a 1936 wheat was all I could do

[Mike Hillis]

Finally got to take the Explorer outside. Used it for about 6 hours straight yesterday.

Took it to a couple of older parks that I knew had been hunted over and over for the last 40 years. Hunting and fooling with it getting accustomed to the audio and display and moving around it. The ground was in nice condition so I didn't have any qualms about digging plugs, which is a nice change. Dug small rusty iron like wire and other trash thinking it was deep silver. Saw it was going to take awhile to understand how it acts around it. Got tired of 70's era pennies at 5-7" after several hours, so I moved on to another small park.

Again listening for deep high conductive targets gave me a deep rusty nail which put me off for a bit. But with a little persistence, I finally retrieved a 1936 wheat penny that inspired me. and disappointed me since I scrapped it.

Now I've got the questions.

Whats the best way to ground balance? I know that it doesn't have a 'ground balance' control, that everything is contained in the noise cancel, but whats the best way to setup? I know I'm missing a good setup. I took it easy and took it to my better ground before I threw my bad stuff at it, but I need to know the set up sequence before I do.

How do you handle the rusty iron? Do you put a thin reject strip up the right side to kill it? What are the tricks?

It was fun though.

HH

 

[Chris(SoCenWI)]

With the Explorer there is no ground balance. The detector does this for you automatically.

Noise cancel has nothing to do with ground balancing. The noise cancel slightly shifts the transmit frequencies and tries to pick a frequency that has the least amount of electrical noise present. As you gain more experience you will find sites that you can not turn up the sensitivity very far. This is because of near by electrical noise sources, generally powerlines.

Rusty iron is tough. Square nail in particular have a tendency to sound like coins. There are ways to eliminate most iron; all of them take experience to figure out. This has been discussed many times and you should be able to find much info on the Explorer classroom archives.

 

[Captain Kirk]

Mike,

Nails and iron almost always hits in the upper LEFT corner of the screen. Try using the IRON MASK mode with a setting between -10 and -14 and see if that helps reject the iron. This setup will produce a dark vertical strip showing the discriminated targets.

In the CONDUCTIVE mode iron and silver coins sound very close to the same and it takes a well trained ear to tell the difference. Personally, I like to hunt in the FERROUS mode. With this setup iron gives a low pitched growl and coins (and most good targets) produce a higher pitched tone that makes it easy to separate out the iron without looking at the screen.

Hope this helps,
Glenn

 

[Mike Hillis]

I felt good to just get that wheaty out of that place.

HH

 

[Jim C (Mich)]

..Plus it pegs WAY up in the upper right where other coins will not hit. Plus pinpointing two ways will "almost" always tell ya if its iron or a coin. There are always exceptions.
Be patient!! You will start to learn what the explorer is telling you then you will be dangerous. Give it time it will all come together. I was a doubter at first and was expecting deep old coins everwhere and everytime I went out. I just needed to learn the thing and now, after 6 years with it I would not have any other detector.
As the years with have gone by I have learned that high sensitivity with the explorer is not a must. It just needs to be stable in whatever ground condition you are detecting. If that means a 15 sensitivity setting than the thing will still plunge very deep.
Just my ramblings. Jim