treasure hunting again!

On Tuesday we all went to the beach to help Norman run a field test on the new pulse induction metal detector. Michael was designated camera man as he was going to put together a video of the test to put on the website http://www.treasuredetectives.net/ I am new to metal detecting and this piece of equipment looks like nothing I had seen before. Apparently it is designed to detect large pieces of metal buried deep underground like cannons and treasure chests full of gold and other such exciting hoards but it ignores small items such as tin cans, ring pulls and other rubbish that you usually collect while out hunting. Its something to do with the size of the pulse induction sound waves it emits. Whatever! For lots more information and technical stuff http://www.deeptech-bg.com/

Norman brought along a cast iron umbrella base as we were certain we wouldn't find any cannons on Papamoa Beach, and a small piece of scrap metal. As well as videoing the test Michael, with the help of Georgia, also dug a 1 metre deep hole in the sand to bury the metal in. All went well. The detector found the base and ignored the small piece of scrap metal. I was the helper following instructions and we drew quite a crowd from the locals wondering what we were up to.

The detectors are made in Bulgaria and Norman is the first person in New Zealand and Australia to use and distribute them.

I know the daughter of the guy who makes them, Sylvia, visits this blog so hi Sylvia!

Anyway, after the test we were happily congratulating ourselves on a job well done when we remembered we had to retrieve the umbrella base. I can assure you this was no easy task. We almost lost Georgia and Norman down the hole and we did seriously consider leaving it down there but Norman couldn't think of a decent enough excuse to tell his wife Linda as to why they couldn't put the umbrella up in the garden. Then we suddenly realised that the beach was swarming with sand flies!! There were millions of them and they were biting! The little devils are only the size of a grain of sand but that didn't stop them making a tasty lunch out of our legs. We must have had signs on our heads 'fresh meat'. Michael fared the worst and he has 150 bites on his legs. Norman insisted he never got bitten by bugs but he did that day! After a lot of digging, sweating and heaving we managed to get the base out of the hole and made a hasty retreat off the beach to the pub as I was sure I had read somewhere that an ice cool beer was the best cure for sand fly bites. Well, it was worth a try, anyway.