot a CW camp, I have been there a lot of times. Just leave it at that - a lot. I am still pulling items out of it, but it is getting harder and harder. And it's not that they are that deep, it's the soil is bad and there is a ton of junk small iron in the ground.

At a good site, I guess we all are guilty of cherry picking the easier spots and saving the worst or trashy/mineralized etc areas for the last. Then we slowly pick or work our way into or through them. Those spots are where coils like the HF can really shine but it still depends on whether or not we are willing to do what it takes to find a good or decent target. I guess it is like Smokey has said about detecting in the ration can (I hope that is right) areas trying to find a target in amongst the old trash. One has to be willing and it helps to have a detector decent enough to do the job unmasking or separating. The variables can vary greatly from one area to another.