I bought a HF metal detector to try to get the kids interested in MDing. The kids were making some good finds last fall so I wanted to do a little testing. Very unscientific testing but this is what I did. I can't bury anything in the ground as it is frozen so I used an ice cream pale filled with dirt. The pale is 6 inches deep with no metal handle.
The MD has 9 functions,
power/volume,
sensitivity,
discriminate,
all metal mode, disc mode, tone mode.
It also has an 8 inch coil and a pinpoint button on the handle(the pinpoint function works very well). The test pieces are a penny,nickle,quarter,dime,1/4inch washer, small bolt,my 18 krt gold wedding band, and a 8 grain gold nugget about half the size of a pea. The first test was an air test and all targets were picked up at between 7 and 8 inches.The second test was to bury all targets at the bottom of the pale and swing the MD over the pale. Like I said this is very unscientific but all targets were picked up with a solid tone except the gold nugget. The MD would pick up the nugget in only 2 inches of dirt. This testing was done in all metal mode. In discrimination mode I could disc out the bolt,nickle,gold
ring,penny,washer,and the dime. the ring,bolt,washer were all under the same disc setting. The quarter would not dics at all on any setting. The third test surprised me a lot. All targets were tested on tone mode and most targets didn't have any kind of different tone. Tone didn't work very well except when it came to the nugget. This is where I was most surprised. I buried the nugget at the bottom of the pale and set the switch to tone, the discrimination was set at 0 and the sensitivity at the highest possible setting and I passed the coil over the pale and the MD picked up the nugget. It didn't make a loud tone but I could hear it without head phones. This testing was done on my basement floor so I thought maybe the MD was picking up a piece of rerod or sewer pipe in the floor. I scanned the floor with an ace350 and nothing came up so I eliminated the rerod and sewer pipe. I also scanned the dirt with nothing in it to make sure something wasn't in it I didn't know about. I cannot pickup the nugget in all metal mode or in any other combination of settings. Only in tone mode like I described above. This MD is very basic with no buttons,no whistles and no LED lights. All it has is switches and nobs and a meter. This MD seems to shine when it comes to gold nuggets as I can't get my friends ace350 to pick up the nugget in six inches of dirt and the price for the ace350 is a little over $300. I paid $50.00 for the HF MD. I am quite impressed with this MD and I think this unit will pick up small targets at around 7 or 8 inches deep maybe deeper. Someone using this unit will probably have to dig a lot but will find things. Like I said in the beginning this was very unscientific but I think I learned a lot about this MD.
I hope I didn't get to long winded. Let me know what you all think.
kctgb
The MD has 9 functions,
power/volume,
sensitivity,
discriminate,
all metal mode, disc mode, tone mode.
It also has an 8 inch coil and a pinpoint button on the handle(the pinpoint function works very well). The test pieces are a penny,nickle,quarter,dime,1/4inch washer, small bolt,my 18 krt gold wedding band, and a 8 grain gold nugget about half the size of a pea. The first test was an air test and all targets were picked up at between 7 and 8 inches.The second test was to bury all targets at the bottom of the pale and swing the MD over the pale. Like I said this is very unscientific but all targets were picked up with a solid tone except the gold nugget. The MD would pick up the nugget in only 2 inches of dirt. This testing was done in all metal mode. In discrimination mode I could disc out the bolt,nickle,gold
ring,penny,washer,and the dime. the ring,bolt,washer were all under the same disc setting. The quarter would not dics at all on any setting. The third test surprised me a lot. All targets were tested on tone mode and most targets didn't have any kind of different tone. Tone didn't work very well except when it came to the nugget. This is where I was most surprised. I buried the nugget at the bottom of the pale and set the switch to tone, the discrimination was set at 0 and the sensitivity at the highest possible setting and I passed the coil over the pale and the MD picked up the nugget. It didn't make a loud tone but I could hear it without head phones. This testing was done on my basement floor so I thought maybe the MD was picking up a piece of rerod or sewer pipe in the floor. I scanned the floor with an ace350 and nothing came up so I eliminated the rerod and sewer pipe. I also scanned the dirt with nothing in it to make sure something wasn't in it I didn't know about. I cannot pickup the nugget in all metal mode or in any other combination of settings. Only in tone mode like I described above. This MD is very basic with no buttons,no whistles and no LED lights. All it has is switches and nobs and a meter. This MD seems to shine when it comes to gold nuggets as I can't get my friends ace350 to pick up the nugget in six inches of dirt and the price for the ace350 is a little over $300. I paid $50.00 for the HF MD. I am quite impressed with this MD and I think this unit will pick up small targets at around 7 or 8 inches deep maybe deeper. Someone using this unit will probably have to dig a lot but will find things. Like I said in the beginning this was very unscientific but I think I learned a lot about this MD.
I hope I didn't get to long winded. Let me know what you all think.
kctgb