MXT & wet volleyball court sand making VDI #s way off but why?

[inspectorgadget]

MXT & wet volleyball court sand making VDI #'s way off but why?

In the sand at a local parks volleyball court I was getting readings of 40-55 VDI & some of these turned out to be 71 & newer pennies. Once I dug them up from about 4 or 5 inches they read more accurately at about 77 VDI. OK now my question is why were they reading so low in the sand? I've been using the MXT for almost a month & never had this type of reading for a penny. Does sand that is very wet cause weird readings like i was getting? & if pennies read that low then whats gold gonna read at in the same area? -10 or -20 VDI? This sand is not salty sand either! Any help, tips or tricks would be greatly appreciated!

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

A History of Mining on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska - Grab it through Amazon!

[Sandman]

This is what is wrong with reading a stupid meter and believing it has to tell us what is in the ground. All a meter does is report the conductivity of the item and not what it really is. Those pennies if they were on the surface would have different VDI numbers. Soon hunters will expect the meters to tell you the date of the coins. They can only report on the conductivity of the surface area and orientation plays a factor in this too. Gold jewelry is alloyed with various metals which have different conductivity also. You can use the meter to let you lose more good targets by only retrieving those that show a specific target. If you want to increase your fun and amount of good targets, either don't pay attention to the meter or just use a light weght power house detector like a Tesoro or a Sov GT.

 

[inspectorgadget]

This is what is wrong with reading a stupid meter and believing it has to tell us what is in the ground. All a meter does is report the conductivity of the item and not what it really is. Those pennies if they were on the surface would have different VDI numbers. Soon hunters will expect the meters to tell you the date of the coins. They can only report on the conductivity of the surface area and orientation plays a factor in this too. Gold jewelry is alloyed with various metals which have different conductivity also. You can use the meter to let you lose more good targets by only retrieving those that show a specific target. If you want to increase your fun and amount of good targets, either don't pay attention to the meter or just use a light weght power house detector like a Tesoro or a Sov GT.

The question is not so much why the #'s were off but why they seem only to be off in the sand yesterday (my first time in sand with this machine), the #'s were reading the way they should in the normal dirt ground at the about the same depth on the same coins. I don't use the meter for much other than seeing if I get a solid number with only slight variations like going between 84 to 87 or 75 to 77. I dig to much trash AKA can slaw, foil of various types, pull tabs, bottle caps & pretty small pieces of various metals including BB's. So as you can see while I don't use the meter to determine if I dig or not I do like to understand what conditions have what affect on the #'s & why! In the sand I sure wasn't expecting pennies to pop up but yet I dug them anyhow expecting pull tabs or can slaw. This was my first time seeing #'s that were totally unpredictable, I'm still learning & still will be for the foreseeable future with this machine.

 

[wingmaster]

Some area's I think the ground minerals play a part in the VDI numbers, some places IH's come in at 50 to 52VDI and other places they fall in the zinc penny range all the way to 77VDI. Once you find one where your detecting they usually all fall in around the same range but will vary from place to place, I think some of it depends on how corroded they are as some places they will be in real good shape and others they are real ate up. Sandman is right though a coin on edge will give a good reading one way and the other will read iron, so if your not hitting the flat face or back of the coin you will pass it up almost always unless you go over the same area from a different direction. I use the VDI to disc out the newer shallow stuff this comes in real handy when detecting someones real nice yard as I don't want to dig a hundred holes in just the front yard and if you are nice and leave the yard like you found it most people will let you come back if you ever ask again. Some places you make some really good finds you might want to go back some time and maybe even try a different coil as they might be a really trashy area you might want to go over with a small coil. HH