Using a Minelab XTerra 505 on the Beach

mrnavy2

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Has anyone have any luck usong a 505 on salt water? I cannot get it to work even on wet sand. Dry sand it works great but not in wet sand or salt water.
Thanks Steve.
 
Has anyone have any luck usong a 505 on salt water? I cannot get it to work even on wet sand. Dry sand it works great but not in wet sand or salt water.
Thanks Steve.

I've used the xterra70 (quite similar to the 505) and I've found it doesn't perform too well on the wet sand. It does pick up targets, but you'll see it keeps giving you a lot of low numbers (-2, 2, 4). This is due to the salt water. What you can do is discriminate those numbers, reduce the sensitivity or switch to 99 tones and only listen out for higher tones. I did neither of those options, I just kept my eyes peeled onto the screen and looked out for higher numbers.

The side effect of reducing sens is that you loose depth, and the side effect of discriminating those numbers is that you might miss thin gold rings. I mainly hunted the dry/moist sand with the xterra and still found lots of good things :)
 
I've used the 705 on the wet salt beach. The 705 is the step UP from the 505, as you know. The 705 SUCKED on the wet salt. Was only getting half the depth that I was/am accustomed to getting with my Explorer. And yes, staticky performance. Had to turn the sens. way down. So the "beach" mode they got on there is a joke. Yes it will make it work, but your depth is half of what you'd get on other machines.

This is because, since the 705 (and I suspect 505) were meant to be cross-over machines, for both nuggets and/or coins/relic, that you will therefore have only a so-so compromise in each dept. This has been the case of mostly all detectors which attempt to be a cross-over machine. Is that they end up with compromises for each venue.

I ditched my 705 as fast as I could. Sorry to be a kill-joy.
 
I've used the 705 on the wet salt beach. The 705 is the step UP from the 505, as you know. The 705 SUCKED on the wet salt. Was only getting half the depth that I was/am accustomed to getting with my Explorer. And yes, staticky performance. Had to turn the sens. way down. So the "beach" mode they got on there is a joke. Yes it will make it work, but your depth is half of what you'd get on other machines.

This is because, since the 705 (and I suspect 505) were meant to be cross-over machines, for both nuggets and/or coins/relic, that you will therefore have only a so-so compromise in each dept. This has been the case of mostly all detectors which attempt to be a cross-over machine. Is that they end up with compromises for each venue.

I ditched my 705 as fast as I could. Sorry to be a kill-joy.

The 705 doesn't too well on nuggets either. I tested a few of mine (which I found with the GP Extreme) and it barely registered a 0.3g nugget at 5cm (and that wasn't in mineralised soil!). The xterra series detectors are only good in dry sand, or for clad and jewellery hunting in parks. Depth in parks (with little mineralization) is quite good.

Gold prospecting and coin/relic hunting should always be kept separately in a detector! :lol:
 
The 705 doesn't too well on nuggets either. ....

I'm not a nugget hunter, but I know that .... if/when you talk to the REAL hardcore guys in the sierra nevada foothills here, they're using the specialty purpose built machines. Not the cross-over type machines.
 
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