Safari Frustration: 2 Unproductive Days Beach Hunting

[ColonelDan]

I need some advice on beach settings for the MineLab Safari.

A friend and I spent 2 days hunting Cocoa Beach Florida this past weekend; he with his Excalibur II and me with my Safari. While he was finding nice rings, ear rings, car keys, assorted other jewelry and two hands full of change, I came away with about 58 cents!

I noticed my Safari would give me a single low tone signal but when I went back and swept the same area trying to locate the position…nothing…no signal. We tried throwing the 14K ring my friend found on the ground and burying it in the wet sand to see of my Safari would detect it…it did and at a variety of sensitivity settings!

After the first day, I called Steve Carr at Kellyco who sold me the Safari back in February. He advised me to get out of the auto mode and lower the sensitivity setting. I tried several settings from low to high and noise cancelled routinely. I went from dry sand to wet sand, noise cancelling each time with different sensitivity settings…nothing.

One other thing I did differently this time was to use ear buds with a plug adapter rather than the headphones that I was given by Kellyco when I bought the unit.

I decided I needed helpful advice with the Safari. Can anyone please give me some ideas as to how best set this machine up for beach hunting?

I’m posting this on several places in hopes I can rectify this frustrating issue.

Thanks

 

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[Fletch88]

Do a factory reset first. Then select coin mode and retest. I normally run all metal mode on the beaches that are relatively clean.

 

[cudamark]

That's why I recommend the Excalibur for the beach. I also have an E-trac but found the Excal goes deeper and is a bit more stable in the water. That said, you should still be able to find good stuff and lots of it with the Safari. Start with what Fletch said and give it another try. Go back out with your buddy with the Excal and compare sounds. You should be able to hear the same targets down to a foot or so. Of course, you may have just been unlucky and not walked over any good targets!

 

[Fletch88]

Also, I forgot to mention clean out coil cover and make sure coil cable is tight. Yes, running in manual is usually deeper, but if it gets too unstable just go back to auto. You should have been able to hit any target the Excal was hiring with a FBS machine pretty easily (unless you were underwater!)

 

[ColonelDan]

Thanks to all.

 

[Lifes A Garden...Dig IT]

My first assumption would be your friend with the Excal probably found more abundant and quality targets because he could submerge and hunt in the water, were you cannot with the Safari. Also, me and my wife just returned from hunting multiple Gulf Coast Florida beaches the 1st week of May with our Minelab Safari and Garrett AT Pro and the finds in the dry and wet sands were slim pickin's. We used to live there and hunted several days a week, so we are used to beach hunting. I think part of the problem is that the beaches were heavily sanded in . What I do know is the Safari and AT Pro are both good machines, so I have faith they should do a good job with wet/dry sand hunting. My opinion with the Safari is change to "low trash" setting and hunt in "all metal mode". Good Luck and HH

 

[Hot zone]

my Quattro is very like the safari but I understand it is slower... So slow in fact that I only use trash mode... Another thing I do that I read about on here, is to find a spot with no metal and lay the coil down on the ground to noise cancel rather than hold it in the air... Not really sure that it helps but it seems to make sense...The sensitivity is what is the hardest for me... It is deepest if you can stand the noise... I default to auto when I can't stand it any more! And when I really can't stand it, I use a Tesoro...

 

[dirtscratcher]

my Quattro is very like the safari but I understand it is slower... So slow in fact that I only use trash mode... Another thing I do that I read about on here, is to find a spot with no metal and lay the coil down on the ground to noise cancel rather than hold it in the air... Not really sure that it helps but it seems to make sense...The sensitivity is what is the hardest for me... It is deepest if you can stand the noise... I default to auto when I can't stand it any more! And when I really can't stand it, I use a Tesoro...

Extremely helpful.

 

[Hot zone]

Extremely helpful.

thanks, perhaps you are not aware that it is practically identical to a safari, just not worth much now that they changed the name...I struggled with it stubbornly for eight years because it had to be me... Everyone pointing out to try this or that... I think I can feel the frustration!

 

[ColonelDan]

Thanks again to all for the input. I appreciate your thoughts. I've decided to keep my detecting life simple and relegate my Safari to a land only role and use my Excal II at the beach. I'll have a good machine for both areas and won't have to worry about getting my Safari control box wet!

Thanks again...

 

[Keppy]

Yes that is best get rid of the FBS and stick with the BBS … I always said and to me the BBS detectors are better than the FBS detectors…And always will be..

 

[ColonelDan]

Thanks again to all for the input. I'm determined to learn those two machines as best I can and do my homework on every aspect of this hobby!