Big Boys Hobbies

ecal II vs Sand Shark

Gold Digger 2

Gold Digger 2

Elite Member
Joined
May 27, 2012
Messages
4,069
Location
SW florida
Ok folks, my new sand shark arrived today and with rain for 13 hours straight, I missed a good low afternoon tide, I did some air tests against each other and the shark got maybe 2" more depth on a gold ring but the ecal got more target range...any thoughts from experience? havent put the shark to test yet but may tomorrow unless I just throw the ecal in the truck and head out :laughing:
 
I never liked air tests. Especially PI units in air tests. Terry will chime in. He loves talking about your detector. Well anything Tesoro actually. He can give you any advice you may need.
 
Gold Digger 2 said:
Ok folks, my new sand shark arrived today and with rain for 13 hours straight, I missed a good low afternoon tide, I did some air tests against each other and the shark got maybe 2" more depth on a gold ring but the ecal got more target range...any thoughts from experience? havent put the shark to test yet but may tomorrow unless I just throw the ecal in the truck and head out :laughing:
Click to expand...

I don't understand two things. 1) Why did rain stop you from catching low tide? The Sand Shark is completely waterproof. 2) What do you mean by "more target range?"

My advice is to stop wasting your valuable time doing meaningless air tests, and put the Sand Shark in the water where it thrives. Make sure you have set your audio frequency to YOUR best hearing (page 12 of manual), put that puppy in normal mode and go get you some! Big Gold to you. :cool:
 
Terry Soloman said:
I don't understand two things. 1) Why did rain stop you from catching low tide? The Sand Shark is completely waterproof. 2) What do you mean by "more target range?"

My advice is to stop wasting your valuable time doing meaningless air tests, and put the Sand Shark in the water where it thrives. Make sure you have set your audio frequency to YOUR best hearing (page 12 of manual), put that puppy in normal mode and go get you some! Big Gold to you. :cool:
Click to expand...

Thanks Terry,
The rain was tropical down pours, heavy,,,,,,,,tomorrows low is even lower and will prob run the excal since I havent been out for a couple days and sunday run the shark and give it a go, heard from many that the air test on a pulse is not a true test and this weekend will give him the test! LOL Beach should be cut nice with a decent wash out from the rain, thanks for the tip on normal mode, was wondering,,
 
Terry Soloman said:
I don't understand two things. 1) Why did rain stop you from catching low tide? The Sand Shark is completely waterproof. 2) What do you mean by "more target range?"

My advice is to stop wasting your valuable time doing meaningless air tests, and put the Sand Shark in the water where it thrives. Make sure you have set your audio frequency to YOUR best hearing (page 12 of manual), put that puppy in normal mode and go get you some! Big Gold to you. :cool:
Click to expand...

sorry, more target range as in during sweep, the excal gets it more out of the center of the coil, also, when running the excal, during sweeps, threshold changes lets me know something may have been close as I walked by, can cover lots of ground, especially with my anderson straight shaft,
 
You have to look at both machines for special uses. The Sand Shark is great swinging in the water (hope you got the 8" coil), much better than the Excal 10". I believe you will find that your Excal spoiled you. Once you start digging a pile of iron junk you may notice your hunting time has afforded less good finds. That was my experience. It says everything about discrimination and maximizing beach hunting time. That machine is wicked deep though but you will get a pile of junk along with that. Something about digging a nail after 15 scoops turns me off. I don't use my DF much due to this. It has its place and only out deep in the water.
 
You have both detectors, hunt with both and see which one works best for your beaches. I am just south of you and do to all of the trash now in our waters from a dredging project, my PI will spend a long time in the detector rack
 
Terry.... i believe hes talking about coil foot print to near targets. Each has their strong points and best times to be used. I do agree with Terry..... trust you field results not your air tests. If you are using them for sampling tones its great but for depth.... i wouldnt trust them. Put the coil on the soil in the field, learn it (takes less than 50 hours), then report YOUR findings. Doesnt matter what others think.... satisfy yourself.

Dew
 
Get out with the Shark, and get into the mindset that you are going to dig EVERYTHING. Just dig it and when the hunt is over, do a post analysis.

Plain and simple, you will dig more junk with a PI. It all depends on the beach conditions, where you are hunting on the beach and how much junk is there.

Get into the wet sand, suds and water with the Shark, set it up where it's running smooth and dig it all. Most PI hunters with experience figure out where and when to hunt with it and when they do, they are digging up most everything that beeps.

You can always guess if it's iron, a bobbie pin, washer, etc., but unless you dig it up, you don't know for sure. You can dig 20 double beeps and pull up 20 nails or bobbie pins, but the 21st one you let go, can be a gold bracelet with a clasp on each end that is causing the double beep.

Been there, done that....was ready to pass up the upteenth double beep using my PI after digging countless bobbie pins, wire, etc., dug it anyway....gold bracelet.
 
When I used the DF I found that many times double bips were hoop earrings as well.I found that I dug a lot more trash with the DF than I do with the Excal now, but it was also my first year water hunting so I've learned a lot more since then, and feel I would have been more selective about when and where to use it if I were to do that again.. I'm curious to see how you compare the SS to the Excal. Good luck.
 
Gold Digger 2 said:
sorry, more target range as in during sweep, the excal gets it more out of the center of the coil, also, when running the excal, during sweeps, threshold changes lets me know something may have been close as I walked by, can cover lots of ground, especially with my anderson straight shaft,
Click to expand...

OK, thanks for the explaination. In normal mode (that is where I notice it best) you'll find the Sand Shark also detects from the left and right of the coil. I have found several nice targets with just a blip or slight rise in the threshold at the end of a sweep. You will also be able to swing the coil a lot faster on the Shark. No nulling or recovery to worry about. Use the Shark IN the water. Best of luck! :cool:
 
Thanks All, Great points,,I bought the shark as a back up machine and some of the beaches I hunt are extremely competitive and do not have much iron or junk, Well, that is until after a holiday, LOL, sure dug of bunch of junk yesterday in the water...using my exal tho,,
Terry, no way I can go faster with shark versus excal, possibly once i fabricate a straight shaft out of pvc or something, but my extra long anderson shaft on my excal gets big, big, range....I will update everyone as I go with them,,,,,,Heading out today for another amazing full moon low tide! :D

HH

Tim
 
Gold Digger 2 said:
Thanks All, Great points,,I bought the shark as a back up machine and some of the beaches I hunt are extremely competitive and do not have much iron or junk, Well, that is until after a holiday, LOL, sure dug of bunch of junk yesterday in the water...using my exal tho,,
Terry, no way I can go faster with shark versus excal, possibly once i fabricate a straight shaft out of pvc or something, but my extra long anderson shaft on my excal gets big, big, range....I will update everyone as I go with them,,,,,,Heading out today for another amazing full moon low tide! :D

HH

Tim
Click to expand...

Tim, I'm saying you can swing the Sand Shark coil, faster back and forth than you can the big BBS coil, with no nulling. The printed spiral is spitting current, not radio waves, so you can alter your swing "speed" :cool:
 
The Sand Shark will never null. It uses pulses of current to "charge" a metal target and waits milliseconds to recover the pulse measuring the decay rate of the electrons. When the machine does not see any decay then there is no metal. A VLF machine (BBS is just a multi-freq VLF) uses the magnetic spectrum to determine the target conductivity. PI machines go from wet sand to water pretty much flawlessly. If you get a blank out on a PI then dig it. I guess you could call that a null but to me it is different than the VLF null.

Well, that is my understanding but I don't know squat. I am still a newbie just like my friend Terry. :lol:
 
Great points, understand completely, Being a completely different machine is definately why I made the choice for a PI machine as a backup as well as most of my beaches do not have much iron and seems like I still dig junk with the excal, (slaw and foil), both give gold sounds on the excal, same as jumpy sounds as already described above. (I get them with the excal also), dug a nice watch last night that was a jumpy signal with excal in the water. :laughing:
 
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