I had an extra bag of leftover sand from a project and I decided to test my BHD 3300 under my "real world" conditions. I mainly do sand lots with some beach thrown in on occasion. I used 3 different plastic buckets starting with a 5", then a 7", and then one that I used for 8" & 10". I used a newer penny, a wheat penny, a nickel, a clad dime, a silver dime and a quarter. I placed each coin at the bottom and then preceeded to fill them up carefully with sand. I set the detector on "all metal" at maximum sensitivity (depth). All coins sounded off well and consistently at 5". At the 7" range the penny and the dime lost consistency. Although they made a tone it wasn't consistently identifiable. The wheat, nickel silver dime and quarter were still good. At 8-9" the penny was lost along with the dime. Only the quarter made it to the 10" although the signal was inconsistent. I also tried two small children's rings that I had found at tot lots. A silver and a gold one. I only tested them at 7". The silver ring made an inconsistent tone while the gold was good. This test was a valuable learning exercise in that I now know what may be a "bad" signal is just something "good" that may be at the threshold of the detector. I am not fooling myself into thinking that my machine is as good as those that many of you may have. But for the moment, for the tot lots that I am doing, it is more than enough.
