Hunting Black Sand - I need some advice

[waseeker]

I had a chance to spend a couple of days on the Washington Coast and of course took along both the XLT & the DFX. When I hit the beach yesterday afternoon, I was dismayed to see black sand. Using both the standard jewelry/beach and jewelry/coin programs on the XLT I couldn't move the search head more than a couple of inches and I would get a beep and an overload signal. I turned down the sensitivity and although I got rid of the the overload signal, I still had lots of background noise and the sign-a-graph stayed pretty much constantly on with a bar at the -95 end of the scale.

After about an hour of nothing I left and headed for another section of the beach. This time I used the DFX. I used the 3kz single frequency (having read somewhere it is good in black sand). This time I didn't even get out of the parking area. I had a constant overload situation so I just shut down and when home.

This morning I went back to a local playground. It contained the same beach sand, but I figured this might be a good place to test out settings. with the XLT I finally settled on jewelry/coin and dropped the AC sensitivity to 59. I started getting strange hits immediately and since it was soft sand I scooped them and was surprised to find coins.

Bottom line is that in about 2.5 hours I pulled 104 coins, a piece of jewelry, 3 pull tabs , 1 bottle cap and a rusted screw from the playground. HOWEVER, the only 4 "good tones" I got were he 3 pull tabs and 1 bottle cap. None of the coins gave a good tone and several were just barely audible. The VDI and the sign-a-graph weren't even close to showing what I actually found. for example quarters came up at 24, 38,etc. Cents were 90, 91, and the 50's. nickels were in the 30's. I had to go super slow and dig absolutely every little blip. Also, I got nothing to register at a depth of more than 2.5 inches. That wasn't so bad on the playground but I'm not sure I would want to do it on "The Worlds Longest Beach".

So does anyone have and suggestions on how to improve performance in black sand?

Thanks in advance

 

[Sandman]

This is a tough one. It would help if you used a DD coil. However it might not be just the black sand, but a cell phone tower or anyone of the other broadcast towers near by. Electrical transformers will also cause this but they usually need to be within 70 some feet.

If you have a coil cover, remove it and clean the black sand out of it. This is a common problem. I even found black sand in my Excal cover and I thought I had it sealed with silicone. Check your batteries and the connections of the coil wire. That's all I can think of right now. good luck.....

 

[waseeker]

Always check the simple things first I reckon. I have used both machines recently along a local fresh water beach along the Columbia river. I was wading and had the heads under water. The coil covers are probably both full of sand.

The Washington beaches are very wide and I was some 150-200 yards away from any structures so I don't think there was any electrical interference.