yowow#1 said:
As someone new to the F-70 i've been using mostly the
dp tones and i really like them. But for the last little bit i've been using
2F tones, and as a relic hunter, 'or should i just say "Junk hunter'
.... i really like the 2F tones also. Another note, the F-70 seems to have more emi issues than any other detectors i have used. I am not mean mouthing the fisher F-70, but can anyone elaborate anything about my increased emi issues? Thanks.
This turned out to be a long one so grab a cup of coffee and a comfortable seat and read on and maybe this might help.
If you want to skip all the babble some tips on hunting with F series units near the bottom.
I have 10 hours in with the F70 so I am not an expert in any way shape or form, but I do have close to or maybe over 1000 hours with an F2, found a ton of great targets in all classifications and have written many posts about how to get the best out of that one and have helped many others learn to tame that particular beast and do the same.
The fact is that from the hundreds of posts, articles and threads I have read about
all the F series detectors and talking to others that own some of these models in my MD club you just have to wrap your head around a few facts if you want to have an enjoyable experience standing behind these things.
Fact one...All of these units are given steroids before they leave the factory and are way overpowered and set to be hot even at start up factory settings.
Fact two...You can turn the sense way down and still get pretty deep with much less noise if you want to but you will sacrifice some depth if you do...not as much as you might think, but some.
Fact three...Noise is just going to be part of the equation and actually is inherent in the language of these things because they are so sensitive on pretty much all settings and they are also affected by EMI a little more than most other brands.
Fact four...If you can learn to deal with this extra noise and learn to ignore the not so solid and squeaky sounding false tones you will get, and there might be many of these or not so much depending on your sites, and then train yourself to recognize the solid sounding "real" tones that good targets like coins and rings will give you then you will be richly rewarded.
If a quiet hunting experience is what you are looking for, absolutely no tones or signals unless you are swinging over a definite solid target even in wide open low trash areas then the Fishers are just not the best ones to use for this type of hunting experience because that is just not the way they behave...and especially if you hunt like I do on pretty much max sense most of the time.
I had some training in hunting with an extremely noisy detector that no others I have ever read about have ever experienced that helped me learn to deal with these noise issues that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy but actually turned out to be something very valuable that helped me become a much better detectorist in the long run and as bad as it was I will never regret...even though it was the most frustrating and worst way to enter this hobby you can imagine.
I started out hunting in Birmingham Ala. with a cheap BH Pioneer EX that had some issues because it couldn't handle the extremely hot ground in that area of the country that the southern states all seem to have and we had the extra bonus of natural occurring veins of iron ore running through most of that area and even small particles of iron that was saturated and existed in most of the dirt, too.
When I say the depth was pitiful I mean it.
In the worst of that stuff
ALL detectors were on an even playing field because no matter what detectors we used, Minelabs, Whites, Tesoros, Fishers or anything else that was a VLF type 3-4" was usually the limit for most of us and that was with DD coils and all other coil types also.
Maybe 5" was possible in damp soil and sometimes we could find some cleaner soil that enabled us to go a little deeper but that was rare.
It didn't stop us from finding a lot of fantastic targets because not everything great is super deep, but it was challenging to hunt under those conditions to say the least.
My particular BH unit could not handle that hot soil in the least and no matter what sensitivity it was set on from low to high it falsed an just about every swing and that is not an exaggeration.
Only the fact that I am an extremely stubborn type of person prevented me from throwing this thing into a lake and giving up the whole hobby almost before I really began...it was that bad.
I really found that I loved the hobby so much that I persevered and in time learned to listen...really listen to all those squeaky and jumpy false tones I heard on every swing and focused on picking out the more solid and real good tones the thing would still give off when the coil ran over a real target in the soil...good and bad.
Three months I went through this and over 100 hours swinging that stupid thing but the silver lining of all this boot camp hell I went through was that I did eventually learn to pick out the good tones from the bad and when I upgrade to a much quieter Vaquero and then eventually purchased a Compade and the F2 all this training turned out to be priceless and that ability to pick out the good tones from the bad came in handy and something I still am grateful for to this day.
This training and ability was ESPECIALLY useful when swinging that F2 which was the noisiest one out of all three and I had no problem swinging that thing on max sense most of the time and used it to find so much clad and other great targets even I am amazed sometimes at what I was able to accomplish.
Moving over to new hunting areas here in Kansas with no soil issues at all it was even better, but I still used the F2 more than my others, still hunted on max sense most of the time and still had issues with a large amount of extra noise because I did but that never bothered me because I still have the ability to ignore the false signals and focus in on the good ones and I proceeded to find much more and better quality targets than probably should be allowed by law hunting with such an entry level unit like the F2.
The reason I got so good with that F2 and could do these things is because I got very fluent in the Fisher language and understood the false tones and also learned to read between the lines when looking at the screen and how the numbers behaved, jumping or stable.
Now I purchased and used the F70 on 4 hunts so far and have about 10 hours in and I can tell you this...the language in this great unit is almost exactly the same as the F2 and I suspect inherent every F series unit up and down the line and that language can be noisy.
As a matter of fact it is noisy and some can deal with it or learn to deal with it and some never do.
So many posts and comments I have read from owners that got these and then got rid of them pretty quickly out there, with comments ranging from "The noisiest detector I ever swung", and "It just wouldn't quiet down" to "It was just unusable".
Again, the F series is not like most other brands out there with a much quieter experience when hunting, or at least nothing like the experience I have when using the only other brands I own and swing, two Tesoros and a Compass Judge 2.
Nor are they like a few others I have tried switching around with hunting buddies like an E-Trac and a 305 and a few others.
As I said the natural language of the entire range of the F series detectors have a good amount of noise involved with it...but those of us that have come to know this and have learned to deal with it and understand it have gone onto finding great things with them and have come to love them and use that noisy language and behavior to our advantage while others never did learn these things, even wanted to try or maybe tried but gave up.
Different strokes for different folks and this is a hobby not a job and you should use tools that let you enjoy it and not frustrate you so those that tried these noisier types and decided it was not for them I can hold no grudge against them at all...it just turned out not to be their thing.
Me, I love the noisy language because I have dealt with it so long and have learned to understand it to the point that it feels natural to me so when I switched from using the F2 into the F70 it seemed like I never dropped a beat and it was a very smooth transistion just like I had hoped it would be.
I still hunt on the higher sense settings so for for the most part and the thing is still noisy because of that but I have had four hunts so far and have found some great things and wrote up my experiences with 3 of those hunts and I still have not even begun to play with all the different combinations of settings that are possible.
I am still a total newb with this one but that has not stopped me from finding all kinds of great things like easily found clad and even silver on my first hunt and gold on maybe my third hunt and definitely gold on my fourth.
My advice to you is spend time with it and learn that language.
It is a different one than you may be used to but it is rich and understandable when you put in the hours.
Turn the sense way down if you need to and switch frequencies maybe also which will probably give you a much quieter experience as you are learning.
Even 60 on the sense is pretty high for this powerful beast and according to IBdiggin and mudpuppy even way lower than that this thing still goes surprisingly deep and actually seems to concentrate the scanning field a bit which will also give you a little less noise.
Play with the other tone modes a bit, we all seem to have an affinity for some over others and just figure out what are the right ones for you.
I, myself, have mostly used 4F because it is similar to the F2 4 tone mode and something I am very familiar with, and the added ability to change the nickel area to a high tone is very handy to a jewelry hunter like me and did acually help me to find a beautiful gold ring after only 10 hours swing time in a very trashy area.
Here are some real world tips about the F series language I learned well swinging the F2 and seems to transfer over to the F70 100% so far in my limited experience.
False tones may be solid sounding to you at first but there usually is a difference betwen these and a real target that is usually fuller, sometimes louder and does not sound exactly like those better targets we actually do want to dig.
Sometime a very subtle difference but it is there and just needs to be learned so you can recognize those differences.
I never look at the screen when I swing, I am looking at the coil moving over the ground and only look at that screen when I hear one of those good sounding and solid tones no matter where they come in high or low.
False tones can be caused by many things and EMI is just one of them.
When you swing over real targets you can get some false and squeaky sounding tones as different parts of the coil move over targets and especially irregular shaped trash like foil, can slaw and tabs, particularly tabs that are shallow and/or oriented perpendicular to the surface.
The only way to get a real reading on the iffy stuff is to
get the target under the center of the coil.
I work most targets I come across by moving that coil side to side with short swipes to try to find that middle sweet spot and the most stable numbers and tones before I decide to dig.
On the F2 I set a rule not to dig anything that had numbers that jumped more than 2..on this one I am still getting used to it so I upped that dig me number a little higher to 3 or sometimes 4-5 as long as I heard a good solid tone which is the real trigger that always gets me to dig.
Targets not under the center can sound squeaky and will cause the numbers on the screen to jump and mean really jump more than 5 numbers and even into other sections.
These units are so sensitive you can actually get some jumpy numbers and false tones from targets that are not even under the coil but outside the diameter edge.
If you do get a solid tone and can get that thing under coil enter do that little side to side swipe thing and get that tone to repeat from one direction or maybe take the time to hit it from another and watch those numbers on the screen.
Numbers that jump too much no matter what you do are usually indicating trash, and if you get numbers from one way and they change a lot hitting it from another also usually going to be trash.
Good targets for me have almost 100% of the time been repeatable from all directions, solid sounding and stable in the numbers without much jumping.
These rules and tips are for targets that are the more shallow type from almost on the surface to maybe 6-8" deep which in good soil this thing should reach easily.
Targets that are really deep can be aquired but all bets are off on exactly how they will act when they are at the limit of the scanning field which in my good soil might actually be 10" or a little more with the standard 10" elliptical coil mounted.
I did come across a signal on my first hunt that pinpointed at 10" deep on the screen numbers but was only a one way repeating hit and there were not any numbers to be seen on the screen at all when passing over this target.
It turned out to be a beaver tail tab in the hole every bit of 10" deep so I dug it because I was curious but I really don't have all that much experience on those really deep ones using the F70 and hopefully others will chime in here that know more about these signal types than I do.
Other than that all I can say is I am happy I got this one, I am elated I already knew so much of the language that really helped, and I realize there is much more language to learn on this upgraded unit and that is something I am exited and happy to do.
Learning and attempting to master new detectors is one of the more enjoyable things for me to do in this hobby and I hope it will be the same for you and yours.
First hunt...found silver.
http://www.findmall.com/read.php?37,1992121
Second hunt I went to a site right near my house that I have scoured and cleaned up but still found more clad I never knew was there.
Third hunt I had a great time and started to realize how fantastic this thing really is.
http://www.findmall.com/read.php?37,1993051
Fourth hunt was short and sweet.
Sweet because in a total trash pit by listening for that solid tone in all that noise I got one and found gold right next to trash and hit a year long goal on my very last target dug that day.
http://www.findmall.com/read.php?91,1993276
No!!!!! not really, but it is hot. Part of the reason it is so hot is not only the TX(transmit) circuit but also the RX(receive) circuit. The F70 hears really well. Unfortunately it hears the bad also really well. 
And then that danged old REVIER follows it up with a technical manual off a space shuttle or something! Gonna need a six pack to get through that one! Once Dbax logs on, he may have to put on a diaper!
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