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Date Posted: 13:48:10 08/21/02 Wed
Author: Phil(NM)
Subject: Yesterday's Infinium Field test

Everyone,

Up Front comment: yes, I'm a Garrett dealer. (No I won't sell here.)

I took one of my stock Infiniums out yesterday for a test run. Wanted to do a straight out of the box set up and run, so headed south about 150 miles to a gold claim that has produced gold nuggets in the past.

First time set up took about 1/2 hour, and was relatively easy, except for that last bolt they mention in the manual that "is going to require a bit of compression". True statement. I was able to put it together, but wish they had included the Allen wrench that would've made it easier to thread thru. (Garrett, you listening?)

Assembled the coil to the rod, piece of cake. Tighten this very well so the coil stays where you want it.... just like any other detector.
Used the supplied tie-wrap to fasten the cable to the rod about 18" above the coil.. (old trick I learned along time ago... reduces false signals).

Set it up as a hip mount and could've used one or two more tie-wraps to fasten the cable to the rod higher up. So far, everything went smoothly and no problems. (Garrett, you listening again?)

Plugged in the headphones, coil, loaded up my digging tools (Anyone invent a non-metallic digging pick yet?) and off to the old tailings piles from 60 years ago.

lesson #1: Adjust your headphones to max, then adjust the volume at the box. Set them to stereo too.

Frequency adjustment: piece of cake. didn't need to, as the freq that is factory preset everytime you turn on worked just fine. Played with the freq settings to see how the 32 settings work, and here's lesson #2: allow at least 3 seconds each time you turn the knob to give the unit time to do it's thing.

Discrimination: As I was after gold, I set it at zero.

Ground tracking: They recommend the "lock" setting for best depth, but I opted for fast because I was in iron-rich red soil with lots of hot rocks. Unit tracked without a single problem. Hot rocks were cancelled out easily (both pos and neg) by simply passing the coil over the signal several times to see if the signal disappears.

There are no other settings! Nice! Only 3 switches to worry about. Everything else is done for you.

Started finding old square nails, hand made nails, tacks, etc etc etc. Lesson #3: Unit likes to find my steel tipped boots if closer than 18 inches. Had to extend wand one click.

As I dig everything when gold hunting, the unit found lots of items for me to dig. Stuff on the surface, and stuff down deep. You will spend lots of time digging targets with this unit, but when you're done, there won't be much you left behind....

What did I find and how deep? Until more time is spent by people actually using this unit, I'm hesitant to post any specifics which folks would tend to use as a benchmark, and which may or may not be fair. A few hours swinging isn't enough to make that kind of judgement. I did, however, find stuff from right on the surface down to a depth I prefer not spending all that much time digging....

Summary:
This unit is a keeper. It's easy to set up and run straight from the box, and while the user will spend some time learning to understand the nuances of those signals, (same for all detectors, no?), it's definately operator friendly.

Will this unit replace the Minelabs? Not currently. So all you Minelab owners keep what you have, cause performance will probably be so close as to not make much difference, (unless you want an equivalent unit and some cash back in your pocket). And once the mono coils and after-market coils (like coiltek did for minelab) hit the market, I expect newcomers to the PI world will prefer the Infinium for it's much lighter weight, underwater ability, simple configuration, and easy control configuration, not to mention that it's 1/3 the price of a Minelab.

A definate keeper...

Phil(NM)

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