I have to disagree with you Dixie, sorry I really hate to disagree with anything labeled "Dixie".
I have an Excall 1000, a waterproofed Sovereign GT with the 15 inch WOT and another land Sovereign GT with a 15 inch WOT. I will take my WOT coil over the 10 inch in the water on any given day.
Two weeks ago I was hunting Daytona Beach and thought "I will use my Excal", since I hadn't used it in a long time. I put the water-proofed Sov in the van and I hunted with the Excal for about 10-15 minutes before I put it back in the Van. I could not stand the "tiny" 10 inch coil.
When your beach hunting it is hard to beat the WOT coil in my personal opinion. I can cover so much more area with it compared to the 10 inch. I will be 60 in a couple months, and I have no problem swinging the WOT in the water, and I hunt the surf at Daytona too.
Now if you going to hunt like you say
"would be using it mostly on dry land , sand fresh water type, and some in shallow water . and would i be wrong to get this model detector ?"
I would do like vondrewvious says and go for the Sovereign GT. I love my Sovereigns, it takes a lot to push an Excal to the back-up position, but that is what the Water-proofed Sovereign has done to my Excal. I use to have 2 Excals, the back up for my Excal was another Excal. When I bought the WP Sov GT, I sold one of the Excals to pay for the Sovereign. After a few weeks the WP Sov pushed the Excal to the back-up position......
If I ever buy a new Excal, I will spend the money to change the coil out for the WOT, or the 12 inch at the very least.............Probably still be a WOT....