Minelab CTX3030 - First Hunts and Initial Impressions

Hello again, welcome back. It's been a long time since I did a metal detecting video, but this is a metal detecting video. Believe it or not, yes it is. Now there's gonna be at least two hunts in this video because I'm not getting much time with my work to go out and do my hobbies. And as we know, if you've done any metal detecting, it can take a hell of a long time to find anything of interest. So in this one, am I out with the E-track? Am I out with the Deus? Am I out with the ATX? No, I'm out with the CTX. 30-30 with the big coil and I'm going to go into places that I have pounded with my other detectors to see if this fella offers anything different and if I can pull anything up from depth. That's my goal. Any machine can find shallow targets, no problem at all. Or any decent machine can find shallow targets, no problem at all. But I want to test this in places that I've hammered. That will be a proper test, so that's why it'll probably be two hunts at least. Now, unless you've got limitless time, or you just don't care what your wife thinks about your detecting, you've got to go when you can, so you need a good detector. I'm always searching for the next best detector, and I've got some good ones. I do have them for specific reasons, and I was a bit worried about getting the .30-30 because I do so well with e-track and I hunt mostly pasture. That seems to be the 30-30's main strength. I don't hunt the beaches very often unless I'm on holiday and I've got the ATX for that. And that's phenomenal, especially under the water. Absolutely love it. So I got this primarily for pasture, deep silver on pasture. That's what I love to dig because not a lot of machines will find that. I know that e-track does and I'm hoping this does. So let's see how we get on. First hunt is in just a little bit of local woodland that I've been in a few times with various detectors. Never found anything of real interest or importance, but we'll see how I get on. Well, I'm actually on the way to the wood that I'm going to be hunting, and I've just pulled up a button here in the field. Oh, it's a nice one. G'day. Now, the reading on the machine said seven inches, and that was pretty accurate. It pretty much bang on seven inches. And it looks like an artillery button of some sort. It's got three cannons on there. That's nice. Good. Gave a lovely clear signal. Good find to start off. Here's another one that gave a really good tone. This was reading 1538. Said it was about six inches, and pretty much was about six inches. Maybe it's five. Just a plain button. Gave a cracking signal, though. After a bit of a tussle finding it, I've got a little musket ball. Possibly of a small rifle, but more likely out of a pistol. It's been fired as well. It's got a little flattened bit on it there. But that gave a reading of 1221 or 1222. So I was kind of hoping that would have been a hammered coin or something even better like a gold ring, but it wasn't. Another one right near the top. This one's a bullet. Pretty big one. It's a very big one. It's more like a blooming crossbow bolt, that. It looks like it's a 303 maybe. Hellish long. God, I wouldn't like to get hit by that. Big 1238 signal. Yields a big musket ball. It's a beauty. Absolute beauty. That's never hit anything. What a cracker. What a belter. It did say that was about six inches deep and in reality it was only two. I know the signals can be a bit iffy because you're firing signals down and they're going to bounce off at all sorts of angles off a sphere. But that's a beautiful find. What a cracker. Well, all the stuff I found there was very shallow. I think pretty much any half-decent detector could have found that. Next hunt. I'm going to be in the fields around my house which have been pounded by myself with at least three or four different detectors over the years. I'm expecting to find absolutely nothing because I have pounded it and the last couple of times I've been out with the e-track I think I found a couple of lumps of lead way down, maybe a button or two and that was it. This fella, if it can do better, I will be impressed. Pretty deep one here, good eight, eight and a half inches That's a coin. Well that's a surprise. That was reading pretty much in the middle of the screen and it wasn't a very good signal but I don't know whether it was on end or it certainly wasn't lying flat. Still gave a diggable signal at a good depth on pasture. Ah, I can just see the head. Victoria Bunhead. There she is looking to your left with the little bun on the back of her head. A promising one here. Says it's 12 inches. If this is a coin, I'll be over the moon. It's having a very hard job locking onto the target, so it's either very small or, as it suggests, very deep. Well, I've just given the coil a run over this, and whatever it is is in here, it's reading 943, which is good. I'm already down to about, I don't know, 12, 13 inches down there. It's come out in the last spadeful, allegedly. Oh, how you up, man? Awesome, absolutely awesome. I say awesome way too much. But this time, I absolutely mean it. This was from in the bowels of the earth. And it's a silver. The E-TRACT loved silver. CTX loves silver. This was as deep as hell. I'll, I'll, wait. Quite literally as deep as hell. I'm sure I've opened up a portal to hell here. I'll bring the camera in and let you have a look. But first of all, I'll show you the coin. Which is a shilling of some sort. Here it is. Still on the little clod of earth. It's in good nick as well. And it's pre-1920, so it's sterling silver. There you go. Is that in focus? Just about. 1916 shilling. George V. Gave a diggable signal, and that was way down. Check this out. And bear in mind, this came out in the last spoonful that I brought out of this hole. Here we've got the lie detector. The total length is approximately 9 inches. And I'm going to stick this in vertically. There you go. And we've got... I don't know, three or four inches above the probe. That's a damn deep silver. Good signal, good find, bloody good detector. I've got a very shallow target here. I've just flipped it over. It's in here somewhere, reading 1128. But I think I'm being watched. It's that collection of stones there. Yep, it's a little rabbit. A little rabbit just sitting watching me. See what this is. Give a good signal both ways. A lump of thin aluminium, I think. Not a good find. Now hopefully this will come out well on film, but it's almost dark now, and I got a signal there that was reading 840. It was jumping around a hell of a lot, and it's not very deep, which makes me think it's probably not a good target, or it's a badly orientated one. It said it was 12 inches deep, and that's nowhere near 12 inches. It's the end of a screw, or the end of a nail, or something. Now reading 1524 is what I think, well I was hoping it was a coin, but I think it's a button. Yeah, it looks like a button. It's a very bent coin. I can't see that very well, but it actually looks like it's got a bit of a portrait on it. Very difficult to tell, because it's getting dark, and it's not very clean. It's possibly a bent coin, that. Well, hey, let's get the light out. Now, there's something silvery, hmm, actually, maybe it's not silvery-coloured. Light-coloured, anyway, down in the bottom of here, approximately 8 inches deep. It was giving a signal, I think it was 0834, but it was jumping round a lot in the top right-hand corner. Possibly just, I was going to say possibly just a bit of pipe, but it, oh man, could this be my first silver thimble? It's a thimble. I don't know whether it's silver or not, but if it is, believe it or not, that would be my first. It is silver. Yeah, it's got lovely patterns on the outside. That is my first silver thimble, believe it or not, after all these years. All these years of finding stuff. I've come to a field that I've pounded so many times. Silver thimble. It's pretty crushed. But that's a cracking find. I mean, you can see how deep that was. Pretty deep. Gave a repeatable signal. Definitely worth a dig. And I'm over the moon with that. Get in there. Another one from a good depth. This was reading 12 or 11.38, I think. And it looks like we've got another coin. Or possibly a washer. No, no, it's a coin. And it looks like a modern penny. Now that's got Britannia on the back. A little head. And I think I can read Georgius. His head's facing to the right. So I think that's George III. Looks like a George III farthing. It seems to have reasonable detail on as well, so I'll get that one cleaned up. It was a good find, because that was pretty well down in there. Good depth again. I'll just quickly show you those silvers, now that I've cleaned them up a little bit. That's the George V, 1916 shilling. In pretty good condition, especially on that side. And that one's the silver thimble. I found that quite near a Georgian farthing. Which I'll clean up and probably show you in another video. But that one hasn't got a hallmark on but I'm pretty pretty sure it's silver. Certainly not silver plated because it's bashed. If it was silver plated it would be all flaking off, it'd be manky you know. So two bits of silver very early on in the CTX 3030's detecting career. Excellent. Well that was awesome. Sorry it went into the dark. As I say I don't get much time so I've just got to go detecting now whenever I can. Two bits of silver in approximately two and a half hours on fields that have been really really hammered. Exceptionally pleased with that. This handled very well. It did actually get a little bit tiring after maybe about an hour and a half using the big coil. I did have the stem at full extension and it was the end of the day. Now those two finds are marked on the 3030 using the GPS, The find marker. So next time, when I'm out there, I'll bring that up, it'll have a little X on, I'll be able to see myself getting closer and closer, and then I'll spiral outwards from that point and give it a really, really good going over, and hopefully should pull more up from that side. Overall, I found this very well balanced, even with the big coil. It's exceptionally well balanced with the 11-inch coil. I like the colour display, I like the target trace. The actual target ID does jump around a little bit. I was expecting it to be a little bit more stable but a lot of the targets I dug were at depth so I can forgive it for that. The target trace It leaves you in no uncertain terms as to what to dig. If it turns yellowy or red, you know there's something right under the coil and you've got to dig it. Providing it's in the right half of the screen. Obviously, if you get a massive lump of iron reading right down the bottom of the screen, you might not want to dig it. Nobody wants to carry that around. I like the pin point, which is just a little button under here. You had to press a button on the e-track, which in the dark, you sometimes couldn't find and you would end up noise cancelling, which was a real pain in the backside. This one is well out of the way of all your controls here. It's underneath here, a little button. Keep that held in, backwards and forwards across it. It gradually gets smaller and smaller and smaller. There's also a little visual indication on there, which lets you know you're bang over the target. And pretty much every single time, it was in the centre of the coil. Worked very, very well. So far, I love it. Very, very good. Can't wait to get out with it again, but I don't know when that'll be. Thanks very much for watching. I'll see you next time. Remember, always leave your holes as you found them.