Metal Detecting - Here in the Future

As one who has lived through a good portion of the metal detecting hobby, about 60-years of scanning terra firma from the golden summer of 1965. I was armed with an unstable BFO (Beat Frequency Oscillator) metal detector built from plans laid out in Popular Electronics magazine and cobbled together from old television and radio parts, including a search coil made from the antenna windings on fiberboard, torn from  back of an extremely old AM radio. the handle off a push-broom and a birdhouse as a control box. My very first find was a severely flattened FALSTAFF BEER can in the front yard of our South Florida home. It was 2" deep, and my father was extremely surprised when my home-grown instrument indicated it was there! Flagstaff quit distilling beer in 2005, founded in 1845.

But now, I am metal detecting here in the future, with instruments we could never have imagined in our wildest dreams! Metal detecting has long-since come to the masses which has been a double-edged sword in many respects. And like people who are enamored by Star Wars or The Matrix, sometimes have to be reminded, it's just a movie!  Well in the same regard, metal detecting is just a hobby! 

One that will become extinct in the long term if the practitioners don't start using a little sense of purpose and reduce the drama. 

There is no crying in baseball and there is no drama in metal detecting. And one of the best/worst things to happen to the hobby is social media where newbies can get either fantastic assistance or amazingly poor advice or a little of both. The time of year is here where thousands of newbies will be excitedly waiting to hit the beach or park with their shiny new metal detectors and swinging the search coil 3-feet off the ground in an exaggerated golf swing. There are no schools for metal detecting, only word of mouth and the good Samaritan detectorist who will help when they see this sort of thing. People of all stripes in the hobby will be offering as much information and disinformation as they always do. And they will be either protecting their interests in the hobby or welcoming the newcomers with open arms. There are two theories here. The first one, as long as I have been in the hobby, has been that the more responsible people involved in the hobby, the more voices we will have in defense of the pastime, which is ALWAYS under attack by officials. And sometimes with good reason. 

The second is to ignore them and their questions and pleadings, amounting to the normal range of errors and mistakes from digging where they shouldn't to leaving gaping holes in a manicured park. Not good for the hobby at all, and an all too often occurrence. I think the basic solution to this is to join a local metal detecting club. Don't have one nearby? Start one! Grab your buddies and find a cheap meeting place, review established club practices from other groups and get organized. Offer your services to local law enforcement evidence hunts and do good whenever you can! I belong to the Central Florida Metal Detecting Club, just now passed its 50th anniversary here in the middle of Florida. It is a SERVICE oriented club, with an extremely competent and dedicated group of people, striving to help others learn the technical and ETHICAL side of the hobby. And, in this way, keep it out of the trash bin of history. One of the main reasons we join a club is for the camaraderie and that oh-so-hard-to-find treasure, FUN! So, when you run into a fledgling detectorist on-line, in a group, or on a beach, offer to take them on a detecting adventure and show them the ropes. Most of all, remember to pay it forward!