I use the Cortes and really like it. Cortes/Deleon, same machine basically. It is an excellent park hunting machine, works good for old coins too.
I use the Cortes and compadre, the compadre doesn't have anything over the Deleon. I've taken the compadre over places to find if I missed anything, I dug more trash those days than I dig in a month or 3 using the Cortes! Also, good targets recovered were none to 1 maybe 2.
when the Deleon/Cortes say it's junk, 9/20 times its actually junk, great ID.
btw, the cleansweep and Deleon will be a great match for open areas.
I was surprised by the depth on this machine when I got it, it's not super deep, but it seems to be close or just as deep as the vaquero I had. I've had coins in the 8-9" range with ok Id.
Cortes is the only machine I have actually been able to ID a woman's gold ring and know what it was before I dug it. Watch the vdi in the nickels/tab area and wait for it to lock on, nickels and tab #'s will bounce around, with a ring the #'s might move a bit, but only by 1 maybe 2 #'s up or down.
For park hunting I keep the disc at O in foil , just so I don't have to listen to all the trash, but still accept a small women's ring, sens at 4, threshold barley audible, . Now when you get a good hit and you know it's not the choppy broken iron sound - BUT the vdi shows 0. This is the machine unmasking good stuff amongst iron. Vdi will show 0 but the clean audio gives it away as a good target! This works best with the stock coil, or the 5.75 concentric. Every other available coil for the Tesoro umax units won't unmask like these 2, as far as I know anyways. Seems to me that the widescan like iron too much to be able to discriminate them by sound when the machine gives a good Id.
if I'm on an older site I run it with the disc at the half-way point between min and iron. Turning disc higher than this will make it loose some depth, but Once the disc is turned past this point it won't loose any more depth no matter how high it's turned.
i like toggling between all-metal and disc mode to find out if the target is a shallow shotgun birdshot or a deeper conductive coin. Also if you are unsure if the target is a bottlecap or not, listen for how the target sounds as the coil approaches it in all-metal. iron will sound off well before the coil is over it, while non-ferrous needs the edge of the coil to get within an inch for aluminum or silver and almost right on top of the target for copper or gold. Gold giving the tightest signal from any of them, so be sure to overlap your swing!
Im getting cabin fever here, waiting for spring thaw so I can actually get out there and use the thing again.
good luck!
Did you mean 9/10?
