Most of the XP Deus Videos are from Europe and can be a bit misleading when it comes to using your XP Deus here in Australia. Its not the soil conditions either like most people think its something else entirely…. let me explain.
Now I have never hunted in the UK, never even been there but one thing I can see from the countless videos and blog articles about hunting in the UK and Europe in general is this. The way they metal detect is MILES and MILES away from the bulk of what we do here in Australia.
The US is a bit closer to what we deal with than Europe, so sometimes when we watch the European videos we are not getting the results using their “Euro techniques” here in Australia and there is good reason for this.
Number 1 is that the metal detecting scene in the UK and from what I can see a fair bit of Europe is heavily regulated. But Lets stick with the UK for now as I know a little bit more about that scene.
In the UK you can’t go to the local park and start detecting, it’s illegal. Plain and simple. Beaches are fair game from what I can see but the Bulk of the detecting is on what is called permissions.
We Know what they are, but just in case… Its when you ask someone permission to detect on their private land. If they say yes you have a permission, if they so No you don’t plain and simple.
BUT even permissions in the UK are regulated. Finds over 300 years old MUST be declared to the FLO (Finds liaison officer) and recorded. (YEP People actually have the JOB of collecting and recording detecting finds.)
Then in some complicated process I don’t fully understand they are offered to museums etc at a price. If that price is accepted then half the money goes to the person that found it and the other half to the one that owned the land.
IF no museums etc want the item it is then Disclaimed and a letter is sent along with the item back to the finder. Pretty sure they can do what they want with it from there. Don’t think there is any obligation to the land holder on disclaimed items.
That’s is my very brief rundown of what I believe to be the system in the UK, Its way more complicated than that and some people won’t see their finds ever again. However a pile of cash can be a good substitute. Detectorists have literally become millionaires from a single find so the stakes can be pretty high.
This system means that in most cases detectorists in the UK are hunting wide open Farmland and paddocks on permissions. They are detecting on farms that don’t see daily traffic or large gatherings of people on a regular basis in the modern era. However what they do need to contend with is THOUSANDS of years of the area being populated.
One thing I can see from those euro videos is that IRON from humans is bloody everywhere over there. BUT The bigger the concentration then the more chance of finds as that means humans where in that area on mass.
So a detectorist in the UK, from what I can see, is doing one thing a lot of the time. Trying to pick the items that are NOT iron out of the mess of iron laying around. Pretty simple strategy really, cover as much ground as you can while using every trick in the book to eek out anything that is not made of iron. Simple Ferrous/NON Ferrous identification. The VLF detectors speciality over the PI.
Using this technique they find amazing stuff from 2000+ year old broaches and Pins to coins hammered into existence before even Jesus was around! Incredible finds BUT it is SO different from 80% of the metal detecting done here in Australia.
My Point is they use simplified audio tones in a lot of cases. Sometimes just 2 or 3 tones because that’s all they need. TID Numbers aren’t that important as if the target isn’t obvious iron it is being dug up. It is essentially a very raw form of detecting looking for 2 targets ONLY. Iron and anything that isn’t iron.
AUSTRALIA and the US are WAY WAY Different!!
NOTE: I’m talking coin and relic by the way, there is NO gold detecting scene in the UK. They use the 5000’s to find hoardes not. 05 gram nuggets. So I’m excluding prospecting as its a whole new scene altogether when writing this article.
In Australia we CAN Hunt a lot of our local parks no problems at all. As long as your neat and don’t dig stupid big holes your normally good to go. Check your local laws but I think you’ll find in a lot of places hitting the park is cool. Beaches are fair game and we can also access some public land depending on your state.
However most of the land we hunt, UNLIKE the UK, has been used for a longtime by a lot of people in the modern ERA. I mean POST say 1900.
If you are metal detecting a park in Sydney for example the 1800’s coins are mixed in with the 2018 model pull tabs and can slaw. The park has probably been used for many many years and that means trash and loads of it. A HIGH Percentage of which is NON Ferrous or NOT Iron.
We RARELY deal with an iron infested park, sometimes it happens, but most likely your dealing with dozens of different targets all which make your metal detector scream and invite you to dig a hole. Your more likely to hunt like the UK in an older area that was abandoned or stopped being used prior to about the mid forties. Think WWII Camps for example. If your hunting sites that where heavily used in the 50’s-80’s your going to get a lot of trash that probably has some depth on it. Its very tempting to dig it all but you shouldn’t.
In some cases there can be more than 10 items in a single swing all NON ferrous and all Targets that would be dug EVERYTIME if you where in the UK. But your not so you need to pick your battles.
The Difference in Australia is that we need to decide WHAT Awesome signals to dig as about 19 out of every 20 good sounding signals in a modern park is a piece of JUNK on a good day.
So we need to go past the UK settings of 2, 3, 4 or 5 tones and kick the XP Deus into overdrive. The strength of the XP deus has always been its tones. In a modern situation using anything but full tones in my opinion is nuts.
WHY Full tones?
Because with 99 tones you get a different sound depending on the conductivity of the target. It also assigns the target a higher TID Number but I’ll come to them later. That means a 5 cent piece will sound very different to $2 coin or a penny, but that’s not the important bit as 5 cent pieces and 2 dollar coins are easy to find.
The Important part is FULL Tones will also allow you to ID trash and that’s more important that being able to ID coins. Trash is hard to ID sometimes and if your running less than full tones a 66 and a 64 are going to sound the same. But in full tones and by using the TID Numbers you’ll get to know that a 66 is probably a post 2010 pull tab and a 64 is most likely a 10 cent coin.
Full tones without discrimination will also allow to you to ID Twist tops by the GRUNT that your hear as you come off the target. Running less than full tones or any discrimination will take away this feature.
By Setting all your programs to Full tones you allow the XP Deus to talk to you and give you better information. By using the TID Numbers you’ll soon learn that even 1 point off the target ID of say a 2 dollar coin will result in an aluminium bottle top a lot of the time.
But learn the full tones and allow your brain to make the decisions, once you ID the pulltabs tone and TID Number stop digging them! Chances are the next 74 you dig will be the same as the last one, a round pull tab from the beaver tail days.
What I have learnt is that trash is trash and once you ID the local trash targets you can easily ignore them and target your KNOWN Tones and TID’s. So Cherry picking out the coins becomes easy as you can say to yourself with 90% accuracy what the common trash targets are.
Now one of my little secrets is this…..
You’ll notice when you are in a park that you’ll see a few TID Numbers/Tones very often. These are generally trash, like I said before the 7th 73 you dig will just be another round pull tab more than likely. Unless they are the familiar Tones of the spendable coin.
So what I do is dig the weirdos as I call It. The weirdos are those TID Numbers you don’t see very often on the day. The strange ones that you know are not a pull tab and you know are not a coin as they don’t have that familiar tone. Often these weirdos turn out to be something interesting. The higher weirdos like dead on 90, often are 925 silver of some description. The Lower weirdos can turn into gold rings more often than you’d think.
Chase the weirdos as well as your KNOWN tones/TID combinations. That’s where the strange treasure is. YES a lot of the weirdos turn out to be trash but at least I’m not digging the same tone that I just KNOW 95% of the time is a known trash target.
What I am trying to say its sometimes better to know the trash, hear the trash and make a conscious decision to walk on. Because as mentioned, 1 or 2 tid numbers difference could mean the difference between an 18K beauty and another round pull tab to add to the bin on the way to car.
Open your machine up whatever it is, let it talk to you and identify the common targets to avoid and stop digging them up.
Once you have thrashed a park to death over many years then you can come back and make sure those trash targets aren’t something better.
I hope this makes sense. My most hated saying in metal detecting is “dig everything”. As by Digging everything you make a huge mess in a small area, get frustrated by constantly digging trash and learn very little about your detector in the long run.
Dig what you know, so learn your machine, practice in the yard and identify the common trash targets as well as those that are worth digging.
General rule of thumb for me in a modern area with some trash, dig everything above 85 that doesn’t grunt on the edges, dig all the TID and tones that I haven’t seen often and Identify the local common trash targets and stop digging them up.
Over a hundred hours of opening your machine up and letting it to talk to you I guarantee you’ll be 10x the detectorist you are now.
Have fun, Open up the screen and the tone bank and have fun, Its chaos at first but you’ll grow to love it. Ask any user of the XP Deus that uses full tones, you can never go back to less. Its even handy in the gold fields for avoiding iron targets and hot rocks!
Clegy
P.S Program 9 HOT is the one to learn. Learn that inside and out and you’ll master the Deus and be a very very effective detectorist. Later you can experiment with other programs that have different ground filtering software. Programs 3,6 and 9 all have different ground filters and that opens up another whole level of detecting.
There is a lot more to the XP deus than meets the eye or is even in the manual. LOL
