Tips for the beach with Ace 250

[Captain Loosechange]

Got a question for anyone that can help. I have a friend who is going to the beach in a month or so and he knows I detect and wants to borrow a detector to try his hand at it. No problem, I'm glad to help. I have a Minelab Excal II but I really don't want to send a $1100 machine with a newby for a couple of reasons, 1st of all being that we all know that no one will be as gentle with our equipment as we are, those pots in the switches are easily damaged and I am always careful with them when traveling and I don't want someone else to damage them. So anyway I have an Ace 250 which I know is a great machine for the dry sand, I also know that odds of rings and such are greatly increased in the wet sand. So I am going to send the Ace with him and set it up in Jewelry mode with sensitivity reduced to 4 or 5. Also read that by turning it on over the wet sand that it will "ground balance" itself for the mineralized sand and help with the falsing, anyone tried this? Any tips from folks that have hunted the wet sand of the East coast with an Ace 250 successfully would be great. I have searched and read everything from "it won't work in wet sand" to "works great with reduced sensitivity" and I have decided on above set up but just really wandering if anyone has done this and how it worked out for them. Thanks in advance. P.S. Yes maybe I am selfish for not sending my Excal but if something happens to the Ace250 it won't be too hard to get $212 bucks out of him compared to $1150

 

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[Sandman]

You are right in not sending a Excal off with a newbie, especially a "friend."

As for the ACE 250 it will work well in the dry sand but not in the wet at most beaches due to incresase amounts of salt and black sand. Turning down the sens will help in the wet, but it will not ground balance as it is set. Fisher used to say their 1280 was Automatic when in fact it was factory set. The word Automatic means different things they thought.

So it won't matter where you turn it on, wet or dry.........

 

[Dirty Knees McGee]

I find that by discriminating out the left two or three items, you'll have no problem in the beach's wet sand... you may get the occasional non-item blip (few and far between for me anyways), but you will certainly be finding plenty of goodies. I find the Ace 250 is best served checking out the dry sand where the cars park on the beach (if your local beach permits such.) People loose a lot of stuff up there, just be prepared to find a few bottle tops and pull tabs if you are hunting for a gold item... but I'm sure you knew that already. Middle of the line sensitivity is really all you need. HH