Beginner advice

[Dr E*]

I'm new to this hobby. I have an ACE250 and have taken it out to several parks. I've been keeping it in the "coins" setting with medium sensitivity. I'm amazed at how often it goes off (every few steps). Should I dig everything at first?? I'm finding tons of beer caps and soda cans. Only have found one penny and one dime (clad) thus far. Any advice for a newbie?

 

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[gregl01]

Hey DR E, after many hours of practice you'll learn the difference between good and bad targets. On most trash items the icons will bounce around and not lock on to one choice. The depth meter will also bounce up and down the scale. Just remember that these ID's are just approximations and are by no means 100%. I have learned that when the ACE locks onto a target its usually what the ID meter says it is. There are always variables but you'll soon figure it out and be showing us all your treasures!!!!!
HH
Greg

 

[TXKajun]

Hi, Dr. E and welcome to TNet and the wonderful world of Ace 250 detecting!

If you're finding poptops and bottle caps, you're well on your way to finding coins and stuff!! Believe me, most of the photos here are taken ONLY AFTER digging probably 50-100 pieces of trash! And that's by the folks who have been doing this a while (not me, unfortunately!! LOL)

Best thing for you to do is just what you've been doing......get out and use your Ace. Dig it all. You'll start hearing subtle differences in tones in it and recognizing them and what they mean before too much longer. It took me probably 4-5 weeks using my Ace 3-4 times/week to start saying "OK, that's a deeper tone and not the dingdingding of a penny or dime. I'm gonna pass on digging this one." or "Hmmm, this is kinda strange sound, not like penny, not like dime, it's worth digging."

One thing that helped me was getting to playgrounds, not just parks. The parks in my area were pretty hunted out, so I needed to find places with GOOD signals.....clad coins, in my case. Playgrounds at parks, playgrounds at schools, playgrounds at playgrounds.....even the local boys club work well. Find places that haven't been hit too hard (yeah, I know, no place is ever totally hunted out, but there's a bunch of places that are REAL clean!)

Anywho, keep up the beeping. It'll come in time. And anytime you drive or go anywhere, look around and wonder to yourself "Hmmmm, where could someone have lost something that I can find??"

HH, ya'll!

Kajun

 

[Monty]

Here's the curse of all detectorists, pull tabs! Those pesky little devils are almost impossible to discriminate out. If you discriminate them out all together you will lose your ability to find gold and nickels. Unfortunately, gold and nickels fall right into the same resistance level as those acursed pull tabs! The way a detector works, contrary to what many novices think, is by measuring resistance to the signal put out by the coil. It cannot identify specific metals as such, but can only measure how much resistance each metalic target returns to the coil. Modern detectors can read the resistance and based on a scale tell you what the metal target is likely to be. Unfortunatelly a pull tab, depending on its shape, if it's bent, if it is just a piece of a tab, its position in the ground, etc., can come back to the detector as almost anything. The secret is to learn to not let it fool you, even though it may be fooling your detector. I am told that after some gain much experience they can differentiate by the way it sounds. Unfortunately I have a high frequency hearing loss and they all sound the same to me so I have to dig 'em all! The best advice I can give you is to go ahead and dig 'em all at first. As you gain experience test yourself by listening, reading your detector icons and seeing how often you correctly identify a target before you dig. All things being equal you probably will find that as you gain explerience you will guess correctly more and more often. When you get confident enough to decide to dig or not to dig, then you have become a true detectorist. I am not a true detectorist! Monty