I am pretty new myself. My first newbie advice would be to practice in your yard, digging any signal you get, maybe even bury a few coins and learn how your detector reacts for each item. It will save you a lot of time from digging pull tabs and nails in the future. I have been on two all day detecting trips with my Ace 250. On my first time I was flat worn out from digging garbage! I spend countless hours practicing around my house, and on the second time I spent all day detecting I was digging mostly coins and cool relics. Learn the settings and tones.
Also work on your digging skills. If you go to a park and dig a big nasty hole and kill the grass, you probably won't be allowed back and may get metal detecting banned all together. You can perfect your digging skills at home and learn to better pinpoint your target and be able to dig a much smaller hole to find it. When I first started, I was digging huge plugs, now its down to just a few inches and I am getting very good at finding the target each time, and when I fill the hole I try to make it look as if there never was a hole in the first place. I just had a discussion with the groundskeeper of the local fairgorunds about this over the weekend. Some guys went metal detecting there a while back and dug big holes, didn't fill them, and left garbage laying around. Luckily he let me detect there, but had discussed with other shareholders over the grounds about having MD banned all together over what the last jerks did. Hopefully after the pristine condition I left the place in, they will consider letting people detect there a little while longer.
