I got a chance to use the F-75 on the beach today in between thunderstorms.
There were no small animals injured or killed during this event.
I went to a beach that I haven't been to in a while. I like it because it has lots of regular old beach sand, like Flagler Beach still does. I think this is the best sand for finding lost items. I combed the beach for about 90 minutes with the PI Pro. There was way more beer bottle caps than usual. This beach usually has a few buried beer cans, but today was pretty much a record haul of junk.
As you can see, no shortage of targets. When there aren't any people at the beach, or not many, I usually take a straight line comb from dune to surf, dragging my scoop to mark the outside of where I've been. Every time I turn around, I switch the machine and scoop to opposite sides, so I am always marking the outside.
After a while, and one or two sprinklings of rain, I took out the F-75. There was a hole I had left open, because the PI still kept getting a target reading, even though I was already down 14 or 15 inches in the sand. The F-75 also got a beat on it and pinpointed it directly in the center of the hole. I kept digging and found a beer can bottom at about 18".
I followed several of the columns with the F-75. First thing I notice is that I can cover about 3 or 4 times the ground with the F-75. Using the PI Pro is so much slower. Following the pattern, I only found one piece of aluminum and a piece of foil that I had missed with the PI. I then ran perpendicular to the original tracks and found only one more piece of foil, no great targets that I had missed and no more beer bottle caps.
I then wandered around to another area with the F-75 and found a rechargeable battery that rang in as iron (7). I marked the additional items found with the F-75 in this pic.
As soon as I hit the sand that was wet from the waves, the F-75 got a false iron signal every few inches (1 thru 8). I didn't mess with the settings because I really am not interested in using the F-75 in the surf.
What did I learn from this?
1. This beach sucks for metal detecting.
2. It rains alot in Florida
3. The PI Pro seems to pic up all the targets
4. The F-75 can comb the dry sand 3 or 4 times faster than the PI
If I have both machines, I would definetly use the PI Pro in the surf, then use the F-75 if I was going to cover any dry sand areas.
Jack