Posted by Tom_in_CA
on 7/6/2009, 5:02 pm, in reply to "Sens, Disc, & Depth"
207.200.116.69
Just curious: what state are you talking of, when you say you were in the "high desert"? I dunno about other states, but if your site is no secret to the history books, then it has been pounded to h*ck probably. Even if locales, owners, etc... say it's "never been hit", trust me, it has. That is the case for RR camp sites in So. CA/AZ anyhow. At least the colorful known sites anyhow (even if nothing but desert nothing-ness is left now). And no doubt, those early arrivers rejected all the iron, and honed in on conductive targets.
But in any case, you should be able to knock our larger iron (cast iron, RR-spike sized stuff, etc..) by simply increasing your disc. control. And not sure about the coin scanner pro, or the wally-mart detector, but with most other machines I've used (various 2-filter machines for instance) you can usually still tell the larger iron vs conductive hits anyhow, just by sound (the abruptness in disc. mode, or whatever).
On the up-side, the fact that you hear lots of iron, means there was lots of human activity there 
On the downside, "community", in terms of RR stops, could mean nothing more than a temporary mail or water stop, that never amounted to anything. A simple "mail stop" (nothing more than someone's front porch or whatever, serving a few neighbors) can sometimes get morphed into a "town" in modern history books.
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