Maiden voyage of the MK on the beach

therover

Senior Member
Joined
Oct 9, 2007
Messages
410
Location
NJ
Took the MK on it's maiden voyage to 2 NJ beaches. The first beach I hunted the wet sand and suds since this beach is known to have some good targets at low tide. This beach is also loaded with hot rocks and the picture has 2 of them shown. These 'rocks' can be the size of a dime (sometimes smaller) or fairly big...palm sized. They sound off as mostly a faint high tone at the first pass of the coil, but are broken up and ID all over the map once you isolate them under the coil. Once you get an idea of how they sound, it's pretty safe to ignore them. But they do sound off and today it was pretty frequent in some spots. Early on I dug a few because I needed to know how the MK reacted to them and ID them. Right off the bat it ID's as a 96-97 but the second pass of the coil will show a drop in the ID and a scratchy, broken sound as you continue to sweep. No mistaking these for coins or silver. They do not ID as a low conductor. These so called 'rocks' give higher frequency units a run for their money. I did not try to GB them out...they were easy to determine after about 3-4 minutes. I purposely picked this beach to see how the MK would perform there.

Beach 1 I hunted the entire time in Beach Mode, gain about 84-85 range. There weren't many targets. Found a few of the rocks to start, then a few greenie quarters, beat up penny and the chain. It's rusted up so no clue what it's make up is. I have the find on video. I was right next to a piece of shallow aluminum. So not sure if that was a spot that was gathering targets. There was nothing else there after those 2 targets were dug up.

Beach 2 is a different animal. Never had much luck in the wet sand...it's the dry sand that gives up the goods. I mainly hunted in 2 or 3 tone, gain again 84-85 range. Started off in 5kHz and found the cross in that frequency among all those nails. What are the odds of finding a cross on Easter ? The area I was working most of the time was covered with the nails in the picture. None of those nails were dug...they were laying on top of the sand. There are dozens of them all over and I am sure there are a lot more under the sand. I picked up 6 but could not clean the beach of them all.

Was in the dig all but ferrous mode to start and 5kHz was getting fooled a bit by the iron ( the rusty bottle cap was in 5kHz). Switched to 14kHz and the iron pops and high tone flashes subsided dramatically. Was in the mood to see if I could pop some small items and possibly gold so I switched to 19kHz and the foil/tabs/small stuff started coming through very easily among all that iron garbage. I found the end of a small fuse with some of the glass still attached so the MK can sniff out the small stuff in rusty iron areas.

I re-grounded a few times in the dry sand and there were times when 2 and 3 tone did not give me the beep when Gbing...so I switched over to Gen Mode, did a GB and switched back to 2 or 3 tone.Everything seemed to work just fine. The Gb I believe was in the 80's in the dry....40's in the wet.

I tried my attempt to video the hunt...was more of a hinderance. I like using headphones when I beach hunt and I had to keep taking them off to video so the camera could pick up the sound. The wireless headphones are very nice, but I need the headphone adapter. I like wearing my good headphones that keep out the wind and other noises. It was a bit windy out there. I could still hear all the sounds just fine and will probably wear the wireless for now. But when the Fall and Winter come....it's the heavy duty phones for me.

I really liked the way the MK performed today in the dry and wet sand. I like the audio a lot, it's easy to swing, easy to see the target ID and easy to navigate (once you get the hang of it, just like all detectors). Wireless has no lag. Great recovery speed in that patch of sand with all those rusty nails and it unmasked a lot of low conductive targets...some of them really small.

Its a keeper for sure.
 

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Nice report, I have a friend Thomas in VB who went the MK instead of the Nox...nothing from him yet. Think he said Clive got one also?
 
OBN,

Hope all is well. I went with the MK because I like the audio better than the NOX. That's just me. Plus, I wasn't on the first waiting list so I knew the next batch was going to take awhile.

The build quality is better, that's for sure. I think it hunts very well in both the wet and dry sand.

I do have to test out the other modes and experiment more, but running Beach Mode and 2/3 tone with gain in the mid 80's served me well today.

Seems like the MK, as well as the NOX, is tuned and optimized for the higher frequency range. At least that's what I think.

My hunting partner has the NOX 800 and we are going to hit that dry sand site later this week. I know he will pull some good stuff out of there.

The next hunt will be much more focused and methodical. No more videoing for me ! Hats off to the guys n gals that do it....its an art in itself.
 
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