Very true, dirtlooter. Well stated. I am at that point now where the confidence level is starting to really ramp up. For awhile, at the beginning, all I was hunting was a part that I have literally POUNDED to death, for 7 years, with FBS machines. This is now as difficult of a site to pull a keeper from as I can imagine. So, while the Equinox would give me a keeper or two from this park anytime I'd hunt it, it was LONG hours of hunting, for a couple of wheats, or a Buffalo nickel, or whatever. SO -- not enough "reps" to build a lot of confidence. Now, though, as I learn the machine, and am thus more consistently making finds -- some of them TOUGH finds, the confidence is really ramping up! It IS a great feeling, when that starts to happen.
HighVDI -- truthfully, NO! It was a mess! If you would have seen me from off in the distance, digging, and then re-digging, and then digging again just off to the side, you'd have thought I was a first-time detectorist who didn't know how to pinpoint or something! The last nail, before finding the coin, was the final "masking" problem, because when I pulled the plug, laid it on the ground, and swept it (to see if the target was in the plug), I could finally hear a good, solid high-tone with 26-27 VDIs along with some iron grunts. So, I searched all through the plug, but all I could pull out of the plug was a straight nail. I thought "OK, now, NO WAY was that the cause of those solid, high-VDI high tones I just heard being produced by THIS nail...
...and then I finally figured it out; turns out, I was hearing the Merc UNDER that last plug that had the nail in it! With that final "masker" removed and in my plug, the coin was finally hitting clearly -- but from UNDER the plug! LOL! So, I had to dig a FOURTH "quarter moon" type of plug this time, just a tad off to the side of the original plug, to retrieve the finally-clear-sounding Mercury dime!
Steve
