old Garrett Fortune Hunter MD.

[lobsterman]

i just got an older model Garrett fortune hunter MD with a minicoil twin-circut discriminator coil, thru the online classifieds for $40.00, it came with 4- 9 volt batt's, i think they must be dead because it only buzz's for a second when turned on, the unit is painted a o.d. green color, i'm guessing it's a 1970's model but i'm not sure, does anyone here know anything about these units ?, should i bother with this machine or should i try to sell it and buy a newer model ?. i thought i had read somewhere that the older machines only found ferrous metals, is this correct ?

Pat.

 

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[lonewolfe]

Sell it!

 

[lobsterman]

that bad huh ? i was afraid of that

 

[allen]

sell it or give it to the kids to play with. keep on digging !!!

 

[lobsterman]

well it seems to work good i got some new batt's and took my 5 yr old to the beach, i only found one penny there, right on the surface, but i was not able to move around too much with kid in tow ( he got bored quick when he found out i wasn't letting him go near the water . )

i was getting discouraged quickly also with no signals, but the beach has been well scoured by others since last season so after about an hour, i took a different tack and went up to my mothers beach house for about 2 hours, it was built around 1890, well i started finding many different things right away, first thing i found was an old mangled spoon, then a brass casing of some kind, 2 hot wheels cars 1 was a 1967 barracuda ( both about 6" down ), 8 penny's (nothing older than 1970), a hose end, a plastic toy soldier with a nail stuck in it, i also found about a couple dozen more nails and some aluminum siding scraps, and... are you ready for this...
my first pull tab , gee should i have it bronzed .

for an old dinosaur of an MD, it seemed to work pretty good, but i can't help but wonder what i would have found with a good newer one .

Pat.

 

[dave-enc]

Lobsterman,
I used to own a garrett fortune hunter, dated 1977, it was a decent machine for the time, I found several silver coins and things with mine back then. used it 1977-1981. It really lost a lot of its punch when set it to reject tabs. I rememebr well my biggest problems were that it had to be retuned a lot and it falsed a lot on wet grass. This was a stright tr machine so really good in low mineral soil but has a hard time in the more mineralized areas. I used mine in south florida at the time. hope this helps
hh
dave+bobbie

 

[lobsterman]

thanks i appreciate your reply, although i don't understand what do you mean by a straight TR model ?, mine has that on the coil and batt. cover ( transmitter reciever ), but isn't that what all MD's are or do ?, is it that newer models include some type of processing ?, please forgive my ignorance in this as i'm new to the hobby and i'm still trying learn about it.

Pat.

 

[dave-enc]

no problem Pat, yes most machines with exception of pulse units are tr machines but they are considered vlf machines machines operating in frequencies of 1-20, these older machines ran in the 80's+. any other questions just ask. if i can answer the questions i will
hh
dave+bobbie