Beach Hunting at Night versus Day

Nice article wow.  I am new to the boards and new to md haven't even purchased a md yet.  Do not know what to buy.  Very interested in the hunt though.

Karen

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http://www.thunting.com/smf/index.php/topic,19844.msg131046.html#msg131046

Karen I am new too and do not have a detector yet either.  I am going 2 routes.  Tomorrow I am going to buy a Whites Coinmaster and I will build a PI detector.


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http://www.thunting.com/smf/index.php/topic,19844.msg131051.html#msg131051

My solution to on lookers is t okeep a few pulltabs and bottlecaps in your pocket. Pull them out surreptitiously and go oh not again a few times. Tey will soon dissapate as you are obviously (to them) wasting your time on trash. This allws you to recover good targets. Make sure your using a headset so they can't hear what you hear.

Good luck and good digging...

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http://www.thunting.com/smf/index.php/topic,19844.msg131068.html#msg131068

I guess I am a US citizen residing in Okinawa.   I first came to Japan right after college in 1989...right at the peak of the "bubble."  I only planned to stay a year....but I have been here ever since.  My wife is a Japanese native from Yokohama.  We have lived in a lot of interesting places in Japan.  Kamakura, Yokohama, Tokushima...

However, I have only been metal detecting for the last six months.  At first, my wife saw this hobby as a little pathetic.  Digging in the sand for hours and coming home with a handful of dirty coins.  But then I found a "Ichibu Gin"  a silver coin from the mid 1800's.  Now she sees what I am doing is something more like archaeology instead of something like the homeless guys digging in the trash for aluminum cans.

Last night Nathan Droblyn and I went out to Canucha Beach.  This is one of the most luxurious and expensive resorts on the island.  It has tight security and the last time I tried to hunt here, I never made it through the front gate.  I wasn't a guest nor was I a visiting a guest.  However, thanks to Google maps... I spotted a small back road that lead to the beach from the highway, it completely avoided the resorts compound, so we tried that.  It was an hours drive up north, and we easily found the "road"  However, no one had used this road for a long long time.  The Jungle growth was so thick, we could only drive about 100 meters and had to get out and walk the rest of the way.  About 50 meters away from the resort, we could see the beach in the Christmas lights they had set up, but we couldn't get there.  A land slide had taken out our access road.  But we were not going to give up so easily.  With detectors and scoops in hand, we climbed down the cliff to shore line, and had to wade up to our knees around an outcropping of rocks, and then we finally reached the resort's beach, feeling like Indiana Jones.

Since this is the resort that millionaires like to stay at, we had high hopes of gold and diamond rings littering the beach.  But no such luck.  After an hour, I only found 210 yen.  (A little more than $2 in clad)  Nathan went to hunt the wet sand and I checked out the beach volleyball pit.  I found one more 100 yen coin, buried 8 inches deep!  While I was filling in my hole, a security guard approached me.  I gave him my standard line, "A friend lost a ring here last summer, and we are trying to find it. "  I hunt the resort beaches at night all the time, and this line seems to work best to make things go smoothly and let me continue hunting.  But this time he said, "Really?  The resort has a metal detector just in case a guest looses something valuable. Your friend should have told the front desk, we probably have already found the ring."  Yikes.  Fortunately I was ready to go any way.

We drove 30 minutes further north to Oppama Beach, and again the hunting was slow.  I found about 1,000 yen ($12) Each coin was buried deeper than 6 inches. Nathan found about 500 yen and a stainless steel ring. It seems that all the loot from the summer tourist season is sinking deeper into the sand and is soon to be out of reach unless a typhoon comes soon and removes some of the sand for us.  Nevertheless...it was a lot of fun and quite an adventure.

The machine I am using is a Garrett GTI 1500.  when I bought this machine, I didn't know much anything about detectors.  I only chose this machine because I got it for a very good price on a Japanese auction site.  But after six months of constant use, I love this machine.  It took a while to get used to, but it has some great features.  One of the best is that with surprising accuracy it can tell me how big an item is, what it is likely made of, and how deep.  Since pull tabs and gold rings have about the same conductivity, I spend a lot of time scooping up pulltabs, but I can avoid digging up a beer can buried 12 inches deep.  If you turn on the salt elimination, turn down the sensitivity and put it in jewelry mode, this machine makes a great wet-sand detector.  Only problem is that it isn't water proof.  If I drop it in the ocean it will likely become toast.  Nathan is using a Garrett Infinium PI detector. His machine goes "DEEEP" in the wet sand and water, but he also digs a lot of iron nails and bobby pins.

Stay Well

RD



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http://www.thunting.com/smf/index.php/topic,19844.msg131212.html#msg131212

Thanks for the info MarkTwain. Sounds like alot of fun hunting at night. Ive got to try it sometime

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