Field Reports WOT

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THE WOT

FIELD REPORTS!

Posted by Beachcomber on January 16, 2000 at 21:47:16:

Well gang I spent the weekend at the beach. It was not a nice weekend :) I was hunting alone on Saturday so I decided to just hunt with the 15" Coiltek Coil. I arrived at the beach at 6:30am about 40 minutes before Sunrise. It was a whole 15 degrees outside. Luckily there was very little wind. The reason for getting there so early was that Low Tide was going to be at 8:15am and I always try to get to the beach about 2 hours before Low Tide. The upper beach was frozen so I started hunting down near the water's edge. The first thing I noticed about the coil was it's balance. The lower stem attaches almost dead center right at the balance point so it doesn't tend to flop over like the Minelab 10" AT coil. This coil is very stable electrically. I was surprised that a coil this large working around the saltwater in these temperatures would maintain a rock steady threshold. After a short time of detecting I had close to 3/8" of ice build up on the coil but it still continued to work just fine. Although I was getting a little chilly :) Anyway back to the detecting.

We had just had 3 days of strong NW Winds that tend to push sand up onto our beaches usually making it almost impossible to find any targets. That was not to be the case this time. The first target sound I heard was fairly strong and pinpointed easily. If this ahd been the Minelab 10" Coil I would have guessed the target to be about 4 inches down. Not with the WOT coil. The target turned out to be a dime at about 7 inches down. This was the shallowest target I dug all morning. Everything was very deep but this coil was able to get down there and find them. All the coins I dug were from 7-18inches deep. The really deep targets were quarters. To pinpoint the really deep signal as I had to use the all metal mode.

AS I a sure most of you who have used Minelabs for a long time the deeper the target the wider the signal seems to be but in the all metal mode it's size shrinks down to where you can easily pinpoint the target. In the all metal mode pinpointing was very easy..much easier than I thought it would be with such a large coil. I would like to tell you that I found a dozen gold and silver rings with this new coil but I did not find any rings on this trip. I did find a junk hoop earring but that was the only piece of jewelry I found on Saturday. All in all I found about 4 coins in teh 4 hours that I spent on the beach Saturday morning. By most accounts this is not a large number of coins but considering conditions I was very pleased. Quite a few of the coins were from depths deeper than I have ever had to dig when using the 10" AT coil. My first impressions of the Coiltek Coil are that it will be a index addition for beach hunters. It is well made, has excellent depth capabilities, is very stable, and it allows you to cover a lot more beach quicker than you can with an 8 or 10 inch coil. When you are working against the tide the ability to cover more beach is a worthwhile advantage. I will have more to report tomorrow evening when I will tell you what happened Sunday when my hunting partner and I ran head to head tests of the Excal w/10" coil vs the Sov XS-2 with the WOT Coil vs the Explorer XS. It should be interesting reading.

HH

Beachcomber

PS When I left the beach at 10:15am Saturday the temperature had risen to a whopping 23 degrees :) :) :)

PSS All temperatures are in Farhenheit :) :) :)

Posted by bbsailor on January 16, 2000 at 21:51:31:

Here it is!

0930 Sunday, hit the Margate NJ beach. Burried a old 1974 quarter 14" deep. Used the 10 Inch coil and could not detect it in discriminate. Could detect it in the all metal. Lost the signal about one inch above the sand. Used 15 WOT (named coined by DOC) and got a signal in discriminate. Switched to all metal and got a strong signal, Raised the 15" coil about 2 " above the sand and got the same signal as the 10 incher. At 3" above the sand I lost the signal.

Went hunting for about 6 hours on the Margate NJ beach and got about twice as many keepers as I normally get using the 10 incher. Most coins were 10+ years old and deep, I mean 10"+ for dimes, 12"+ for quarters, 10"+ for nickles and 11"+ for pennies.

This is a worked out beach and I though would be a good test. Sunday's finds: 13 Quarters 13 Dimes 8 Nickles 33 Pennies 2 pop tops 2 Pull tabs 1 cheap ring assorted copper pieces 2 nails 1 small fishing sinker

This coil is so sensitive that you must learn to hold your metal scoop behind you to avoid false signals. Eyelets in shoes can also cause false signals.

This coil is a deeper keeper. I will use this 15" WOT exclusively on the beach in the future. It now has a track record!

Posted by Bill (S.CA) on January 17, 2000 at 11:41:41:

First of all, my apologies to Doc for taking so long to post my first impressions on the WOT. Just chalk it up to kids soccer tournaments, a wife with the flu...I know, I know. As the Rock would say, "KNOW YOUR ROLE AS A FIELD TESTER AND SHUT YOUR MOUTH ABOUT ALL THE REST!!!"

Ok, had to throw a little WWF in there.

My detecting pal Frank and I got our coils this past Tuesday. Got them all hooked up but couldn't get out until Saturday AM. We decided to hit Santa Monica Beach, north of the pier, which is one of our usual sites. Of late it hasn't been yielding too much, mainly due to the fact that the sand is built way up (we need some storms!). We thought this would be a good place to give the WOT a workout.

By the way, Frank has previously used the 10" open coil, while I have been using the 8" solid. Both of us use Sovereign XS's.

So, we got to the beach at about 6:30 AM. No cut, tide going out, sand built way up. We both hunted primarily in the wet for just over 3 hours, with the following results:

FRANK: About 2 bucks in clad, including 3 quarters at well over 12"; 1 - small 14K gold "ILUVU" ring about 4" down; a few misc. deep tabs and chunks of melted aluminum

BILL: About $1.50 in clad (he always beats me!), including 2 trashed zinc pennies down 15"-16"; a chrome-plated bronze Caesars Palace medallion just a couple of inches down (nearly blew my headphones off!); and a few misc. deep tabs and chunks of melted aluminum as well.

Our impressions of the coil:

Sensitivity: Extremely sensitive, but very stable. As has been mentioned in other posts, you have to keep your scoop behind your back or else the WOT will pick it up. And Doc, you are correct, this thing goes deep! I had a 4" short scoop and was overwhelmed in the wet--will need to bring my big scoop next weekend.

Weight: Frank felt that the WOT weighed about the same as his 10" open coil. Since I was moving up from the lightweight 8" solid to this big baby, I did feel some fatigue after about 2.5 hours of hunting. We both liked the way that you connect the rod to the middle of the coil instead of the outside--no problem with flopping.

Color: This thing is rust-colored, not orange! Just messing with you!

Pinpointing: Dead on, better than either of our Minelab coils.

Ground coverage: A huge advantage, especially for me, since I nearly doubled my coil size. If you hunt the beaches a lot, you know what I'm talking about.

Value: We can't imagine hunting the beach with anything else! It has too many advantages over any other coil that goes on the Sovereign. I might add two other points here, both made by Frank: 1. He tried the coil out in a local park for 1/2 an hour, and was amazed to find that he had no problems with trash seperation. 2. He also has a Sun Ray S-12 coil and said that the WOT blows it away.

Coil cover: A good one, but a real pain to seal up with silicone. We both thought we had it sealed up real good yet we still had leaks. We've tried again and hopefully it will take this time. I wonder if drilling a couple of small drain holes in the cover would do the trick (I'm not going to do it, but it's just a thought).

Finally, I would like to make a few comments regarding Doc, the gentleman who we purchased our coils from. He has been nothing but honest in all of my dealings, and very up front about those things that he both knows, and doesn't know about the performance aspects of these coils. Further, for any of you who seem to think that behind every good story there lurks a dark, X-Files-type evil motivation, I'd like to let you know something about how Doc does business. Many of us who pre-ordered our coils from Doc gave him our credit card numbers for payment. When he received the shipment of coils, he discovered that his credit card machine didn't work. Instead of making everyone wait while he got a new machine, he sent the coils out anyway, in good faith, and asked that everyone pay him with a check instead. If that isn't good business, then I don't know what is.

So, good coil, and a good guy to buy them from.

We'll be out again next weekend, so I'll have more to report (hopefully some gold!) then.

Good luck hunting everyone!

Bill