Depth at the Beach ?

[69trev]

Four hours detecting on Essex beach.Ground balanced in beach mode then swapped to Park 2
All items found within about 5-6inches.Will I need to swap to all metal mode to hear deeper signals ?
Or are they there and i am not yet enough experienced yet to hear them ?
Only 5th time out with the simplex standard coil.

7B78D6E7-9553-477C-956E-ED6044B0D03E.jpeg

[mrix]

I am not a user of the simplex myself but have used a fair few Makro Nokta machines, normally on their machines directly after you have ground balanced simply increase the gain / sensitivity as much as you can before the machine becomes unstable / starts to false, this will improve the depth greatly.
What performance increase you will get will depends on the beach itself and any possible interference from the surroundings.
Maybe its different on this specific machine but hopefully a owner will be along soon

[mattym81]

Never yet been able to use it on the beach. interested to find out from those that have.

[Koala]

What type of beach

mud
sand golden
pebble
shingle
Rock
Clay
sand Black
hard pack

above the High tide
below the High tight

dry or wet

Beaches vary a lot.

are there any targets any deeper


Generally single frequency VLF machines aren't too Good if the condition are tough like rockpools and improve as you get to nice even sand and be 100% as you get to dry sand. On a kind of sliding scale

[69trev]

Sand and shingle beach on the dry and wet.
Ground balance to 0 on the wet sand and the simplex becomes usable sensitivity down 2 bars or more until it becomes stable.

[Pasty]

Four hours detecting on Essex beach.Ground balanced in beach mode then swapped to Park 2
All items found within about 5-6inches.Will I need to swap to all metal mode to hear deeper signals ?
Or are they there and i am not yet enough experienced yet to hear them ?
Only 5th time out with the simplex standard coil.7B78D6E7-9553-477C-956E-ED6044B0D03E.jpeg

I’ve only had mine a week and only used on the beach. I was ground balancing in beach then switching to park 2. I’ve been reading and watching dozens of videos and quite a few people are now swearing by all metal so about half hour in I decided to give it a try , all I can say is it felt like the machine became alive , had my best couple of hours out so far using it in all metal mode . Interestingly after finding a nice target and switching out of interest to park 2 it wasn’t picking it up . Only turned out to be a 5p but I’ll definitely be sticking to all metal from now . No changes made to settings apart from gb, played about with sensitivity and although it chatters a lot more than park 2 , targets are easily heard .

[BlimeyWhat'sThat?]

Out last Friday on Northumbrian sandy beach. Searched in beach mode, full sensitivity and ground balanced to 00.0. I switch to all metal mode to listen for the distinctive hot rock sound when checking signals.
Very few targets...none in dry sand, not even bottle tops. Two targets in the wet sand from just below the high tide line. One was a modern penny from about 5-6 inches and the other, amazingly, was a Victorian penny, dated 1898, in quite fair condition. It was about ten inches down, at the same level as the water table. It gave a strong, clear signal against the feint chatter of running beach mode at full sensitivity.
I was both surprised and delighted with the Vicky penny. It does show that in a wet, sandy beach, a coin-sized target will be detected at ten inches. Given the clarity of the signal, I think there was an inch, or two, at which that penny would still have been detected. It was a great confidence booster, building trust in the machine.
Hope that helps.

[kenn]

Four hours detecting on Essex beach.Ground balanced in beach mode then swapped to Park 2
All items found within about 5-6inches.Will I need to swap to all metal mode to hear deeper signals ?
Or are they there and i am not yet enough experienced yet to hear them ?
Only 5th time out with the simplex standard coil.7B78D6E7-9553-477C-956E-ED6044B0D03E.jpeg

I’ve only had mine a week and only used on the beach. I was ground balancing in beach then switching to park 2. I’ve been reading and watching dozens of videos and quite a few people are now swearing by all metal so about half hour in I decided to give it a try , all I can say is it felt like the machine became alive , had my best couple of hours out so far using it in all metal mode . Interestingly after finding a nice target and switching out of interest to park 2 it wasn’t picking it up . Only turned out to be a 5p but I’ll definitely be sticking to all metal from now . No changes made to settings apart from gb, played about with sensitivity and although it chatters a lot more than park 2 , targets are easily heard .

totally agree when in all metal different machine all together tried field park 1n2 and beach i can run it flat out in all metal

[HairySporran]

my local beach is shingle. I use auto balance and run in all metal for best results. Budweiser is the bottle cap of choice.

[69trev]

Thanks for all your reply’s .Will definitely try all metal mode next time on the beach.Very interesting
Signals were heard in all metal and not in park 2.Still waiting for a pre decimal coin on the beach.

[Queenslander]

I switched to AM a few months ago. Really fine sandy beaches here on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. It's sort of using the machine unfiltered or in full manual mode. Depth wise I use sensitivity of 4 bars and dig up hair grips at 11 inches.
I think set up is REALLY important. Here's what I do:
1. Ground balance
2. Sensitivity to 4
3. Swing over something metallic and adjust volume to almost painful.
4. Hover over non target area and adjust threshold to reduce buzzing noise to an acceptable level.
The above works well for me in my conditions but you may need to fiddle around and fine tune it for yours.
I have noticed that I occasionally get falsing. If this happens do another ground balance and it seems to sort it out. Remember if you change the sensitivity it will alter the threshold setting as well. Being single tone I dodge over to Park 2 to get better info if I suspect a dodgy target and then back to AM.
All in all I really enjoy AM - some users might find the constant faint buzzing annoying but I don't mind - at least I know the machine is working!

[Hofling]

All very interesting.

I think I detected on a beach once, a while ago.

I just don't get why beach mode is not the best mode, if supposedly it was designed for that purpose. Can anyone tell?

I will try the settings suggested here - I have beaches all around me now.

Cheers.
C.

[fred]

All very interesting.

I think I detected on a beach once, a while ago.

I just don't get why beach mode is not the best mode, if supposedly it was designed for that purpose. Can anyone tell?

I will try the settings suggested here - I have beaches all around me now.

Cheers.
C.

Even if the machine is sound the manufacturers tend to dumb the preset programmes down for the target market. As this is usually the US they have to make it extra 'idiot proof' or they risk getting inundated with complaints. The dumbing down is the reason presets are seldom the optimum mode to use, not without considerable twiddling anyway, and twiddling successfully requires experience and knowledge.

[SimplexSimonx]

All very interesting.

I think I detected on a beach once, a while ago.

I just don't get why beach mode is not the best mode, if supposedly it was designed for that purpose. Can anyone tell?

I will try the settings suggested here - I have beaches all around me now.

Cheers.
C.

Besides Fred's point above, I think that the main (see what I did there? ) problem in this case is specific to the original Simplex+ machine. 'Beach Mode' on the Simplex+ was really only marginally capable of dealing with wet salt sand (which creates a very large conductive signal which tends to confuse/overload the machine). 'Beach' modes on more recent/sophisticated machines are usually more useable and preferred on the beach - subject to expert tweaking.