New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

Hi there
Just a little report back from using the AT Pro over the past couple of months... really loving it.. have not found gold yet but a silver ring and a stainless mens ring and bout $45 in usable change. Also a 1943 Penny on the mount main beach.
Have had a steep learn though with the AT pro on the wet salt sand..I know the vlf machines are not the best for wet salt beaches, but cranking the sensitivity way down to two bars and manually ground balancing at about 21 the machine seems to be fairly stable. I have found a dollar (yippee) in the wet sand, so I know it works, I later came across a signal in the wet sand that got stronger as I dug a bit, but the water just kept filling up the hole, so I did not retrieve the target. It came up as non ferrous with quite a good tone, one I have not heard before, I had to abandon the search after digging as much as I could. Now my question is... Was that just falsing, or was there something there? does the machine pick things us deeper in the wet sand due to conductivity?

Just wondering about the fisher CZ 21, would that be a great wet sand/shallow water machine? and where would one obtain one of those in NZ?

If good then the saving shall commence...:)

Thanks for reading.
Brett.

Hi Garrett. Sounds like you may have been digging for a tin can or eqivelant. The signal getting stronger as you dig is one telltale sign of a large object, possibly. Lift the detector up and down above the hole, if its still sounding off then it may be a large target like a can. Falsing occurs when there is too much water under the wet sand or water in the hole as you dig.
I have hunted the Mount main beach before and found the sand to be very deep, didnt find anything and down on the waters edge was a lot of space junk/alluminium. Had better luck over in the bay side.
Maybe a PI machine would be better there in the deep wet sand. Your garrett is a good machine stick with it.

HH

.

Brett - a couple of beach hunting secrets with the AT Pro:

Get used to a noisy hunt. You will soon subconsciously know when the detector is falsing or on a target even with very faint signals but you shouldn't have to lower the sensitivity down as far as 2 bars unless there is a lot of black sand around. 2 to 3 bars down from maximum is normal on a reasonably clean beach, but it will make a lot of noise.

As a start to tell a target from a false just swing the coil over the same area again but in different directions. A false will never repeat but a target will, if in Pro mode you will also notice a difference in the quality of the sound between a false and a target (hard to explain but easy enough to pick up on with practise).

There is one ground balance for the dry sand, another for the dry to wet "slope", a third for the wet sand and finally a fourth for in the water. The best way is to work horizontally along these zones instead of trying to ground balance every few minutes. Get the machine to ground balance first in each zone and take a note of the number, then its quicker to just manually enter the GB whenever changing zones then having to lift & lower the coil and auto GB each time. On Waiheke beaches (very little black sand) it was 20 on the dry, 18 on the wet and down to 14 in the water. The machine can GB better then you can manually even if there is noise afterwards but it takes longer to do.

Hope this helps, a dedicated beach machine will go a little bit deeper but not much and I reckon it is better to learn how to use the AT Pro on the beach first before spending the extra $$ on another machine. The AT can do surprisingly well on the beach once the operator leans all its quirks.

Hey guys, thanks for all the advice and tips, yes I will stick with the Garrett, I was thinking of adding to the arsenal with a CZ 21 or something similar. I think as time goes by I will get better at identifying the sounds from the machine, I am not scared to dig... I dont mind digging anything, it makes for a cleaner beach too at the end of the day, there has been some shockers of rusty junk that people could step on.. Tent pegs are an epidemic, and so are bobby pins. Plan to go to a mates place tomorrow, he has an original 1930s house with seemingly un-touched landscaping.
Will let you know if anything good turns up. I must get to some other beaches too, the mounts sand is deep as stated above.
Cheers for now.