I finally went MDing today!

[cheese]

Hello!

I've been reading this forum for a little while and got inspired. I have a micronta discovery2000, which is made by Bounty Hunter from what I gather.

I went to a local park and set my settings (thanks Onionhead for a good starting point on that). The very first thing I found was a recent nickel about 1 1/2 or 2 inches down. Then a quarter, then some aluminum and pull tabs, and a penny and another nickel. After that was trash...aluminum mostly and a washer. I see what you folks mean about the pull tabs!!! Man, how many of those things are there!!! Anyway, I had a blast, stayed out 'till dark (about 29 or 30 degrees too).

This was my first real trip out with the detector. The reason I have it is to find metal (nails and screws) in antique wood that I reclaim from old buildings. I did take it out one time before to an old homesite, but got frustrated with all the signals I got and sat the detector down and started hunting arrowheads after my wife came walking up with 2 she had just found while I was MDing. Lots of the signals weren't repeatable, and when they did repeat I couldn't find the target. I don't have a book for this MD, and I figured I didn't have it set right. There were lots of iron ore rocks in the area too. I think I'm getting the hang of pinpointing with it though. Today I got to where I could pin it down to a spot about 4 inches across. I just took a knife, cut a horseshoe shape in the sod, and scratched around with the knife until I found the target, then laid the sod back over and stepped on it. One problem though....I am strapped for time as it is. Now, I have to make time for one more hobby....I'm hooked!

 

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[OnionRings]

Well I'm glad to see your having fun that's what it's all about!!!

Remember to change your settings to the all metal mode to find those nails in the wood.

Those signals that disappeared could be in the dirt you tossed aside be sure to check the hole after you find the target there could be another one in there it happens a lot.

HH

Onion

 

[Leon]

Hi ya, Cheese...
Welcome to the forum. I started detecting with the same unit you have there. I could only detect a target 3" at the most when I first started, but after getting used to the detector, I could pick a coin size target out at about 7" down...
Do you use headphones?, if not you should give it a try, as you will hear much more.
Oh ya, if your hang'n out with onion, I'm sure you'll be finding some nice stuff soon..
Good luck & Happy Hunting~

 

[True_Metal]

Welcome aboard, Cheese. 8)

 

[cheese]

Thanks for the welcome!

I'm not ahngin' with onion, unfortunately, lol. I read a post where he mentioned setting the discrimination to 0 and the sensitivity to 1:00. It worked.

Did bounty hunter make all of radio shack's detectors? The reason I ask is because there are apparently 2 different versions of the discovery 2000. One looks just like the bounty hunters, and just have 2 control knobs. Mine is different from the BHs on the BH website and the other discovery2000s I've seen. It has 5 control knobs. One is a selector for allmetal, disc, and pull tab reject. One is ground balance, one is sensitivity, one is discrimination, and the last of course is volume. I have had the selector in the disc. position (whatever that means) while hunting.

I went again today to an old lake. I guess the place was full of trash or something. I got signals like crazy, lots of them wouldn't repeat, some repeated occasionally with different tones, and the signals were so close all over that I couldn't seem to zero in on just one. What do you do in this situation? Find another spot?? I wound up finding some bottle caps, aluminum can pieces, a washer, chunk of melted metal, and a nice old applied lip medicine bottle (was in the hole with a piece of aluminum that made a good enough beep to dig). I found a larger piece of iron that I almost gave up on. I kept digging and checking. It said the metal was still in the hole, but I was below the topsoil layer and into the clay. I kept on until I got 10 or 12 inches deep just to pull out a rusty piece of iron. Oh well, it was still fun.

 

[bergie]

The only thing there are more of than pull tabs is Memorial pennies.

 

[cheese]

Oh, I have a question. In the disc. mode I've been using, there are 3 different beeps. A low, medium, and high pitched beep. What do these mean? So far, it seems that most low beeps are iron, and most high beeps are aluminum. But not always. There must be some significance to the beeps, but what? Also, the depth meter does not seem to be accurate. It seems a large object buried several inches down might show to be right on the surface according to the meter. Is this normal?

 

[diggummup]

Okay,the depth meter on BH's isn't too accurate in my personal experience.The 3-tones you are getting are as follows;1-low tones usually mean iron or steel objects,however highly oxidized(rusted)objects will emit a high tone,depending on your disc. setting.2-medium tones can be gold or pull tabs(gold can also induce a low tone depending on the size of the object)it's hard to differentiate pull tabs and gold they both emit a medium tone.3-high tones are usually the best,copper,silver and brass objects usually fall in this category.Hope this helps a little.Good luck and welcome to the forum and i'm glad to hear your addicted to your new hobby H.H.

 

[Darla]

My son uses a bounty hunter and my experience with it shows the higher pitch signals to be the better targets. You might want to try the school play grounds, under swings monkey bars and base ball diamonds. Aaron is always comming up with silver rings and change and one time he even found a 14 carrot gold chain.

keep detecting the older the area the older the finds and as far as gold is conserned it comes in around pull tab on most of the detectors I have tested which would include the bounty hunter, my garret 1500 and the whites mxt.

happy detecting and keep it up,

Darla

 

[Carl in CO]

Cheese, excellent questions. Many of those I have myself. I have a BH Pioneer 202. This has been my experience.
Low tones are gold, pulltabs and nickels. Iron will also have a low tone if you haven't discriminated it out.
Mid tones are zinc pennies
High tones are silver, brass and copper including pre 1982 pennies. A large piece of alluminum will sound high. Oxidized iron sounds high. I think oxidized iron wreaks havoc with about any metal detector.
I have the problem with multiple hits at the same time. It could be some electromagnetic interference such as power lines. Oxidized iron. It might be multiple targets at different levels. To sort out multiple targets you could turn the discrimination to high to hopefully eliminate some of them. Turn the sensitivity to low and /or lift the coil off the ground until you single out a specific target.
I had great difficulty pinpointing. I am getting better. It takes practice. Set up a garden if you haven't already. My BH has an open coil. It has the outer ring and then a smaller ring inside. I've noticed it tones everytime the object passes either side of the inner ring (so by making a slow one direction motion over the object, two tones will be emitted). Also, I get right over the coil and look straight down when pinpointing. Standing behind can throw off visiual perspective of the target area.
My BH is not accurate with depth. I have a digital readout. It is good enough that I have an idea. I can tell by tone strength and depth readout whether it is on the surface, about 1-3" deep or more than 3" deep.
To help pinpoint, I got a slightly used hand held pinpointer off of E-bay. It is not perfect, but has saved me a great deal of time.
Regardless of what I do, I am still sometimes driven crazy by the multiple and broken tones. In parks, if I don't get a good consistent and repeatable tone, I take it to be trash and keep on going. If it's a place where I can dig without tearing up the surface, I am still digging them. Sometimes I don't find anything. When I rescan the hole and dirt I pulled out, it kind of tones in different places and then won't tone. It is very frustrating. I am coming to the conclusion that all broken tones should be ignored. The downside to it is that deep objects in my garden give broken tones. When I pass them, I am also passing some good targets.
BH is very good with discrimination. When turned up it will definately ignore the gold, tabs, iron and zinc.
Hope this is helpul. I would love to hear from anyone with BH experience or BH versions.

 

[OnionRings]

Cheese,

The crazy signals can be a couple of things foil near the surface you can't see also coins will do this if they're on top of the ground.

Multiple targets in one area can also cause this.

I have also noticed that these signals occur more when the batteries are weak.

Solution raise the coil off the ground a couple of inches until you can isolate one target pinpoint it and remove it rescan and find the next one.

Have you tested your detector in the setting you have it on to see if you can detect gold?



Onion

 

[cheese]

Thank you for the info! Carl, I know what you mean about the broken tones driving you crazy. Sometimes I get a good beep when swinging, but if I go back to the spot where the beep occurred, it might not be there, or it might be broken and chattery, or it might be a different tone. Then I dig it and don't find anything, recheck the hole and the dirt from in it and get no signal at all. I get irritated and fill the hole, and only dig solid signals for a while until my mind starts wondering what I might be missing on those broken signals, and try one all over again.

I did test the settings I'm using now on gold and silver with success. I haven't found any yet though. How far down are silver coins generally found? I was sure I would find some today. I got permission to hunt a plantation main house site. The house was built in 1850 and owned by a wealthy family. There were slave houses nearby too. I found old bullet cases, the reed plate from an old harmonica, a rusted miniature pocket knife (about 1 1/2" long) and a golf club head with the shaft rusted off, and the usual junk, but no old coins. Just one recent penny by the driveway. Broken signals all over the place.

Onionhead, you're right...I have noticed that the batteries have something to do with the signal quality and also the accuracy and ability to pinpoint with it.

My current method of pinpointing is sweeping side to side (like east to west) just above the target and lowering my sweeps a little at a time until I have crossed the target and am below it. While doing this, I note where the signal was best. Then I sweep in the opposite direction, (like north to south) the same way. I also note where the signal is best in this manner. Then the location of the object is pretty well defined, and I sometimes hit it with my knife when I stick the dirt to begin cutting a plug out. When the batteries get at about 8.4 volts (I checked them with a voltmeter), the signals get erratic and pinpointing becomes difficult. It seems a shame to toss batteries that still have good life in them. Maybe I'll come up with some sort of alternate power supply. Any ideas?

 

[OnionRings]

Pinpointing takes time and practice,

Here are a couple of things that could help.

Make sure your coil is level to the ground the point you want to eyeball is right where the rod connects to the coil thats where your target is. Once you take a knee and think you lost the target site check the target again without getting up just rescan the target to relocate it.

I use a ground down Phillips screw driver to probe with and most of the time you only have to dig a one inch plug. Don't use this probe if you feel there could be a valuable coin you will scratch it.

I don't have any suggestion on power packs sorry.

Onion

 

[Monty]

And I thought I was the only one having trougle identifying targets ! I got an MPx from Kellyco for Christmas and although it seems to be a good unit the owners manual is very poorly written. So bad you just have to figure it out by yourself....if you can. Apparently I can't as I sent it back to have it checked out . There was a chart supposidly to identify what the pitch of certian tones means and mine seemed to be just the opposite! Coins were supposed to be a very high intense tone but on mine they were very low barely audible. What was identified as a gold ring by the icon invaribly turned out to be a squished aluminum beer or soda can. I have spent 90% of my time digging junk! Is that typical or is it just me? jimmileo