Hello,
The Minelabs loves the dirt, but hates air! - this means that you have to keep your coil as close to the ground as posible. Use a coil cover. Compare the price of a new coil to a cover, if you think you don't need one...
Start with the coin program, as suggested, but a great tip, which will help you a lot when you get more experienced with your new machine is to copy the coin program into the advanced mode, and then adjust tone and variability to 10. You have to learn how to use all of the tones at some time, and if you start out with the standard values, then you will have to relearn the tones later on.
Gain and sensititity is the key to getting the max out of the explorer. I will suggest that You use auto sensitivity, until You can recognize false tones from ground mineralization just by listening the tones.
Your machine is great, but have a steep learning curve. I noticed, that when I started to hunt for 4-5 hours at a time, instead of just for half an hour, that I really learned a lot fast, and that the tones from the different targets actually stayed in my memory.
Did somebody mention that you should swing slow
- 4 seconds per swing works for me. faster will do well, for detecting shallow targets. Experiment a bit with it, it will help you later.
Pick any program you like, but stick to it while you learn the tones, and then change one thing at a time, so you can hear and see exactly what happens.
Have fun.
/Steffen
