I was on a dig recently hopefully scanning the surface of the recently "disced" field with my E- TRAC, with over twenty other members of our club. I realised that I was getting close to one of my pals who was detecting in front of me and realised that he may have just covered this part. However he wasn't using a Minelab so I wasn't unduly worried. This sounds arrogant but I have learned in the past that the E-TRAC picks up things missed by others. I won't say what detector he was using, but it is a very good machine that does uncover some very good artefacts.
Sure enough one of "those" signals literally jumped into my ears. It was reading three quarters of the way along the twelve line and showing fairly deep. Lovely crisp high frequency two way signal. Even before I dug it, I said to my pal that he had missed a hammered coin. This got his attention but he carried on detecting. So I dug it! At about 9 inches down, there it was, a cut half, silver, hammered coin, later identified as originally a Henry III penny, now cut in half to become a half penny.
Obviously, I couldn't keep this quiet so I called my pal over to look at it. He detected his way back the twelve yards or so and on the way back he got a signal on his machine. To his credit, he asked if he could dig it as he was quite close to me by then. I said that I didn't mind and that he should go ahead.
When he dug out the first spadeful of dirt, the signal disappeared on his machine. One sweep of the E-TRAC revealed that it had fallen deeper into the hole. Another spadeful and it was out. Again, it was a Henry III coin but this time a farthing. So there you are, if you are wondering if the rumours of greater depth with the E-TRAC are true, I can assure you that they are!
Gary - UK