Bill D. (VA)
Silver Member
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2008
- Messages
- 4,711
- Reaction score
- 6,212
- Golden Thread
- 6
- Location
- SE Virginia
- 🥇 Banner finds
- 6
- 🏆 Honorable Mentions:
- 2
- Detector(s) used
- F75 SE (land); CZ-21 (saltwater)
- Primary Interest:
- Other
Well, I finally caved and bought me a new toy – a Minelab GPX-5000. Been talking about getting one for some time and finally took the plunge. I had used a borrowed 4000 last winter to find 3 more coins at my hammered silver site so I already had a little familiarity with the use of a GPX machine. So I loaded up all my settings and with the 18” mono as the coil of choice I made a quick trip late this afternoon to see what I could do at my coin spill site that recently produced 6 colonial silvers and 6 large cents that I found with my F75. I was hoping the coin/relic timing would work at this site as the ground conditions are very benign, but the machine was going crazy and couldn’t be balanced so I switched to the “sharp” timing. That immediately calmed it down so I was ready to go. After hearing what I believed were a couple pieces of large shallow iron I finally got my first diggable signal. It sounded pretty good but was quite loud so I wasn’t expecting much since the coins here were generally quite deep (in the 10-14” range). But after digging a nice deep hole I was finally able to recover my first target with the new machine, and it was an 1817 copper. I did some air testing with it and could get a very solid signal when swinging 18” above it, and could still easily hear it at 24”. That was a confidence builder as I figured any remaining coins could not go undetected provided I walked over them. Anyway, I dug a few pieces of iron and then about 45 min later I got another decent sounding signal, and out popped a real nice looking holed 1784 one reale. Both of these coins were actually found directly underneath rows of cut corn stalks. Apparently I couldn’t get close enough to them with the F75, but by swinging the 18” coil over top of the stalks I was able to pick them up. It started getting dark fast so I had to begin the ¾ mile trek back to the truck before I had finished covering all the territory I had intended to walk over. Guess that will have to wait for another time. But my first outing with the 5000 had to be considered a success, and hopefully a good omen for things to come. Below is a short video clip of yesterday's hunt along with pics of the coins all cleaned up. HH ..... Bill
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Merry Christmas to you and Julia!
