First Beach Hunt

LochNESS

After two years of MD forum lurking, I decided to hunt at a beach. My first beach MD'ing. The short story is, very disappointed and questioning my meter settings.

Got permission first, as always. Northern Isle of Palms. Very nice, quiet, trash-free stretch with gently lapping tide rolling in. I woke around 6 AM, washed and made pancakes, and then headed downstairs around 8:30. Having never done beach before, I decided to search the first few feet of water. Well, either the ocean is made of gold or I can't work the meter settings ... I'd get zero hits and then some water rolls up and the meter goes nuts. Must be some heavy non-ferrous water. I couldn't figure out what was going on. I re-tuned every 10-20 feet. Not much change. I tried adjusting the "Ground" setting even more frequently. Never seemed to get that right. It would settle down and then go bonkers a few feet later. On the way back, I tried the first 1-2 ft of exposed sand - filled with seashells washed up from last night. I figured if the shells were there, maybe I'd find some coins ... Zero hits. I took off my wedding ring and placed it in a safe way. No hit! WTF! So I put the meter on its VLF setting (supposed to be for battery testing and tuning). This VLF setting is the closest I got to normal behavior. I got my wedding ring to register, plus a decent amount of mild hits, and once in a while some spikes. But after digging a couple inches and revealing millions of tiny shell pieces in the sand, I came to the conclusion that the signal was bogus.

My detector is a RadioShack "Discriminator" model 63-3006. I know it's not the best, but the coil is waterproof so I had high hopes. Please advise! Should I go back to those hit sites and dig deeper? Do you prefer evening hunts over morning hunts? (Tide out vs in).

pcgs69

salt water messes with a lot of machines, and it looks like yours is also a victim. I'm not sure of the science behind it, but waves can set it off, even touching your coil on the wet sand can cause false signals. I'd suggest playing with your discrimination a bit to see if that helps at all, of course you will lose depth by doing so. You might have some luck on the dry sand as it tends to be more stable. this kind of environment can be very frustrating. There are plenty of machines that can handle it, such as the Excalibur and other water-friendly detectors. Does your detector have a ground balancing option? It might be worth another shot if you try playing with your settings, but some detectors just can't handle salty environments. My buddy and I went to a salty area last year. His Ace 250 freaked out at him and he had a miserable experience. My e-trac did quite well and I did okay for myself. You'd probably be digging to Australia if you went for some of those signals you're getting... most likely falsing.

by the way, make sure "salt water" stays as two words. the PCGS bad word filter gets mad when you combine, as a bad word is made in the middle.

LochNESS

It does have a discrimination knob and ground balancing. And a sensitivity knob. I am definitely going to try again. Probably either earlier in the morning. I prefer to avoid the looks of passers-by. There's dry sand to try so I will. I guess my frustration is due to me not feeling confident in my tuning / grounding settings. It seems no matter how much I tweak, it needs more tweaking.

My wife thinks I should hunt where everyone sits instead of by the tide's edge. Another reason to go early.

WhiteTornado

I've read much of what pcgs69 said, on treasurenet.com. Try the dry sand, maybe the machine will act more normally. Your wife has a good idea, hunt where people sit . Also, try anywhere there might be sand-based activity, such as a beach volleyball court.

ricko

Many detectors cannot handle salt water or the wet sand.... you need a good beach detector. Some of the best stuff is in the water though. The towel line is good (i.e. your wife's suggestion). In the water is where the best jewelry is usually found. Cheers, RickO