Handling "iron" is not an easy task to describe, and it's also not something that should be determined using only one detector and one coil without having other detector set-ups along for side-by-side comparison.
Also, it can get difficult for everyone to understand what is meant by one person who makes a statement like
"I hunt iron infested sites" or
"Where I hunt there is a lot of iron." To readers of those statements, the person making such a remark might have a completely different understanding of what those man.
I know what
I mean when I reference a site as being heavily littered with nails and other ferrous debris, and often I have seen people join in a hunt who are absolutely amazed and just how dense and very littered some of the places are with ferrous debris. Not only can many of them not handle such a challenging site, but their detector and coil choice do not do very well either.
In my 'signature' I make the following statement:
Detector Outfit: An assortment of favorite detector makes and models, with the best coils mounted for the tasks I'll take on.
I have two favorite detector and coil combination models I assign to
'get-serious' Relic Hunting in dense iron contaminated sites. I have some that I more-or-less prefer just for urban Coin Hunting applications. Then I have several detectors that can do a decent job in most of the ferrous challenged sites as well as in a lot of the urban places where I want to chase coins or jewelry, and those are my 'General Purpose' models.
My Apex is schooled to arrive Monday the 31st and I have several sites planned to take it or evaluation, and it will be going up against all the units I have in my outfit. Due to the coil size being bigger and not smaller, I don't think it's going to rival my 'get-serious' Relic Hunting models, but I am hoping it might do well enough to fit in a 'General Purpose' category. I don't want lack-luster performance to consider it as only a good urban-site Coin Hunting only model.
Monte