starting out!

G,day all from terrafirma just new to the forum and gold detecting , been out with my sd2200d a few times now up to the daylesford area , no gold plenty of trash to be expected . i'm running a coiltek 14'' dd , running the gell cell battery but will son be upgrading to the lithiuim, also running a sound enhancer. Anyone out there with some handy set up hints for my detector would be appreciated, looking foward to chating with pepole on this forum.

G'day terrafirma ... Kate here, from SA. Nice ta meet ya!!

I've got an old SD2000 ... my best buddy ... but I DO wish you all the very best of luck in your hunt for the magic yellow

A beautiful detector the 2200 - I still use one (with a 3500) and reluctant to ever get rid of it. It had been modified by some stooge before I bought it and I sent it back to Minelab to be reconfigured to factory settings as it would not ground balance. I run 11", 14" and 18" DD coils - depends on the depth of soil/wash etc. (I also have an anti-interfernce coil for use on a site in South Aust that has a lot of power lines, also some areas in the Triangle for the same reason) I rarely run a mono coil as I find them very noisy on the Golden Triangle. I use the 7.3v lithium batteries and whilst they are fine, i am having on-going issues with the battery chargers that my local distributor sells. Off to Battery World to discuss this week as a matter of fact. I have used two different brands and I have to buy two every time. At $25 each they are not dear but I am sick of it and have now spent $100 on Made in China garbage.

My settings are these: Off the diggings in new ground or an area close to the diggings where I am sure there is little rubbish - fixed, deep, discrimination off, both channels. Rubbish area or areas where I am having problems with ground noise - tracking, deep, discrimination on, both channels. Make sure you ground balance before switching to fixed. Threashold should be just audible (my preference) and I usually use a smallish piece of gold for my testing and tuning. lead will do - of course.

The 18" DD has been very kind to me in deeper new ground and if I get a patch, use the other coils and an 11" on the 3500 to do a clean out. It all depends on the ground of course. (Had some amazing small finds with the 3500 that the 2200 could not 'hear'.) I dug out an old 11" eliptical just last trip to Maryborough and had a bit of fun on the mullock heaps with it with the 2200.

I have been using the 2200 for some time now and still have the occassional issue with false signals, especially on the hot red clay pockets. You will get used to the noises pretty quickly. The 2200 can be grumpy, frustrating, make strange noises, old farts of things - just like me, but they are a fun machine to learn on. The manual is quite good. The 18" is very quiet and reduces ground noise significantly. You will miss smaller gold with the bigger coil but conversely, you will miss bigger gold with a smaller coil. You can also cover a lot of new ground with the 18". Good luck and I am sure you have success with the 2200.

Go low and slow and RESEARCH RESEARCH RESEARCH.

Mine has performed beautifully for the last 7 years. I run a 14'' DD, a 10x7 DD and an 8" round mono. I have also got a 12x7 NF mono. The mono's can be a bit jitterly but the signals boom through - you just need to stay focussed. I often use the small mono's for detecting shallow ground in the creek beds and have found lots of very small stuff that has been jammed into the cracks in the bedrock floor. The bigger DD is great on deep ground and very stable. Mine is one of the sought of 45000 model serial numbers and I run it with a Reeds 'Lucky Lark' LI 12v battery and regulator set at 7.3 volts, it has a built in amp.

I always run in 'Both' Channels, Fixed if the ground is fairly stable and only use tracking in changeable ground but switch to 'fixed' when isolating a signal. Usually in 'normal' but use 'deep' with the 14" DD on deeper ground and 'shallow' on the bedrock desribed above. I often use the discrimator (wound fully up on max discrimination) when working around old diggings or camps. Its a balance between digging heaps of trash and the possibility of 'losing' the occassional nugget.

John