The voice on the telephone belonged to the farmer on whose land I had gained permission to search. A nicer man you will never meet but, as we went through the usual introductions, my mind was reviewing what I might have done wrong. There were no gates to shut and I was pretty sure that I had not been on land that he had sown, so what was left? It soon became clear. “Clive, I wonder if you could use your detector to find my wedding ring. I know which field I lost it in and I have had a look and cannot find it.” It is now necessary to make two facts clear. The first was that I knew he had recently married and would thus be very upset at losing this ring. The second is that I had only been detecting for a few months and was both very inexperienced and had a basic starter detector that my wife had given me for Christmas. In the time that I had been detecting, I had found virtually nothing apart from a few pieces of scrap iron and was not sure how good my detector actually was. My confidence in both my own ability and that of my machine was very low and help was needed urgently if I was to stand any chance of finding this item. I rang Laura, at Detecnicks, and put the problem to her. Nothing ruffles this lady and she offered me the use of her X-TERRA 70 as she felt I stood a better chance with this machine. I went to see her and she gave me a lesson in using the machine. We spent some time with various bits of gold, including her own wedding ring, so that I had some familiarity with the working of this, to me, very advanced piece of kit. I also knew the reading that I wanted to see on the display when gold was found. She recommended that I use the elliptical coil, although I have to say, when I compared its size to that of the coil on my own machine, it looked very inadequate. However, I did not feel that I could argue and set out on my mission. The farmer took me to a field where he had been baling hay and showed me where he had parked his tractor and where the baler had stood. This left an area of pasture land about twenty metres square where the ring was believed to be hiding. Not wishing to have my inadequacies exposed to public gaze, I suggested that he leave me there and I would let him know how I got on. Using some sticks and bits of equipment, I marked out the search area and set about methodically going back and forth to cover the ground. One hour later and I had heard no signal of any kind. I turned so that I was now covering the ground at ninety degrees to my first search. One and a half hours later, I heard the detector come to life. The reading was not what I expected, but I was getting to the point where I would search anything. There was the ring, lying on its side, snugly settled in the grass. I rang my wife, to tell her the good news and headed back to the farmhouse. There being no one at home, I left the ring on the kitchen table and a note that said, “The ring is found. Regards. Frodo.” The result of my activity was twofold. The first was a very grateful call from the farmer who said that both he and his wife were relieved to get the ring back. He also planned to have it made a little smaller as this was not the first time he had dropped it! The second was that I wanted an X-TERRA 70 of my own. Any machine that could compensate for my inability had to be good. I am pleased to report that I have achieved my ambition and been very happy with my choice. It has given me good service and, just recently, rewarded me with my first hammered silver coin. Shortly I shall be taking delivery of a new X-TERRA 705 and may, ultimately, give some thought to moving further up the Minelab family. However, I shall always be in debt to a borrowed X-TERRA 70. Clive Lewis – West Sussex, UK