I haven't had a lot of time to post a reply because I have been a little busy with the arrival of my new daughter! With so much attention needing to go to my wife and new daughter and also because of the winter weather I have had to get creative in order to find the time to detect. The time restraint has made me realize two things:
1- The compact design of the ATX is awesome. Every morning there are a few must have items I grab before I leave for work they are wallet, keys, cellphone and now the ATX. I also keep a set of detecting clothes in my car along with a fold up military shovel. I drive a lot for my work and when I get the chance to detect I have everything right at my finger tips to go at it.
2- The ATX works in trashy areas. Lately I have been detecting in a lot of public spots because of my current situation. Unfortunately most of the public places are full of trash.
For now I'm going to provide just a few general tips on how I learned to utilize the settings on the ATX to develop different techniques while detecting in trashy areas. I am slowly working on a more detailed post on this subject and hoping to including a video in a planted test area.
1- (Patience)The ATX is such a sensitive machine that in trashy areas it will constantly scream at you. Don't lose hope there are techniques you can learn and develop to be successful in these environments. Just remember it will take some time and being patient is very important.
2- (Focus on Action instead of Results) Take your time and make it a point to concentrate on the action of Metal Detecting in stead of focusing on the results. Instead of going out with the mind set that todays the day you are going to discover the rarest coin in the world go out with the mind set that your only objective is to listen to your ATX, dig and learn. This mind set should provide you with a little peace and will aid you in efficiently understanding the machine.
3- (Plan of Attack) When you get to your trashy area develop your grid as you normally would but instead of keeping it in your mind draw it out in a note book. I started out by drawing the basic shape of the area I was going to MD, then I drew vertical and horizontal lines through the area creating equal grids and included which way was north on the map. Ok so we got our normal grid drawn out then I drew three more distinct lines horizontally creating three sections of the area and assigned each section and grid-box with a name for reference. ( Note: I ended up adding a lot more sections than the original three) So an example of this would be Section 1 Grid-box1 (1.1) or Section 2 Grid-box 5 (2.5). I then established my "Rules" in each section and grid-box as an example in 1.1 I would operate the ATX at factory settings only and record the results in my note book. I have a ton of data on this and will share in detail in a later post when I get it all together. Im just trying to provide the bases of what I did in this post.
4- (Stay Consistent) This is very important! When you establish your "Rules" for the sections do not break them. It was very tempting for me to play with the settings to try and get more favorable results while I was still actively working a rule in a box. To ensure that you are learning how the ATX is responding in a trashy area you must develop true data to work off of. As you progress through each section and grid-box you will systematically go through different settings that are established based on the true data you collected in the previous section and grid-boxes. Staying consistent will actually speed the learning process along.
Remember these are just general tips to establish the base of how I learned and am still learning to operate in trashy areas successfully. There is so much more to it that I will share later on. Please feel free to critique me. Its the only way I will get better.
you have a lot more patience than me using the ATX in those trashy areas. I think I would just use a different detector myself. Good luck my friend!
