It was with great excitement recently when I opened a package from Minelab and got my first look at the new PRO-FIND 35 pinpointer. For a long time I’ve been wanting Minelab to make a fully waterproof pinpointer, and at last they have. When the weekend came around, I didn’t need any prompting to get out and try it…
The first thing I noticed about this new unit is the colour. It’s bright yellow, so if you were to drop it, even in murky water, it will stand out. Also, whilest it doesn’t float, it does stand upright making it easy to retrieve. Operation is straightforward. With a press of the power button, the unit beeps and is ready to go. If you’re using it in salt water, as I was, it is important to turn it on while in the water otherwise the salt mineralisation in the water will cause false signals. Turning it on in the water effectively “ground balances” the PRO-FIND to the salt water.
After I had a play with the PRO-FIND 35, to become familiar with the sounds and signal response, it was time to go and look for some goodies and put it to work. I started off by searching the shoreline and, as I often do when I receive a good signal, I recover it with my sand scoop and give it a rinse in the water before looking in the scoop. Sometimes, as happened this time, the item was small enough to fall through the holes in the scoop back into the water. This would normally result in me having to dig up more sand and get it back on dry land to have a poke around in search of the target. This time however, I was able to simply run the tip of the pinpointer around the area and I quite quickly located a small brass eyelet.
Once I had been up and down the shoreline it was time to attach my floating sifter to my belt and head out into the water. It wasn’t long before I had a nice sounding signal under my coil, a quick pinpoint, scoop, and I had a pile of shell and sand in my sifter. This is where a pinpointer comes in really handy as any items that have been in the sediment generally turn a grey colour which matches all of the other pieces of broken sea shells .
I have been known to spend several minutes peering into my sifter and moving the shell and gravel about in the hope of seeing what I had found. Not this time! Once I had the contents of the scoop in the sifter, I simply ran the pinpointer through the pile of shells and in a few seconds had located the target, which this time was a $2 coin. I can certainly see the PRO-FIND 35 getting some use this coming summer along the beaches and rivers. I also can’t wait to try it out at some of my shallow dive sites!
You can see more about my detecting adventures on my YouTube channel “Westcoast Mark” and my own bloghttp://westcoastmark.wordpress.com/.
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