First time out today with the V3i. I gave it slightly over 3 hrs. at a pony league baseball / football field combo that is pretty old. In the old days - early 80's - I found a lot of silver and tons of clad. There's been people hitting that field complex on a regular basis after I stopped detecting in '84'. I would see them there on my way to the golf course.
Anyway, it is pretty trashy now, with all the sports activities going on. Finding any silver there is only going to happen with a lucky sweep. Knowing that it would pose a real challenge I decided to go there and I resolved myself to the fact that if I could find something with the new, complicated detector it would be a success.
Ended up with $1.83 ( 5 quarters, 5 dimes and 8 pennies - one was a wheat ). No silver. No gold. No jewelry. I am not complaining though with the results. Not worth taking a photo of though.
I went with the stock 'Coin & Jewelry' program and only changed the Threshold volume & tone and the Target tone - like RaZR suggested. I was surprised how constant the threshold is. I like it. I set the tones to mimic what I have on my Garrett ADS III detector so that part felt like home.
The identification worked great so I ended up only digging three junk targets ( maybe not totally junk. The pieces look like melted globs of white brass ) and one hole where I could not find anything. Probably way down in the hole is a Barber Half as I write this.
The biggest problem I had was pinpointing. This machine does not pinpoint like my Garrett does. With the Garrett pinpointing was precise, even with the large 12 coil. When you flipped a plug you knew the target was either dead center in the plug or dead center in the hole. Thousand of coins and I never came close to scratching one. Coin recovery was fast.
With the V3i I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to find the coin :white:. Rarely was it exactly where I thought it should be. Several times it was on the side of the hole. Obviously I have to figure this out.
I can see now why just about everyone has a Pinpointer nowadays. We never used them back years ago. Coin recovery was easy and fast - I think I said that.
Now I am opening a hole, increasing the size of the hole, undercutting the sides, going deeper for no reason when not found right away, tearing clumps apart, etc. - it's not fun. The time & effort saved in not bending down to dig holes for a lousy target has changed to ' hole expanding & clod dividing.
Looks like a Pinpointer is on my next purchase order.
Maybe I can hip mount the Garrett, remove the coil stem and keep a 3 Super Sniper coil in my pocket to use as a pinpointer. It's a thought.
It's a bit long winded but it is exact.
By-the-way, thank you for the opinion about the wireless headphones. Switching the detector from one side to the other side before my arm falls off presents a cord problem. I don't recall so much arm switching 27 years ago. Getting old!
I think I'll ad those to my purchase order also.