One of DetectorStuff’s newest members, Eu-Citizen has hit the ground running with user submitted content! Here’s his review of the DFX…Thanks EU!
So where shall we begin with this beast?
When you take it out of the box, it doesn’t really look much. But as soon as you turn it on and want to adjust things.. Whoaa!
Lot’s of adjustments, you could ruin a whole weeks worth of detecting if you’d start out right away and try to adjust everything.
In the beginning I really suggest you keep to factory programs and the manual.
Ok out in the field:
Park:
I start out my field test in a simple good old park.
First thing I notice, the adjustments are a blessing if you have the guts to stick with it. (but a PITA if you just wanna detect)
I of course find lot’s of targets, living in Sweden most parks have never seen a metal detector.
Much trash to comes out, I soon learn the so called “DC Phase” feature can help ID some coinage. (especially small coins)
The cans soon started to turn out to be a problem, scattered around the place both whole and cut pieces they where hard to seperate from coins.
I soon noted using VCO and doing a “+” sign over the target helped to ID some of them to my relief.
I did well with 2 hours and got well over 15 coins, inluding a few silvers and early 1900’s copper coins.
Summary:
Ok well it does very well in the park to say the least. Found several coins and various bobs and ends.
I think this is where it’s at it’s best.
Relic Hunting:
Now I bring it to a older part of the park where relic hunting is possible but much small iron plagues the ground.
Because of constant silence and a few broken signals (discrimination kicking in) I decide to lower disc so I get better tones on the none ferrous stuff. (stuff that isn’t iron)
Also recalling from the manual that Correlate frequency might help I changed it and re-ground balanced.
It was better now, the none ferrous tones where more crisp and not so broken.
Still it was beeping every second or so, so I slowed down and lowered volume which made it much more tolerable.
Summary:
It found very little but it did ok, just barely though. A smaller coil would have been prefered but none was available at that time. (forgot at home)
The heavy iron was a plague and that she was constantly chattering didn’t make it more enjoyable really.
Now I moved on to the beach at the camping grounds of the park.
Beach Hunting:
Re-ground balanced, switched to Best Data freq and made a few other adjustments then I felt ready to go.
I quickly learn much foil was at the beach but it was easy to tell by using the VCO pinpoint function as they had irregular shapes.Cool
The method was the same used on the cans in the park.
Not expecting much due to it being hit with my Explorer II I slowly remembered I hadn’t searched it all!
Now after I found the unsearched spot a while I started picking up some coins, I found one tiny child’s toy ring (which often the dentist gave kids back in the days) it was very small with a small green glass piece in.
Now I went to the hunted part of the beach and didn’t really find anything there, a few small pieces of scrap metal my Explorer missed was all.
That was quite expected.
Summary:
It works very well for beach hunting especially with a larger coil.
Note! It was written to make it stand out where the DFX excells, i.e. in which hunting styles it works best.
