Italy 2018 with Equinox 800

As it has become a tradition, this year will be no exception and again you will find an article about searching by the sea. This year it will be a bit more extensive than previous years thanks to new equipment. I have also divided the article into several parts. Anyway, you have a lot to look forward to, because there will be more than enough information, so read carefully

Planning

This year we took it a bit more responsibly and tried to plan everything a bit in advance, which turned out to be a bit misguided, but I won't get ahead of myself. The last weekend in July, everyone probably noticed the reports of traffic collapsing on the highways towards theto our favourite holiday resorts, the reason being the start of the holidays in the neighbouring countries. The Italians are doing the same. Holidays there start a month later, and as I learned last year while chatting on the beach with a local searcher, all over
Italy this is the caseThere are several large or small beach parties where the Italian youth from the surrounding area come and totally cancel for the joy of the upcoming holidays.

As a proper seeker, I saw an irresistible opportunity and a chance to capitalize on the experience of picking Czech festivals (festival clearing). So we packed up and up to traffic hell.

Equipment

This year was the first time I've basically completely changed my equipment, which I was a bit worried about, but the fears turned out to be completely unfounded. But I was going relatively far, after all, so I was a little nervous. When you're riding with untested equipment, even the slightest problem can put you out of contention, which can have fatal consequences far from home . In past years I have always ridden with a CTX 3030, which I had used years before and had the setup perfected to the point where all I had to do was turn on the detector, check the salt water box and hop in the water. This year I took the Equinox 800, with which I was in salt water for the first time, so everything went all over again.

The advantage over the CTX is that you don't have to worry so badly about the detector, after all losing the CTX would be much more painful, especially if the detector is just being lugged around campgrounds locked in the car like I am. I usually carry my EQ 600 on my telescope everywhere, but I wanted to try the gold mode for small gold (earrings and chainsunderneath the volleyball court net, of which there are quite a few around the beaches. There was also a new sieve that I picked out myself. I've been prospecting underwater for nearly 10years and the sieve has knocked me out of the fight a few times.It was necessary totest it thoroughly and since it has proven its worth, we have included it in the offer on LP.

Aside from the sieves from my early days, which I made with my own hands out of whatever was within reach, most of them didn't even survive half a season and many times I had to pack up and go home halfway through the search. I used the last sieve really heavily for about 3 seasons, however, after a while the top sheet needed to be reinforced and the sieve re-welded in some places. But I must add that the sieve must
have been in real agony. The original sieve was also designed for the classic broom handle diameter. Unfortunately, in the vast majority of shops, only spruce handles are available, which will last for about 2 handles. If you happen to get a beech one like I did, you can get through a whole season with it.I reliably solved this problem with a custom made ash handle.

It takes a while to work your way up to something that works.

Anyway, back to the new sieve. Here are several design improvements. The entire sieve is made from high quality 2mm stainless steel sheet, so even after a week of heavy use in salt water, no changes to the
stainless steel material have appeared. Probably the biggest change is the reinforcement of the top sheet of the sieve by bracing and bending the sheet 90 degrees. The rear foot section is bent and beveled, so one can dig comfortably even barefoot and one does not injure one's feet on the sharp angle of the sieve with the welds. Another change is the way the handle is attached, which is designed for a much thicker handle. The sieve comes with a detachable stainless steel handle, which comes in handy when you are travelling by plane and need to save space. Classic spade handles will also fit the sieve, which you can get everywhere without any problem and are twice as thick. (My handle came out to a nice 69Kč ).Plus, the new sieve is great for opening beer .

All in all I had packed for the trip: an Equinox 800, a Go-find 66, a Pro-Find 35, a small powerbank LP, a sieve and a drapery .

Journey

For similar adventurers I will list here roughly the cost of Prague-Northern Italy round trip:

• Petrol approx. in CZK 2400,-
• Petrol in Austria 25Eur,- (I tried to fill up as much as possible in the Czech Republic)
• Motorway vignette in Austria approx. 10Eur/10 days
• Fees for Austrian tunnel 2* 11,5Eur
• Toll on Italian motorway approx. 2*18Eur
• 4*Redbull on sale for 99,-

I drove the route including stops and occasional traffic jams for approx 12 hours, leaving at 22:30 from the Czech Republic to avoid all the rush hour traffic.

Italy

Since I was going to a campsite, I couldn't completely rely on 100% electricity supply. With CTX, I didn't have to worry about that. All I had to do was take a pencil battery block and just swap out pencil batteries when needed. I charged everything to 100% before the trip, but it was clear that the battery would run out pretty quickly. I didn't want to charge the Eq for a whole week in the car either, I was a bit worried that after a week of charging I'd run out of battery in the car and drive off in peace. The blinking unit and adapter in the car might also attract unwanted attention. A small 5000mAh powerbank solved this whole problem. I only walked the water during the day and at night, when the beaches were empty, I went under the loungers and charged straight up while looking. The powerbank also comes with a pouch under the armrest, so the powerbank and power cord don't get in the way anywhere.

When I finished searching that evening, I threw the detector and powerbank in the car to fully recharge. I then left the power bank at the front desk to charge when I went to the beach in the morning. It's a much more elegant solution than leaving the unit there and dismantling the whole detector to do it. Not to mention that at least one doesn't draw unnecessary attention to oneself.

Party

After a tiring journey we arrived at the Italian campsite. We quickly unpacked our tents and went to the sea. We arrived on the morning of 27.7. The holiday party was scheduled for the same day.
After a discussion with a colleague and due to total fatigue from the trip, we decided that we could go to sleep and agreed on a 5:00am wake-up call, which later turned out to be a fatal mistake. The next morning we didn't actually wake up until 5:30am and so at least until 6:00am we searched among the mess in the car for tracking sticks, shovels etc. We got in the car and drove to find the location of the beach party, which was on the other side of town. After arriving at the place and unpacking all the stuff, it was about 7:00 and to our surprise there were about 4 local searchers already running around and another one was already packing up. Well I sensed that this was probably not going to happen and we were late. However, I still managed to beg a little over 10 Euros, a shredder with the rest, two sunglasses and a couple of lighters. I learned from one of the locals that the event ended at midnight and basically it was normal to search the area from 1am. Next time it's going to be a case of getting up earlier. The local searchers seemed obviously happy.

Searching underwater

After a minor setback at the party, I didn't get discouraged and told myself that the essentials were waiting for me in the sea anyway. I turn on the Beach 2 program and wait to see what happens. There were quite a few waves and the water was waving me and the detector around quite a bit. Again, I figured there's no point in fighting the waves or you'll be totally tired in an hour. As I wrote last time, you have to walk perpendicular to the waves and synchronize the detector movement with the waves and basically let the detector drift with the waves while pushing the probe down a bit. The waves will do most of the essential work for you. The first day was basically just for acclimatization and filing the setup. Still, 3 chir steel rings and Ag earrings fell into place. I ended up leaving the setup on a regular dual tone with a closed iron (basically a unison) - the dual tone only served when switching to all metal when I wanted to check something.

Normally I go for a tonally richer audio (basically a reworked 5 tone ), but in a situation where the waves are still waving you and the detector around, I found the targets were better in unison. There are far fewer targets in the sea than you're used to from Bohemia. Pretty much any color went out, so I didn't mind the monotone audio at all in this case. I left the ground tuning in the auto. I wanted a relaxed search, plus the detector is noticeably more stable in this option. Even if you switch to the GB icon in the menu, you can see how the automatic continuously adjusts the ground itself.

Another pretty important thing is the sensitivity setting, which is basically directly proportional to the actual wave intensity at that location. If the sea was really rough, I was also looking at a sensitivity of 14. As I
wrote above, big waves can flap the detector quite a bit and as a result, as the probe rapidly moves closer and further from the bottom, the GB tuning changes and the automatic can't always catch up with these rapid changes.

This causes the detector to occasionally sound. On calm water, it is possible to search at a sensitivity of around 18.
Beaches in Italy were generally divided between hotel beaches, private beaches and so-called free beaches (spiaggia libera). Logically, we were the first to immediately fit on the beach below the most lavish hotel in the area. This, surprisingly, didn't turn out to be the best choice . There were probably the most Euros underwater, and plenty of jewellery too. Mostly silver or steel, though. Probably jewelry that tourists from the hotel bought for their kids or girlfriends.

Some gold also fell, but mostly with one exception it was classic 14 carat gold from tourists (standard purity in Italy is 18 carat). The surprise was held up on the free beach on the edge of town, where I think the local Italians from the area come to swim. Euro coins, steel and silver jewellery were admittedly a bit scarce. However, I did manage to pull out two pretty fat 18 carat pairs18 carat ladies' wedding rings (5,7 and 4,9g) and my colleague also got one slightly weaker 18 carat ladies' one. The dream gold chain that I had set as a goal for this trip unfortunately didn't fall, but from what I hear they are mostly hollow anyway It's all about looks in Italy .
One more interesting thing. There are hardly any tinfoils underwater. It's a pretty light object for the waves and the waves wash everyone ashore before they hit the surface. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the beach.

Vice info on the setup and bonuses can be found in the video below

Searching on the beach

When it starts to get dark, the beaches start to empty out pretty quickly, which again is an opportunity to come into some Euros :). The situation here is diametrically opposed to the water, there is a snack stall on every corner and from time to time an ice-cream vendor will pass by the beach.

So the beach is pretty much full of tinfoil and other rubbish. I'm sure there will be gold on the beach too, but for one ring there will be hundreds of tinfoils. I found it much easier to pull a gold ring out of the water than off the beach.

For that reason, I focused on the beach and the Euros. No need to work any miracles in the setup. Euro coins are a pretty big target and they don't tend to be very deep either. Even so, while searching for Euros, I came across a silver bracelet

Basically I was looking at Park 1 with only discrimination open from ID 14 to ignore the tinfoil. Unfortunately, this also wiped out some gold targets, but I would have dug that. Too high a sensitivity setting is more of a nuisance, the detector then also takes the deckchair design from the side so you don't get close to the deckchairs. Also, when searching under bars or refreshment stands, the detector can also pick up the iron structures of the stand, which again is a detriment. I walked the sensitivity to about 15.

What surprised me though was the Go-Find 60, which I slipped to a friend to search with me. Combined with the small plastic scoop, it's a perfectly adequate detector for finding Eurasian, and literally folds up into your purse after a search. But that's not the only surprise this detector has in store for me. The setting was on sensitivity 3 and the disc rejected the first 2 fields (iron and foil). On the last day, to my surprise, I found that this detector works perfectly fine on wet salt sand and on sensitivity 1 even in salt water, which of course I wouldn't completely recommend because the detector is not waterproof.
An unfortunate fall into water can be fatal for the detector. However, salt sand or even approaching it is not handled by most even more expensive devices, which was quite a surprise for a detector with this price.

Recommendations and maintenance

Maintenance:

a) Before each search, check all detector connectors for tightness
b) After a search, it is absolutely necessary to desalinate the detector by bathing it or at leastat least a thorough shower with normal fresh water (showers were free on every corner)
c)Never go into the water with a power bank attached, even if the power bank is above water.
d) Do not charge the detector if the contacts on the detector are wet or if the detector has not been properly descaled (see point b)
e) Unless necessary, do not unnecessarily disconnect the headphone or probe connector. Sand can get everywhere very quickly. If you want to reconnect the probe or headphones, make sure
that both parts of the connector are perfectly clean, or clean them in some non-violent way.
f) After searching in the water, you may find that the detector probe is much heavier. The culprit is sand that has settled under the probe cover between the probe's reinforcement bars during the underwater search.
I recommend that you also remove the probe cover after each search.
g) If you don't have waterproof headphones, be sure to have a black plug carefully screwed into the headphone jack.

Recommendations:

a) There are morecoinson the beachthan underwater, and more jewelry than Euros in the water.

b) The signal from the wireless headset will cut off once you sink the unit underwater.
c) In the morning, a machine with a catter drives along the beach to sift the sand and clean the beach of trash if you eat it. can follow it and see where it's dumping the rubbish, there's quite a few Eur waiting for you.
but that's more of a tracker.
d) Euro coins can easily be cleaned with wet sand from the beach between your fingers or by throwing them into a machine and squishing themm the return button, then new ones fall out.
e) Prepare for attention, Italian kids are pretty spoiled. They often got hold of me and I couldn't get rid of them for half a kilometre, I had to search for them while screaming. The parents don't care and are asleep. They're glad to be rid of them.
f) A minimum of Italians can speak a foreign language, you can't do much with English or German. Yet they will ask you questions over and over again even though it must be obvious to them that you don't understand them.
g) Don't give the first impression of the beach, most of the gold was on the beach where it looked like a Khan's estate. There were plenty of Euros on the hotel beaches.
h) Italians drive like crazy, so pay attention, half of them don't shine and the other half don't flash.

Conclusion

If you have a little patience and time on vacation, I definitely recommend taking a detector to the sea. Searching by the sea is completely different from the classic search in the Czech Republic, so it would be a shame not to try it

jaccob

Other articles by jaccob.