I would believe that the other freqs would have picked up the merc, probably no problem if swung over at all. I was originally looking at the higher freqs for deeper mid range conductors like V-nickels and such, even some wheaties or IH. I was also hoping to find possibly some smaller or deeper gold that might be in the ground that I might have missed with the lower freqs. I was concerned that I would be giving up deeper or smaller silver in the trade off but I was happily wrong. it is easy to forget how small the beam of detector really is and how easy it is to walk over and miss a target. A person that covers a lot of ground fairly quickly, misses a lot of targets because they simply just don't swing over the target. you can swing a flashlight on the ground at your normal speed and at your normal gait and you will be surprised at how much you actually miss. That is why so many preach the slow go in an attempt to overlap your last pass. many people also swing upward at both ends of their swing and thus miss targets. Sometimes you have to make a game plan of attack for the day or a site and do your best to stick to it. A lot of people only grid one way while others grid 90 degrees to their 1st passes to look for targets hidden or on edge that are harder to hit on. soil conditions change and so does how it detects, so many variables to consider as to why one missed a target before. But the odds are that we simply failed to swing directly over the target before. My whole point of this thread was that I am not afraid that using the 54 Kz is going to cost me finding silver. Jerry
Your statement makes a lot of sense in the different ways a coil is swung will determine the targets found. I watch folks detecting in England on many of my trips over and there's one thing consistent is the amount of finds at the end of the day represents the true coverage of the coil to the ground.
Swinging like a banana is a sure way of missing targets, and running around fast walking is another. I've seen folks cross an entire field 4 times by the time I was a little more than halfway across. There was a report of the landowner or somebody finding gold coins on the field. The point is one may get lucky and hit a large target, but when I see small targets I know how they're detecting.
Near the end of the day when one s tired the swinging gets sloppy, the race starts, the targets get even less.
Using the 9"elliptical now for just 5 hunts it has shown me some pretty impressive hits and depth. I've ran it in 14,28,74 and each has given up things in well hit sites.
I guess I'm guilty of doing the drunken sailor type of detecting. But I manage to cover it pretty well in the end where I have a hard time getting one good target (a piece of non-ferrous).
Permissions get old, and the older I get I need a new patch of soil once in a while. I'll leave some permissions go for a few years let the soils get moved by frost then hit them again. It's a race out there now as the frost is out, we're in the double digits, the ice has gone from the waters. So now for the next 4 weeks that's it for us then the seeds are sowed.
