Minelab E-TRAC Forum

Kymer 74
I hope you don't take this post the wrong way. Use conductive mode not TTF. If you don't believe me try this experiement with your etrac. Go to manual 25 sensitivty. Drop a dime on clean ground and sweep with your coil in conductive mode. Put your headsets on and start sweeping near the dime and progressively continue to sweep the dime from higher distances. You should hear a high tone up to about 10 or so inches and watch the ferrous numbers while your sweeping. Now go to TTF and repeat. Watch what happens when you get about 6 inches away from the dime and you continue to raise your coil while sweeping. You should start at some point to hear on some sweeps a higher tone and others a grunt. Now imagine throwing in some nails/iron, ground mineralization, it would be awful hard to detect a silver dime at say 8 inches on every sweep of the coil wouldn't it. I realize this is an airtest. But it does shed some light on the differences. For me TTF is an additional mode not my primary mode for relics or coins/jewelry. I will venture a guess that there are no 9 inch plus silver dimes recovered in TTF even in the sweetest of soils.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/18/2012 07:46PM by squirrel1.

I have a killer Etrac, it nails silver all the time in my beat up parks. But if I am going to hunt relics, then I use my Fisher 1266-X and a 12" hothead coil. Can set it to just knock out nails but still get the other stuff. I have 4 people waiting in line for when and if I ever sell it. It is not made anymore. frequencies used on it are 5 and 15khz........NGE

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Exposure to the Son, Prevents burning......

Some of the other Fishers like the 1212x can disc out regular dimes while still finding silver. Sold mine and now I wish I still had it. Idigid

Took the etrac 2 days ago to the area I mentioned in an earlier post. Went with ttf and a 5"sunray coil. Got zip. The hunt buddy I mentioned in earlier post took his AT pro to the area the next day and pulled a an 1887 indian penny. He has used garretts in the past, about 9-10 months ago he got an etrac and did well( he also went back over areas with the garrett and pulled more coins that the etrac missed), before that he had an se pro.
He got the AT pro 2 weeks ago and says it fits like a glove. Yes I have found some good stuff with the etrac. But at two different sites I've hunted, he pulls stuff and I haven't. The reason I got the etrac(I've had the etrac a few months now) was was to go back places I've been and dig stuff out. I'm wondering if the etrac is as good in high trash as all the hype. If he had pulled 1 coin from this particular site I wouldn't have thought to much about it but to pull 3 coins on different hunts and silver to boot, I got to wonder whats going on.

Joe, it may be the way you have your etrac set up.....NGE

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Exposure to the Son, Prevents burning......

nge
yes considered that. have ran at least 3 different set ups, am going to try again with lower sens. am open to suggestions.

squirrel1
Interesting but I don't put much faith in air tests.
When the weather allows, am going to test your theory in the test garden.

Joe, you need to spend a lot of time with your E-Trac. If an At-pro was out hunting it, something was setup wrong. It's also possilbe you didn't swing you coil over the coins. I am still pulling old clad (including quarters) from a park I have hunted about a dozen times. It's extremely difficult to truly cover every square inch of ground.

Unless your buddy can hit a target with good ID that you can't with your E-Trac you have no evidence to prove he finds stuff the E-Trac can't.No doubt he finds stuff you missed as it is almost impossible to cover every square inch in even a small area.I find lots of stuff I have missed in past when I thought I had covered an area quite well.
You must compare targets with competing machines to prove anything conclusive at all.

Just A Suggestion

Can you contact local MDers who have had the ET for a while and go out together?

I have always found the" Live Show" is very helpful and have offered that opportunity to some newbies locally

Good Luck

Yeah have done that at different places.

Kymer- Good original post. I'm going to keep on plugging away with it
Got some ideas from different ones. Talked to some etrac users over on the AT pro forum and some of them had some good thoughts on it.
If you get a better handle on it I'd like to hear how you did it.