Hi Coin Sniper,
I recently did what you are considering. By the way, hello everyone, I am new to the forum, and new to detecting. I am 53 years old, my only prior experience with a metal detector was as a teenager. I built a Heathkit model that was pretty neat at the time. Didn't really get a lot of practice on it, but learned the theory pretty good.
So I recently got the urge to do this and figured I should start with the best equipment. I tend to do that with everything I buy, can't help myself. So I purchased the Minelab CTX - 3030 with stock coil and the 17" coil.
I've found it to be simple to use with the stock programs, but obviously I'm sure I'll be tweaking those a lot as I get more practice. I've been to a Broward beach a couple of times for about 2.5 hours each trip. I have not used it in the water yet but have been practicing on the same area of beach with wet and dry sand. Both times out I've gotten about 8 coins (quarters, nickels, pennies so far), only exception was one piece of foil and a couple of ghosts that never seemed to materialize. Other than that, no junk found.
This is not a very busy section of beach, I'm just using it for practice since there are not a lot of people there. What's slowed me down the most is the scooping - that seems to be an art you have to develop. On the second trip I noticed a big improvement in pinpointing the target, so a lot less scooping was involved.
Aside from that I have been playing around with the GPS and marking the "finds" to have a good record and look for patterns on the map.
I'm really enjoying it and feel comfortable that I have a beast of a machine that will support me as my knowledge grows.
I'm waiting for a more suitable scoop to arrive for use in the water and will try getting wet on my next hunt.
Best newbie advice I can give you is don't forget to bring your scoop as I did on my first trip.
I will now go back to lurking as I have learned a lot from you all and will return with lots of questions in the future. Thanks for having me here!
