My First Beach Hunt Tomorrow

[samarai]

I will be on S Padre Island (Tx) tomorrow and plan on conducting my first beach hunt. Will need to buy a sand scoop. Using a new Garrett 350. No great expectations, just thought I would give it a few swings.

[del]

Good luck Bill , please tell us how you do

[samarai]

Got skunked, but was an excellent learning experience. Will be better prepared tomorrow when I try again.

[del]

how did the machine act Samarai ? did you get a lot of falsing or erratic behavior on the wet sand?

[samarai]

Del, constant light false signals. Did not understand why, but they really didn't interfere with my hunting. Just never got a good clear tone anywhere. .

[del]

your garret is a single frequency machine and has a tough time sorting through the minerals (the black iron ferrite) and the wet salt which also registers as a mineral to the machine . between the both of them the machine will false especially when you go from dry sand to wet. your machine probably does alright in the dry sand and runs pretty smooth ,yes?

[samarai]

Yes it did. I did test it with coins in the sand to see what kind of tone it had for them. I am comfortable with what I heard. Was using no discrimination. Thanks for the input.

[del]

for your next attempt try re balancing the machine in the wet sand when you move onto it and if you go back into the dry sand re balance it there too . sometimes you might get it to quiet down a little when you balance the machine for that particular area.

[samarai]

Okay, thanks. I will try it Friday when I go back out again.

[Digger_O'Dell]

Just a little insight maybe since I'm using a single frequency X-Terra 705. I had similar experiences first time out beach hunting on Lake Michigan. Here we have no salt, but layers and layers of black sand sometimes hard caked an inch or more deep-sort of like an iron plate. lol For a while I couldn't figure out why I wasn't getting any targets. Even tried detecting a quarter I placed on the surface of the sand, and got nothing! Digging through the top thin layer of normal sand, that's where I discovered the deep black stuff.
So to try and find a solution I adjusted settings until I was able to get exceptional response under those conditions-surprising for a single frequency machine. I found I had to lower the sensitivity-a LOT! I also had to set the ground balance all the way down to the 10 to 12 range, eliminate the discrimination blocks (all metal) and readjust the threshold. Once it was all dialed in I was able to detect a clad penny several inches under even the worst of the black sand and was finally finding good stuff!
Hope this helps!