I would purchase the Excalibur ll 800 if available!
However, I suspect that a new one would be very difficult to find, as I spent more than one year
and one price increase searching for a used one without luck.
I prefer to detect with the The smaller 8” coil, actually 7.25” as often shallow water hunt in the first trough or detect near fire pits/picnic tables where it tends to be trashier, plus it is easier to get between ripples in the sand which are too narrow for the 10” search coil to get between.
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The small field eight inch coil is more sensitive too smaller targets as it covers one half the surface that the large field ten inch search coil. The trade off is you may lose a little depth: 8 to 10 Inch for the small field 8 inch DD search coil, verses 10 to 12 inch for the large field ten inch DD search coil. Even though the surface area under the 8 inch DD search coil is one half of that a ten inch DD search coil, You can still cover a large search area as the smaller search coil can be swept faster since there is less to process. Also, you can run hotter (more sensitive).
Ideally, you should to be able to change coil sizes, to meet specific conditions encountered:
An 8 inch size search coil for trashy areas, a ten inch search size coil as your go to beach coil, and a 15” or larger size search coil to cover more area or detect deeper targets. This will require a total of three detectors if the search coil is hard wired or one detector if you use a water proof inline connector.
Unless you live close the repair center, you should have at least two detectors, so that you can still detect while a failed detector is being repaired.
As the beaches I hunt are small, and the currents / waves stronger, I prefer using the 8 inch small field coil for shallow water hunting as it is easier to pinpoint. This h is very important as I often only get one chance at retrieving a target, before being knocked out of position or the target being sucked down out of range by the vacuum created while digging in soft sand.
Running for your life to get away from a strong surge or rougue wave is more difficult with a larger size coil. Where I hunt, there is no continental shelf to slow waves down and you can easily be dragged out to sea, seriously cut from a flailing scoop, or loose all equipmen - even if tied to you.
QUOTE=goCARDSjim;4689556]Looking to purchase a new Excal for use on Texas beach - High mineral content - but am unsure of best coil size. I'm thinking that the 8" coil would make pinpointing easier. Also thoughts on Fisher cz21? My main machine is Fisher F-75 upgraded and love it.[/QUOTE]
