First gave my trusty Deus a very quick (less than 10 mins) run over the beach in Dry beach program to see how it responded, but despite finding a couple of targets it was falsing quite a lot, I didn't care to change any settings or the Wet beach program either - so enough excuse to spark up my newly acquired PI detector - a Whites TDI SL.
Despite the beach being mostly black sand apart from about the top 2 inches, I was able to run the TDI maxed out in straight PI mode right to the waters edge whilst it stayed completely quiet and stable. My main intention this trip was to just get familiar with the TDI rather than to maximize finds so kept well away from the main masses a few hundred metres further along the beach.
Anyway, I had a very enjoyable couple of hours on the TDI's maiden voyage and was most impressed with it's stability and depth of targets, several of which I admit to eventually giving up digging. My Evo 360 scoop worked very well despite the quite rocky sand. Apart from a couple of bottle tops and some ring pulls there were just three coins, an ear stud and two fishing hooks. Not quite as impressive as Fred's beach finds, but it's early days yet. It makes you wonder how many sandcastle makers get impaled by these sharps? The next day I had a few more hours in the same area, wandering does make for a better all round tan, and got some more coins, fishing tackle and some very deep iron etc. I'm now comfortably familiar with it's traits but feel there may be perhaps more to learn about tonal variations of certain targets? It would have been interesting to have had a go on the main beach area though.
When detecting inland I rarely see a sole, so the beach promenade seemed like the motorway of footpaths for onlookers. I still felt perhaps to be the curiosity of the beach for bored sunbathers and passers by, but was thankful and quite surprised that no one had actually approached to ask the mundane question if I had, “found any treasure yet?”, but then again, my other half later informed me that the suntan lotion contained glitter, so that may have been a deterrent. Along that line of thought I've previously found that in different detecting situations to avoid virtually any approach, you just need to adopt a look that most are not really comfortable with so as to minimize the chance of them approaching you, I'll leave that to your imagination, but generally I find that a pair of shades and a really scruffy hat does the job.
Good Luck getting to know the intricacies of the PI audio. I have been told that with a good deal of familiarisation, it is possible to develop a 'discriminating' ear (with the 'crossbow' model at least). Regards ss47
