Search and Rescue Experience.

As I had not been out detecting for awhile I jumped at the chance to join in a search and rescue operation today. Over the weekend a landowner had contacted our metal detecting club about a part that had fallen off a piece of his machinery while he was out cutting a grassy field. He had heard of our free search and rescue service and wondered if someone could come out and try and find it.
As it happened myself and a fellow club member volunteered ourselves to try and find this lost item. Which was a sort of large thick steel washer, but was more important than that as it was needed to keep the machinery working.

On arrival we were greeted with thanks from the landowner and was shown what the part looked like and  the field where he knows it must have fell off. The field though a funny shape was the size of about 2-3 football fields, so not too bad, and you could see where he had been because of the cut grass. He said he had tried an eyes only search but the cut grass laying about made it more difficult to find but he knew its just laying on the surface somewhere.

I took my Garret Ace 250 for this search because of the large 13" coil I have fitted on it. I just notch out the first two bars on the discrimination and the first two bars on the sensitivity as depth was not a problem here.
First we checked the trackway from his garage to the field entrance, no luck there. The field was slightly sloping so we thought a good idea was to start at the bottom and work our way up. I chose the very bottom of the slope right against the edge of a fence as there seemed to be a level trackway running along the side of the fence and you could see he had drove along here because of the cut grass. I walked this edge swinging normaly, was no need to go too slow because of the size of the part and it being on the surface. I was thinking if I walked over it it was going to blow my eardrums out.

Anyway, after walking a few yards a first sharp signal made me stop and search. Pulling back the loose and cut grass just under the surface a long piece of copper pipe. A few more yards and another sharp signal stopped me and turned out to be a grotty copper halfpenny. I thought nice one, in this search were going to find some coins. Now here's the jammy bit, after only three quarters of an hour searching I got a really belting signal. Dropped to my knees, scrapped away the loose grass, parted the still growing grass and uncovers the missing part. I walked over to my mate grinning like a Cheshire cat holding it up in my hand. He said you never have, I said I have laughing. What's the chances of that finding it so quick, just goes to show how a lot of this hobby is just luck.

We reunited the missing part to the landowner who was thrilled and couldn't believe we found it, let alone so fast. We were told then we could spend as long as we wanted on the field so we had a couple of hours detecting to ourselves.
Just some more grotty copper coins came up. My mate did dig a nice old Victorian Bun Head penny. We gave the coins to the landowner and his young son, but I did keep a forgery sixpence I found as it was kind of interesting to me. I've found one before and they snap very easily, hence the chunk out of it in the picture.

All in all a very interesting day, my first search and rescue mission, and a good result. Maybe we'll get some land out of it for the club time will tell, but at the end of the day it was a good PR stunt and am looking forward to going on more of them.

The landowner did have a metal detector which he showed us and what a sight it was. Just had to take a photo of it with my phone. It was an old Whites Gold Master from the 70s. What a beauty and a collectors item. He said it belonged to an uncle and the batteries were taken out on the last day of its use so should still work in theory.

  Monday 15 September 2014.