4/11/15 Report - Lot Of Sand On Treasure Coast Beaches. Cutting False Signals With Sweep Control.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.



Treasure Coast Beach This Morning.

 This is what it looked like this morning on the Treasure Coast.   There was a rain shower off shore.  The noseeums were biting.

The front beach is still accumulating sand on top of layers of shells.  It feels firm in places, but it is new layers of sand over shells, not sand compacted over time.



Surf On Treasure Coast This Morning.

A few waves seemed to come off of the rain shower at times.  It generally wasn't as rough as it looks here.



One of Three Other Detectorists I Saw This Morning.

This fellow was using a large coil in the wet sand.

One fellow wasn't filling his holes and was where the water wouldn't fill them very soon.

The three detectorists that I saw were all in the wet sand.  The dry sand didn't have many targets of any kind - good or bad.

It was pretty hot already this morning.

I visited another beach, which I seem to have pretty much to myself, and dug a good number of coins and things.  That beach has very little junk on it because I've cleaned it up for myself.  Junk targets are scarce, making it possible to run zero discrimination and full power without being bothered by trash.

I've been talking about marginal signals.  After I write about something I always notice it more.  Today I noticed that maybe ten percent of my good targets came from marginal signals that could have easily been overlooked.

You can get what I call marginal signals when the target is under the edge of the coil or out from the coil if you have a coil with good peripheral sensitivity.  You can also get them from deep targets near the limits of what your detector will detect. When you get one of those blips, double check them.  There is indeed a skill to recognizing them as possible good signals that need to be checked.

Here are some things you can do to cut down on false signals besides properly ground balancing and decreasing sensitivity.

Don't sweep the coil too fast.

Don't tilt the coil at any time during the sweep.   Most people tend to tilt at least a little at the end of each sweep.  Keep the coil flat.

Slow down coil movement at the end of each sweep.  Round the sweep pattern at the end of each sweep as you change direction.

A sharp sweep pattern with a  sharp quick change of direction will cause false signals at the ends of the sweep (where the arrows are), especially in salt or other mineralized soil.   The illustration above shows a more rounded sweep pattern, as is recommended.

This pattern requires slowing the coil speed at the ends of each sweep.  It really doesn't require much.   If I simply think of sweeping as if the sweep pattern was a very flat figure eight instead of left to right and right to left, that is about all it takes.  The difference is so small you probably wouldn't notice the difference in the path of the coil visually, but it will diminish false signals.


Don't expect any significant change in Treasure Coast beach conditions this week.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net