crazyjarhead said:
My new ace 250 arrived today and needless to say I had to go out for a few hours. Still learning the machine. Found a 1970s penny, 5 memorials, and a 1982 quarter. Also found a broach in front of my grandmothers house, which was built at the turn of the century. Looked like it had some kind of stones on it and most were missing. Its soaking in water now.I will hunt this in detail later. The next step for me is to learn how to download pictures. I have a sony digital camera with a macro. Tried to take pictures of coins close up but they come out blurry. I'm not a genius when it comes to digital cameras and cell phones. I have to get this discrimination thing down. I set sensitivity at 50% and on the coin mode. But I'm still learning the types of signals and what they mean. Dug alot of pull tabs that were showing 10 and 25cents. Stay tuned, Ron
If your camera is a point and shoot type, set it to Macro mode (the flower) and get it on a tripod and use the timer function. Get lots of light (go outside if necessary). This should help it not be blurry. If you have a nice digital SLR, everything is about the same, with not needing AS much light. Also on the SLR if it has a auto focusing lens with vibration reduction or image stablization turn the later off when on a tripod. Make sure you are not too close that the auto focus won't lock on and focus.
Definitely keep the sensitivity low when you are first learning the tones of the ACE. You won't be digging 8" either which will help you dig a lot more targets and figure things out. As you learn the signals you can turn up the sensitivity to get some increased coverage and depth, but as others have said you will get false tones. These can slow you down if they happen too often because you have to constantly break stride and reverse scan. Just turn the sensitivity down a notch at a time until this goes away (depth will be shallower as well but you can kind of cruise along and find good sounding signals.
You can learn how to use the ACE by reading about it, but the best way really is to just experience it. Log a lot of hours and see what patterns develop.
I would get some headphones if you don't already have some. This will really allow you to hear the difference between things that ring a particular signal type that are in fact different. Pop tops and nickels are basically the same but in the headphones sometimes you just know when it's definitely a nickel. Over the ear are best, but earbuds would be ok too if they are not too loose. Gotta have some kind of volume control though. Radioshack sells a little white volume control extension cable (ACCURIAN is the brand name) for $10 if you headphones don't have them built in. Headphones also help keep the kiddies at bay in the tot lots. If they don't hear the BING BING BING they won't come running and try to dig your hole for you.
Those must have been the older pull tab style you were digging. The pop tops usually ring nickel on the ACE, and occasionally ring pull tab for me. The actual pull tabs can ring all over from below nickel to quarter depending on how much of it is left or how corroded it is. Gotta love those bottle tops that ring dime and quarter too!
Pinpointing will help you "see" how big the target is, but be careful you don't get a "all knowing" complex because just when you think it's a pop can and walk away, it will be a silver ring and you will have passed it up. This actually happened to my dad when I added the second of three rings I've found so far in less than 2 months with the ACE 250
As much as you can tolerate it, dig everything and the loot will come your way!
HH!
One was actually pretty deep. I had strong signals on several of them. I believe that they were in the nickle and dime range.
