I just thought I would write a short post following my first venture out with my Simplex+. As I am new to the hobby (well, since owning a very small and no doubt not great machine when I was about 8!) I decided that I would test out my shiny new machine on one of our local beaches. I had relatively low expectations as to what I may find and was fully expecting tonnes of iron and ring pulls.
As I am not a driver, I had to make do with a couple of bus journeys and my detector in my rucksack. I got to the beach, put the Simplex together and had a play with ground balancing it. I have to say, this was really straight forward, much to my relief. I set to beach mode, dropped the sensitivity a bit and changed the frequency...just because I could. As a slight aside, I was under the impression that there were five frequencies? I only see three in my menu? Anyone have any insights into this at all?
Anyway, once set up I happily began searching in the freezing, strong wind. a fair bit of chatter, some mysterious signals that showed as strong and then vanished but much to my delight after an hour of detecting in less than favourable ground, mostly a thin sand layer with shingle and cobbles beneath (not great for digging), I managed to find two bits of what I assume are WWII bullet/shell casing, a brass eyelet from a jacket and a small piece of what I think is steel. I know, not pretty finds, but they were my first and I was dead chuffed to actually pinpoint anything.
Overall, I really liked the Simplex, easy to use but will be even better once I get more practice and can tweak the settings a bit. Now to try and find some permissions - again, as I don't drive I've resorted to letter writing and trying to be patient and just hope someone is kind enough to offer some land.
Thanks for reading and I'm sorry I couldn't report anything more exciting for my first trip out
Matt
