Polly's Parlour — XP ADX150 & Garret Pro-Pointer AT Field Test (Part 1)

Not so straight-out-of-the-box, slick, pristine and modern-looking now, eh?

Either I had miscalculated or the weatherman had. The rain predicted to arrive in Coventry at around five in the afternoon came early and of course, I got caught out in the field. I had about half an hour of dry weather beforehand but then it started to spit continuously and carried on drizzling for the next fifty minutes after which I packed up and headed home.

And so my field test, which was to be two hours in length, was just 1 hour and 20 minutes in duration. No matter; it was enough time in which to get a feel for the field performances of both the XP ADX150 & Garret Pro-Pointer AT.

On the previous day, I had set the 150 up for Judy on full sensitivity and minimum discrimination but thought that that might have caused her a few problems. And so, today I set it up at the default sensitivity, which is marked with a red arrow on the dial, and notch 2 for discrimination.

The ADX150 had 5 targets to achieve.

1. It must get me to dig at least thirty signals per-hour that will result in non-ferrous objects.
2. It will find large pieces of coke, though not small fragments unless on the surface.
3. It must find small items in the top six-inches and very small items in the top three.
4. It will knock out small ferrous scrap but should allow me to find and remove larger pieces.
5. It will prove itself for good depth if a very faint non-ferrous signal would be encountered.

These requirements are only what I generally ask of the Laser B1 everywhere and more specifically, what it has proven itself capable of doing on this particular field — in essence, the two machines were going head-to-head upon a known environment where the XP ADX150 had to match up to to the Laser B1 on five scores already established there as desirable ones...

Or else!

Initially, I'd set out with the 150 on loud-speaker but within ten minutes I'd fished out the supplied headphones and plugged them in, because, competing against the background noise from the nearby busy road, I could hardly hear enough audio information to be certain of anything but the very sharpest, cleanest signal. The difference was remarkable. All of a sudden the machine was intelligible and signals were easy to read. The tone was a bit squelchy sounding to my B1 ears, but I could deal with that. The finds rate soared and it was clear that the target of 30 recoveries per-hour would be achieved and perhaps even surpassed. And yes, it did respond to large pieces of coke but ignored fragments, and so it hit target number 2 also.

Unfortunately, not a Lizzie I shilling... But for just a sweet moment - it might have been!

I began using the AT probe. Because the soil was fast becoming soppy it was a boon not having to divide it all by hand. It was fast and accurate but it seemed that I had to have the tip very close to the object before it would register. I thought that this may well be down to sensitivity settings and so I decided to experiment with those later. The way it was set up would just have to do for now because it was covered in mud and I needed to re-read the manual!

The bright orange colour is good, though. If it were dropped somewhere you could see it a mile off! The continual beeping alert should you stow the device back in its holster without turning it off first was great too and will avoid running batteries down needlessly.

Because it was performing well, I wondered if the 150 would uphold not only the overall recovery rate per-hour for this site, but also achieve the expected outcome of at least one shirt button, at least one coin, perhaps a toy and a surprise item too?

That's a big ask in a shortened session!

Well, the shirt button was duly located (unbranded...) and so it can find small items in the upper levels of the soil. However, I must say that it did not seem to be locating quite as many very small targets as the B1 would have — in fact, the shirt button was one of the smallest finds made during the session and though there were other finds as small as the button, nothing was found as diminutive as a cut half or quarter-penny. However, this is not yet alarming. I simply may not have passed over anything so very tiny as that.

So, target 3 was partially achieved.

Target 4 was hit when I dug a positive signal that I could not easily find in the hole until the probe located it in the side-wall. It was a piece of iron the size and shape of a Havana cigar. Top marks for the probe!

And as for target number 5?

Would I even come across a very faint, non-ferrous signal?

The answer was yes, I did. It was a soft sweet signal and good in every direction but just a whisper really. I expected iron as I dug down 4, 6 and 8 inches. The signal became a little louder as the soil was removed, but not by much. The probe could not find the object at 4 or 6 inches but at 8 inches it finally located the item which proved to be a large brass harness buckle laying on its side, plumb in the centre of the hole and at about 9 1/2 inches in depth.

Two 'coins' were also found, but one proved to be just a thin disc of brass and not a coin at all. No matter, it was coin-shaped. And then, with the 150 having hit almost all performance targets and having achieved some of the expected outcomes too, I was satisfied and so I began to wind my way back to the gate.



Along the way, I stopped and dug a loud positive signal and flipped up something that was felt by its weight alone to be just a lump of old lead...

But it was not just any old lump of lead. It was deer number two and yet another toy added to our growing collection from this interesting site.

As I said in the previous post — the numbers never lie!