I spent Sunday searching in a friends backyard. Low overhead power, cable and phone. Wire fencing all around, metal siding on buildings. ...

It took me a while to quiet the Nox down as it had continuous chatter and too many targets to deal with. After digging a dozen random pieces of trash (dog chain, crown tops, broken pieces of toys, chunks of concreate with wire hanging out, pieces of copper pipe, wire, nails, iron stakes, foil, flashing bits ...) all at least 8" down. I re-read sections of the Equinox book by Andy Sabisch, and finally got it to quiet down. I had to drop the sensitivity to 10 and increase the recovery speed. Finally I got it to quiet down. I placed coins shallow over the top of the trash and could find them perfectly with the very low sensitivity.

I ended up finding a single 1964 Canadian penny and a bunch of junk. I am pretty confident that there were no other shallow (4" or less) coins in the area. But I did end up digging some shallow bits of roof flashing that were masquerading as coins!

All in all I learned an amazing amount about the machine and decided that my friends backyard (being about 50 yards from the original homestead) was the garbage dump for the farm.

Thanks all for the great forum! Now to take my new found knowledge to a more productive location.

AJ