Allen,
Congrats on getting out there and using your Ace 250. I have used mine for about 2 years now and now that the snow in Upstate Ny is finally melting, I am getting the detecting DT's. Anyway I always hunt in Jewelry mode and depending on the site you are hunting, whether it be a fairgrounds that is frequently used, or an old homestead, the target id's will change. A pulltab you dig up at a park or fairgrounds (shows PT on the detector) might be an old flat button or piece of jewelry at an old homestead. I have found that if my detector shows an target as being a quarter and it stays on quarter ID throughout the swinging, 9 times out of 10 it is a quarter. I normally hunt a site that had a homestead on it from the mid to late 1800's and I have found quite a few flat buttons, whihc are my second favorite thing to find after old coins. Anyway, they show up in the nickle to pull tab range. As all will say it is best to dig it up and know exactly what it was than pass it up and wonder if it was a gold ring or other relic. After a while you will get the hang of it and know what it is telling you and what you will want to dig up or not.
Another thing is that aluminum cans (soda and beer) show up in the coin range. One way to tell if you truly have a can is to lift the coil off the ground about a foot and swing it as you normally would. If it is still giving you that nice bell tone, then it is probably a can. If you are into recylcing, dig it up and dispose of it properly or even if you wanty to make sure you don;t get fooled by it again.
ANy other questions please feel free to PM or post them and others will be glad to help you.
Funkman.
Now for Creeper...
I assume you have done the air test that all the detector manufacturers recommend that you wave a nail over the coil and listen to the tone. Then wave a pull tab over the coil and hear that tone, then wave a penny or dime over the coil and hear that tone. The Ace if I am not mistaken...again haven;t been out with it for a few months...>DAMN WINTER SNOW.....but it has three tones, one for iron, one for nickle/pulltab/gold and one for pennies and on up to dollar (coins and silver). WHen you get this tone that you are saying, is it truly the iron tone all the time? If you have a rusty nail or other piece of iron around wave it over the coil and you will see that you get that deep tone all the time. If you have a nickle or pulltab handy you will see that you get a different tone from the iron object. When you are getting this tone and you say it is iron/pulltab, those should be different tones. I assume you are swinging the coil over the target that is still in the ground and watching the screen to see what the detctor is telling you what it is. DO you have it on all metal mode? DO you see that the target id is truly bouncing from iron to pulltab to something else? I have had this happen at my site which has a LOT of rusty items in the ground. I get this mostly when it is a rusty object. SOmetimes there might be two things there and you have to shorten your swing to determine where each thing is. What I mean by this is that if you are swinging left to right and you are going a ful arm length either way, you could possibly get a couple of targets. You could even get a couple of targets within a foot of each other. So when you get mixed signals like this, try to zero in while swinging by shortening your swings. Instead of swing a full foot or more from left to right, swing only 6 inches. The target will still show up but you are zeroing in on exactly where it is and possibly determining if you have a coin near an iron object. Also swing while going forward or backwards away from the target to see if it changes. Sometimes junk targets will sound like a coin when you are swing right over it but if you continue to swing but going away from it, you will see that the target now gives a different tone. You will want to go after the targets that stay the same throught this swinging process. Just to show you what could happen, I had a great target that the detector was telling me was in the coin range but when I dug it it was a horse shoe. NAturally I kept it because it is an over 100 year old horseshoe, but it fooled the detector into thinking it was a coin. I have also pulled large cents and indian head cents out of this area and sure enough they stayed in that coin range. Just keep at it and you will as all of us have be fooled by what you think is a good target and find out it was a rusted junk or a can.
Any other questions from you or any others who need a little help or guidance feel free to Pm me or post. We are here to help as well as congratulate on great finds.
Funkman
