Hello world :)

Baph

New Member
Joined
Aug 15, 2019
Messages
3
Hello

I’m new around these parts and to metal detecting in general. Based in northern England, I have a lifelong passion for history: Egyptology and Ancient Greece / Rome as a kid, but these days I’m more interested in “prehistory”, the really old stuff.

With regard to local metal detecting, there’s an old village in Lincolnshire where my family go back centuries, they lived and worked the land. My father died young, but I remember him telling me stories of him finding some roman and, more excitingly, some hammered silver coins on the surface of a ploughed field he was taking a shortcut over. This was back in the 1970s and I’d always dreamed of metal detecting that field.

Unfortunately these lands are no longer in the family, but I have enough connections to get permission to metal detect there.

But I want to get this right.

A few years back, I bought the best metal detector I could afford, a Garret Ace 250. Used it a few hours, found a £1 coin and a lot of rubbish. Loaned it to a friend and it came back broken.

Forgot about the whole affair.

More recently I’ve felt the bug again and, after a lot of research, found myself a Minelab CTX 3030 “cheap” second hand.

Now I don’t know if this is the right place to ask this, but....

I’ve been doing a lot of reading both on metal detecting, and farmer’s forums. Starting off reading up on how easy it generally to get permission to detect farmland in England m, loads of farmers were saying they wouldn’t permit MD on their land. In most cases, this was due to not trusting MDs, attracting nighthawks and suffering previous acts of disrespect / stupidity on / of their land.

I started to see their side of the story.

So, I thought that a good way to get trust is to work like a professional archaeologist: do a ground scan first, share the results with the land owner, then offer to excavate together. That would build trust.

So I bought the CTX as is offers GPS location recording. Question though, if anyone knows...?

Is it possible to automatically record the locations of finds on the CTX automatically? Can I scan a field with it, then just save the find locations to a map that I can print out?

Any advice would be seriously appreciated. I did try to contact Minelabs in Ireland via email and telephone to ask, but have not received any answer, so I just wondered if anyone I here might know?

Thanks :)
 
Welcome to the forum from Western NY USA


:fmdfwelcome:

There are 3030 owners on here that should be able to answer you question.
 
Welcome to the forum! Sounds like you have some very interesting places to hunt. You certainly have the history.
I think it’s a great idea to involve the land owner. Finding some recent historical items that might have belonged to his family and offering to share any real finds. Best of luck!
 
Welcome from Atlanta, GA.

if you have an iphone you can can install the free app google earth. Then you can locate points on your google earth image or areas and take a screen shot and email it to who ever you wish to email it to.

Lucky you. most of us in the states cannot even comprehend the target rich areas you guys have to hunt. Loved the British TV series "The Detectorists".
 

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Finding some recent historical items that might have belonged to his family and offering to share any real finds.

Thanks for the welcome, people ;)

Yes, I think that works for the large estates, some of which have been in the same hands since 1066 or even before. Not so sure how many generations the average farmer goes back though (but I’m thinking about it and that really is an interesting question).
 
Welcome from Atlanta, GA.

if you have an iphone you can can install the free app google earth. Then you can locate points on your google earth image or areas and take a screen shot and email it to who ever you wish to email it to.

Good idea, thanks. I’ve actually looked into this and it still requires a lot of additional faffing about and, moreover, it can be prejudiced / edited. One could only record (say) half the finds and just pocket the rest. I guess this could be done with the autosave feature, but it would be more difficult as the landowner could be getting real time information over Wi-fi. I’ve still got to think that part through.

Lucky you. most of us in the states cannot even comprehend the target rich areas you guys have to hunt. Loved the British TV series "The Detectorists".

That’s the interesting thing: I was looking for an MD forum to ask the question about autosave and this place just seemed to be the nicest and most responsive so I joined. I wasn’t thinking about location, hadn’t occurred, I just wanted to ask about a feature on a widely used MD.

All the responses I’ve had have been from the US (thanks guys! :)), so it looks like this is mostly a US based forum. That got me wondering what you guys are finding over the pond and it’s fascinating. I see a lot of cheers when you find silver nickels, but can I ask, speaking from a position of genuine ignorance...

What are your dream finds? Over here, a detectorist retires when he (sorry girls, you’ve got some catching up to do, it’s always men over here) finds a hoard. That’s where some poor mook in times long gone stashed everything the brutal b’stard had nicked (which is pretty much the only way you obtained such wealth in those days) before some invading army killed him and he never got to retrieve it.

Or some ancient royal burial.

What would be a dream find in the US?

And BTW, there’s always a warm welcome over here in Britain if you guys ever fancy an adventure holiday. There are loads of MD groups over here that would look after you; I’ve met the top guys of such groups as The Battlefield Trust and they are great, really enthusiastic. Go all over Britain / Europe in teams.
 
Welcome from Boston, Baph.

If you are detecting in England, you may need to get familiar with the 1996 Treasure Act and the Portable Antiquities Scheme, which are covered in detail at this UK web site: https://finds.org.uk/

Unlike the relationship between detectorists and archaeologsts in the U.S., there is a cooperative relationship between the two in England.

Good luck and happy hunting. Looking forward to stories and pictures of your finds here on the forum.

Jim
 
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