Inspired by the adverts; you know the ones, where the signs pop out of the sand, I actually parted with 25 perfectly good drinking vouchers to acquire a "Metal Detector" that I thought my 6 year old grandson would be able to play with and maybe even come out on the field to find a few pennies that might have found their way into the ground for him
Well, we turned it on and tuned it to it's threshold and voila! Hold a 50p next to the coil and it goes off, woohoo. Interestingly though, it didn't emit a continuous tone, oh no it didn't, it went beep (silence) beep (silence) beep... very interesting.
So for a quick test on the lawn, two dozen Liz & George pennies tucked just under the surface and guess what. If the head goes over the find whilst pressed hard enough onto the grass it might or might not go beep, depending on whether you were over the spot on a beep cycle or silence cycle. LOL, talk about slow and low! totally unusable.
So plan B; I gave him the Deus to use. Trouble was it was too big and heavy for him.
Plan C: He spent ten minutes on his hands and knees with the Garrett pro-pointer and grabbed the lot. Now he's well and truly hooked.
Well the stupid beep - beep machine is now back in the returns dept with a size ten footprint on it. Mr Maplin has already been to the rescue and his next detector is already here waiting for the next visit (and it works!)
That stupid machine truly deserves the title. Thanks Argos, not.