My first time out!

[ryan1715]

So I'm still learning FYI. I've been looking into getting a good beach detector. Leaning towards the garrett sea hunter or sand shark. But I've been itching to get out there. My buddy let me borrow his whites beach hunter. So I finally got to go mess around with a machine for a bit. I was in mainly dry beach sand for about 3 hours, found the usual stuff, caps, cans, hooks etc. but I was playing around with my settings a lot obviously trying to learn. One thing I noticed was that I was picking up anything deeper then a few inches. I would progressively burry some of the things I found deeper just to test the machine. Is it because it's a VLF and a PI is preferred on beaches? Or did I just have my settings way off?

 

[lookindown]

You should have got at least 10 inches on a dime with the proper settings. A PI is going to go deeper but you will have to dig all targets, including iron, like bobby pins and sparkler wires.

 

[ryan1715]

In the settings on the beach hunter it was , ground, sensitivity, and threshold. Are these your normal settings on most machines? And I know what sensitivity is controlling but can you help me out with what ground and threshold are exactly doing?

 

[Beach Papa]

I assume you are referring to the Beach Hunter ID. I am not familiar with that machine. However, I can tell you the threshold controls the volume of the constant hum. It should be just barely audible. If you have it too loud, you will miss small changes in the sound which indicates a target below the coil. If you have it below audible, you can also miss small targets or deep targets. If you don't have access to the manual, I would suggest you go to the Whites web site and download one for the machine you are using. You should be able to get much greater depth than you are getting......

 

[lookindown]

You may have buried the targets you were testing a little deeper than you think. How deep do you think it was hitting a dime?

 

[ryan1715]

I was literally going maybe three inches down before I would lose it.