It's quite amusing that, after all the advice we've given, people still doubt the ability of their metal-detectors and the programs installed upon them.
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The scenario is quite simple, if you can't hear it...... it's not there.
Adopting this ethos should remove all insecurities and therefore allow the detectorist to fully enjoy their day out in the beautiful British countryside.

Ignoring the above ethos results in purchasing several machines or constantly changing/tweaking machine programs that have been created by machine experts.
This is just chasing the dream!

So, don't worry, if you're not finding that elusive hammie whammie, it's not there, simples!

After using the same machine for over 7 years and using the latest upgrades, I've never lost faith in the machines performance.
The same goes for the rest of the team, they are fully satisfied with the performance of the Déus, the HF coils and the new X35 coils using the V5.2 software.

Having this belief in our machines allows us to survey areas with full confidence, therefore allowing us to cover ground without loss of time.

This is the result of using the Déus over 7 years....... Results

How time flies! I can't believe that DigNation has finally arrived after booking the tickets last December. It was also an opportunity to meet up with the DigVentures crew after a very successful dig last month when they uncovered a possible C1st Roman villa.
We weren't sure how the weekend would turn out as we had so much on with a new possible permission to visit, a survey around the trenches and of course, the lectures too.

I did wonder if we would see any of the Time Team guys "up close and personal"...... ironically, we ended up drinking with them in the local pub as well as in the green room attached to the lecture theatre.
This was so surreal...... actually chatting to all of the surviving Time Team members that attended the Mick Aston tribute on Lindisfarne in a totally relaxed and open way.
Rob and I spent an hour sat chatting to Phil Harding in the pub and then Francis Pryor, Stewart Ainsworth, John Gater, Helen Geake, Carenza Lewis, the executive producers and all the support crew that helped create Time Team as we saw it.

Meanwhile, we called in to a farm we'd researched for a possible new permission and met up with the landowner. He was so kind and accommodating, he said help yourselves! The field was cultivated stubble but the soil was quite soft and fluffy. It started off well with a Roman brooch appearing in the second signal, unfortunately nothing else was recovered, probably as a result of the soil conditions.

​We made our way to The Holy Island of Lindisfarne to see what areas DigVentures wanted us to survey. We started on the soil heaps and were excited to find two hammered coin; an Elizabethan sixpence in fair condition and a heavily clipped shilling of James Ist.

Part of the DigNation gig was a Saturday night party that involved an inflatable pub, a live performance in the lecture hall and, of course, more trips to the local pub! It was so strange seeing your Time Team icons all over the place and well up for a chat.

The climax of the weekend was a private party on Sunday night at the DigVentures house with members of Time Team enjoying the free flowing bar too! Can't believe I was sat on a bean bag with Helen Geake and discussing LiDAR and other techniques with Stewart Ainsworth! John Gator was also on-hand for topical discussion.

As we were leaving the campsite I learnt that the farm had 600-acres, I couldn't resist the temptation to ask.......

So, that was it, two new permissions, two hammered coins, two days of pure hallucination and two days of meeting new friends, contacts and of course.... the Time Team members in the flesh and in a situation that is totally surreal.

​The next few weeks are going to be interesting as we've met a young lady who's heavily involved with the young farmers association and has lots of contacts with landowners. This is going to flow nicely with our quest for adding potential new permissions to the exhausted sites we have.

We're so excited for the 2018 - 2019 season.
Hopefully, we can guide other members to a more fruitful future in detecting.

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Apart from our jaunt around the English countryside the other week, this was our very first survey of the 2018 - 2019 season.
This is a brand new permission that we came across during that trip.
The landowner said that we could have a look there and then but we had other landowners to see. Rob however decided we should have a look and see what happens.
The field was rolled but had lots of huge voids as the soil was quite dry and solid. Surprisingly we found a cut-half and a denarius of Vespasian in the hour we spent there so it looked to be promising.

We arrived at 8am and the weather was overcast with a southerly breeze but the forecast was said to stay dry.
The field had now been seeded with Oil Seed Rape (OSR) and was flat as a pancake and with no gaping voids at all. The soil was extremely dry and quite powdery although solid enough to give us confidence that depth wont be a problem.

The field was quite large (26-acres) so we had no chance of covering it all but we thought we'd give it our best shot.
This involved the use of our tried and trusted "Zebra" search pattern and this resulted in us quickly finding areas rich in signals and surface finds.

Once we were satisfied where to start, we tightened up our search pattern and it wasn't long before we started to recover lots of Medieval pottery, artefacts and coinage.

In all, we recovered 11 Medieval hammered coins, a bronze stater, 6 Roman coins, several Medieval buckles; one of them zoomorphic, a Medieval casket key, spindle whorls, a Medieval thimble, Medieval skillet fragments, 98 fragments of Medieval pottery with 12 jug handles, Medieval belt mounts and fossils.
The Medieval coinage covered 9 different rulers! There was also a ferrous item that looks to be either a blade or spear as lots of Medieval horse shoes were found too. We were extremely lucky to recover 2 groats (one being Queen Mary Ist) 
One item of interest was the base of a bottle with the name P Naide and a date of 1721 below it. Other modern items were a Gin bottle adornment, a cap badge, an aluminium bird ring, 2 ship halfpennies; one was in decent condition, the other badly corroded.

 Two 13" X35 coils, one using V5.1, the other V5.2 and the third coil; the 9" HF coil flashed to V5.1. The programs used were GMP for the main part of the day with FAST on the extremely busy ferrous area and a quick blast on HOT just to see how it coped.
One of the V5.2 13" coils was set to TRACKING on all programs and and this setup was extremely successful in recovering a wide range of the finds on the day. This of course could have been luck, but on the whole, all three machines performed brilliantly.

​High Definition images of all the finds can be seen here.

There was however a downside to the day, the landowner came over to chat to us and said "glad you're enjoying yourselves, I'll give you a ring next year when I've re-ploughed it and you can come back".
So, now we have to wait until September 2019 before we can return LOL!

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We're off to Lindisfarne on Friday for a long weekend enjoying "DigNation" hosted by DigVentures.
During Saturday and Sunday there will be several talks by lots of archaeologists and members of The Time Team including Sir Tony Robinson, Mick Aston, Dr David Petts, Professor Carenza Lewis, Francis Pryor MBE, Dr Helen Geake and presenter Dan Snow to name a few.

It will be great to meet and chat with the Time Team members and get their views on how metal-detecting has moved on since the 1970's.

It will also be a great chance to display our metal-detecting experience and expertise with all the archaeologists and Time Team members.

Whilst up in the wilds of Northumbria, we plan to call in on potentially what may be a new permission.

I'm sure the weekend will be a blast, hopefully not from Storm Ali that's passing through Northern Britain at the moment!

We'll keep you posted and get back to you early next week.