hey guys ive recently got into metal detecting and i have the fisher f2 with the 4" and 8" coils what one should i be useing. When i say trash i mean you name it i have dug it up or will soon.I think my house was built on a trash dump.
As it has been written, your 4 inch coil is your weapon of choice when you enter an area like the one you describe.
It's like getting a new detector.
After using the F2 with the 8" coil for about 2 years I finally decided to try out the 4" coil most of this past summer and I can tell you now that I am kicking myself because even though I found all kinds of great things with that larger coil I am afraid to think what I missed by not using that sniper coil more often.
I have found that even though on the screen solid numbers and depth bars are primary dig-able targets, and jumpy numbers, (more than 2), and jumpy depth bars usually indicates trash, there is so much going on under that coil in especially trashy sites that you need to use the best weapons possible and
ALL the information you see on the screen and hear in those tones to really get a good idea of what is truly happening and make informed choices on what targets to dig, or become a dig it all kind of hunter like me to be sure.
I have learned that on trash targets of irregular size like can slaw and foil, and other trash that have holes like tabs of all kinds, as you move your coils over these types of targets, (especially the bigger coils), you might be able to get a pretty solid number in the center of the coil, but as you move different parts of the coil over the target, and even move the whole coil off the target completely, you will usually get some very big jumps in the numbers on the screen, the depth bars, and you might even jump to a completely different classification.
For instance a sta-tab that for me that is usually a 34-35 can easily jump into the high 30's...the 40's, or down into the 20's, especially if it is not right on top, (shallow), or on its side laying in the ground.
Even though I usually dig most targets I come across, I still play the game with myself on every target and try to guess what it is before I dig.
I use this slight movement of the coil and jumpy numbers and depth bars info to figure out trash, and after digging up so much trash I can tell you I am right about 95% of the time.
Even so, I have been wrong and sometimes even good targets can jump and bad targets can be stable.
If you believe anything is 100% in this hobby we need to talk about a bridge I have for sale.
If you have a trash target all by itself this stuff will work pretty well, but imagine a site with trash galore and try to imagine the amount of false signals you will get with 2-3-4 or more targets under that coil at the same time.
Even if you have a good target in there somewhere it still might be very difficult to pick it out even if you move that coil very slow from all kinds of different directions.
When you go from the 8" coil to the 4" you are effectively cutting that scanning field in half and gaining some precision that would never be possible with larger coils and that will give you about a 50% better chance of picking out a good target in the vicinity of a lot of trash...and a side benefit is you also gain a good measure of sensitivity, too.
Since last December I have been hitting a large amount of parks with several detectors including my F2 and that 8" coil.
After mounting the sniper coil I revisited many of these parks I thought I had cleaned out pretty good but I was shocked to realize how wrong I had been.
Some examples on a few sites I re-visited...there are many more.
http://metaldetectingforum.com/showthread.php?t=120082
http://metaldetectingforum.com/showthread.php?t=122428
This site I visited in August and first hunted it with my new 10" and found a bunch.
Then I returned with the sniper coil and not only dug everything, but because of that smaller coil I could much more easily differentiate between all the signals I was getting, and zero in on each one separately.
Using the larger coil the amount of noise and jumping signals was almost overwhelming because of the trash, especially the large amount of foil and sta-tabs at this site.
My first time through with the sniper in an area I covered one hunt before with my larger coil I managed to single out this 37-39 more solid signal and I dug it...and found the first gold ring that I am actually proud to wear as a personal piece of jewelry.
http://metaldetectingforum.com/showthread.php?t=124694
4 days later I returned to this exact same area at this same site and continued to go slow and cover another part of the same small area I had scanned with that larger coil and luck was with me again because I found 2 gold rings that day, one at a 24 foil and one at a 35 with is a nickel signal on the F2 but for me has always been a sta-tab.
http://metaldetectingforum.com/showthread.php?t=125006
This park and this area has had not only been hunted by me and that larger coil but by others in the past, and we all missed those rings.
The fact that I was going slow, using that sniper coil and digging all solid signals, which were much more easily acquired with the sniper, is what enabled me to have the best week ever MD'ing in my short career.
I mentioned the fact that the smaller coil has a range of sensitivity that the larger coils do not, and here is the proof....
http://metaldetectingforum.com/showthread.php?t=127835
If I am in an older area looking for deeper coins the larger coils would be my choice, but I am a jewelry hunter and I hunt parks and I want to find not only rings but chains, too, and when it comes to the small thin ones the sniper can pick these up where they would be virtually invisible to the larger coils.
As was mentioned, if you put on the sniper coil you are changing the F2 from a very capable all around unit to a different and more precise hunter, and don't worry too much about the loss of depth because you can still get about 6" or more in good soil with that 4" and that is well within range of just about every great thing I have ever found.
It is still almost unbelievable to me what this little "hockey puck" of a coil can do, and what it actually costs either in a package or aftermarket.
Considering what it can find, I think it is one of the best values on the market as far as accessories go, and it happens to fit on one of the best values on the market when we are talking about extremely productive detectors at a bargain price.