Out in the field

 
A video of my first search by a ruined castle.
 
On my experience: In the above video you can see me, near where I live, exploring the foundations of castle Höhingen which was destroyed in the Thirty Years' War. From here there is a fantastic view across the Rhine Valley and the area may also provide a good opportunity to uncover some ancient buried artifacts — you never know…
 
Both sides of my first finding...
As you can see, I am by no means an expert ‘detectorist’; this was my first time out. At the start of the video you can see my canine companion slinking off into the undergrowth. Despite his apparent disinterest and lackadaisical attitude he is in fact highly trained — his job is to protect me from any assailant who may try to rob me of the gold and diamond-encrusted booty I will shortly be unearthing.
Before long, a series of bleeps indicated something non-ferrous buried beneath my feet. Unfortunately it turned out to be a thin aluminum foil and plastic sealing disk from a soda or screw-top wine bottle, probably carelessly discarded during a medieval banquet back in the 1600’s; the emperor’s troops did a lot of pillaging back then and were well known for being untidy litter bugs…
 
A length of wire, probably from a vineyard was my second find.
On the second outing I found something more substantial buried at a depth of 15 cm. It was a length of rusty steel wire at least — 30 years old?  This area is famous for its viticulture; chances are that in a past life this piece of bent wire would have been used to support a Riesling grape vine. It got me thinking — I had been on the hillside for some time now; on the way home I might just drop into the village watering hole and enjoy a glass of the local tipple in front of a roaring log fire. That way I would be able to appreciate the real treasure produced from the soil in this part of Germany.

Conclusions

On a more serious note, it’s important to be aware of and comply with all the regulations governing the use of metal detectors before you even begin to set out detecting.
The detector is really sensitive and armed with the CS400 you would be pretty well equipped to detect a wide range of buried artifacts, not only those just laying on the surface. Just how sensitive and selective the unit is, can be seen from the following example:
Above my apartment is a loft space and my ceiling is supported on a series of wooden joists, with a layer of wooden boards fixed to their underside supporting light aerocrete concrete blocks filling in the gaps between the joists. Some years ago I wanted to screw a TV mount to the ceiling and found it quite difficult to locate the positions of the load-bearing wooden joists above the layer of plasterboard and wooden planks. I bought a DIY cable / stud finder at the local hardware store so I could work out from below where to put the screws but it proved useless. I thought this might be a good test for the CS400 to see how well it was able to discriminate between the different materials used in the ceiling’s construction. I was surprised how well it was able to locate the positions of the 15 cm thick wooden joists. The metallic salts in the lightweight aggregate concrete blocks between them could be detected through the (2.5 cm thick) layer of wooden planks and 1 cm layer of plasterboard. That was quite impressive.