Its been a rough few days.  Friday was a rough hunt, as previously blogged, no detecting Saturday, but Sunday I decided at the last minute to go to a group hunt.  It was supposed to be 60 degrees, after all.  Who wouldn’t want to be out detecting?

I had low hopes for the hunt, given that the site was 800 acres of mostly nothing (fields and woods), with old cultural features sprinkled in for those who did the research.  I didn’t do the research, cause I didn’t think I was gonna go, but decided to go just for the social aspect.  Its fun to hang with 50 local detectorists, after all, even if you find nothing.

I found nothing, despite finding several old cultural features, and giving them quite an intense go.  I did find a big pile of metal detecting trash that some other asshole dropped at one of them; no wonder the hobby is banned by park people.

I think about 5 people, maybe a couple more, found a silver or copper.  I wasn’t one of the 10-20% on this day.  Is it skill or luck?  I dunno, all I can say is that those who did find something are people who I consider skillful.  They found what they found near cultural features.  Not like finding a random reale in the middle of a 100 acre field (I’ve actually done that, cause what I generally do is luck).  So, skill takes the day, and it wasn’t me.   (I did find a clad dime in the middle of a 100 acre field on the day, talk about a sort of ironic luck, if there is such a concept).

So, I left, not cause I wasn’t finding anything, and knew I wouldn’t find anything, but cause it was too damn cold, and some of my friends were leaving as well.  60 my curvy butt.  45 tops, and a cold 45 at that, with fog, mist, clouds, and drizzle.

But after lunch I decided to hit a backup site, and that is when things went from miserable to worse.  I kept getting CO 01 on pretty much everything.  It was constant.  Even when holding the coil in the air.  I was finding clad, but nothing deep.  I wondered about a coil or machine issue.

I moved to a backup backup site, and it was even worse.  I went to a third site 5 miles away, more of the same — constant low tones at CO 01, no matter what you do.  I went to a site 5 minutes from my house that I know very well, and is totally hunted out (cause I was the one who hunted it out), and the dirt is very clean and there is no EMI, and tested the machine there, still the same.  Some part of my rig failed.  No wonder I couldn’t find anything.

Monday, swap out the big unit Ultimate 13 for the stock coil, and she’s purring again.  Hit a nice deep target which I figure is either a wheatie or bottlecap, and put the big unit back on, and its as quiet as a mouse.   Nails the bottlecap with better TID than the stock coil, and I figure my coil troubles are behind me.

Decide to then go hunt a police station to test the coil (wouldn’t you?  Ok, that was totally random, but that’s what happened. Think about it — they are generally public property and part of the municipal park system, and sometimes in old buildings, and who is gonna bother you?  Its not like you are skulking from the cops (and, in my experience, police officers tend to be very interested in MD’ing).  (And besides, one of my best all time finds was at a police station). They also tend to be very trashy, cause not many people hunt them, and it seemed the perfect place to stress test the possibly dysfunctional coil.

But, the coil seemed to work fine, until it didn’t.  Got a rosie and a couple of wheats at the police station, but then the machine went haywire, in a sort of different way (not just constant low tones, but all sorts of tones).  Since the site was so trashy, it was hard to tell what was going on, so I decided to move on to a hunted out park to eliminate some of the uncertain variables and work on my machine again.

(Why do I bother?  Its not even in focus.  And we’ve all seen rosies before.  I should just cycle the same stock rosie pic).

And at the hunted out park, the coil was toast.  Constant low tones even while holding it in the air.  The stock coil was fine (and I’ll tell you, it is a pain in the ass to switch them for these tests).  I found a nice deep wheatie with the stock coil, which the Ultimate 13 could barely hear.  Ouch.  This may explain the issues I wrote about Friday.

Well, I had a high opinion of the Ultimate 13, but it seems it went bad on me, so I have to withdrawal all previous opinions for now.  KellyCo says send it back and they’ll send me a new one, so I may soon be writing about KellyCo’s service (good or bad, depending on how it goes, and right now, I’m expecting it to be good).  I still like the Ultimate 13, and what I’ve found with it, and hope a new one restores my confidence.

So, for now, its back to the pro coil.

Oh my, totally missed this one, should have done a Friday afternoon album instead, or relayed some conversations with my competition about parks we have both hunted recently (which was totally interesting).  But sometimes you just have to document what is going on, as tedious as it is.