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An Old Subject With Some New Observations

RLOH

Well-known member
I have been away from Explorers for several years, but I recently traded a F75 for an Explorer 11. It seemed like every detector I tried in the last three to five years, I was always comparing it to an Explorer so the time was right to get back with the best. The F75 had a had a meter to measure the iron in the ground and it also gave a readout of the ground balance number(higher numbers indicated bad ground) I also used an Exterra 70 for six months or so and it also gave numbers which indicated how bad the ground was. I have been hunting an old park for the last four years and I have had much success here with most of the detectors I was using. I did have several detectors that acted up here. I had one of the first Tejons made and it was a deep detector in most spots, but not at this park. I remember having trouble ground balancing that detector in this park. I could not get it balanced correctly in most parts of this park. It was not my ground balancing abilities, but the bad ground in this park. The F75 had the highest ground balance numbers and the meter blacked out most of the icons that indicate iron of any place I hunt. I think this explains why I had so much trouble with the Tejon years ago. Two detectors that worked extremely well here were Fisher CZ's.(Cz6a and CZ 70). These detectors always ended up with a ground balance of 1 to 1 /2 here compared to 4 or 5 at most of my other hunting spots. With the CZ's, I routinely found 8 to 9 inch deep coins here, but some of the newer detectors(F75 and Xterra 70) seemed to be a couple of inches shallower here. Enough of the backround and I will get to my latest venture with the Explorer 11. With the Explorers I used years ago, I always ran manual sens at between 22 and 26 at most of the spots I hunted. I don't think I ever had a spot where I had to use auto sens. When I took the new to me Ex 11 to my bad ground park a couple of weeks ago I set it up with my old iron mask program with manual sens of 24. I hunted all morning with a very erratic detector. I will say that I found some coins that date this park, but I don't ever remember my old Explorers acting this way. But, I never had them in this park. When I went back the next time I started lowering the manual sens and I had it at 12 before it stopped the incessant chirping, but it still was not real smooth. I almost always find wheats or a silver dime at 8 plus inches here when I used a CZ and after a morning of clad, I realized that I had to get the Explorer's sens back up in the high teens or low twenties to find those coins. When I got it back up to where it was erratic, I started picking up deep wheats. I had to do stop and resweep the high pitched chirps. It is time consuming but you could pick out a deep coin. Yesterday I went back and I quickly tired of the noisey chirping so I for the first time switched to auto sens with a setting of 28. The detector's threshold smoothed out and the chirping stopped. Unfortuatelly so did the deep coins. The deepest coin I dug was 5 or 6 inches. I hunted in auto sens for two hours before I decided to switch back to manual with a setting of 22. The Explorer chirped and nulled, but by going real slow, I started finding deep coins again. I tried the Sunray x8 coil yesterday and it was smoother than the stock coil with the same settings. I could the sens up a couple of numbers before it to a point of being unhuntable. Thankfully my other spots do not have ground like this and I can hunt in relative peace. One more note about this park. Some of my long time hunting buddies told me five years ago that this park was all but hunted out. I just looked back at my records to see what I have found here since I started hunting it. I have found 168 silver coins, close to 1900 wheats, 22 buffalos, 29 Indian heads, and 12 V nickles. Throw 6 gold rings and numerous silver jewelery. I think the bad ground limited his ability to get deep enough to find the older coins. R.L.
 
Good post. I just got an Explorer ll myself but have yet to take it outside. I still have a lot of reading to do. I mostly hunt just parks and schools so I'm hoping to snag some of those missed deep targets myself.
 
Many of us have noticed this, that in Auto the machine will lower the sensitivity way too far.

I'm guess you are also having issues with power lines or other EMI at this park.

Chris
 
RL, I have sort of followed your trek of using different detectors for a little while so welcome back!
Those other detectors you mentioned are no doubt fine detectors also.
When you say erratic or chirpy, do you mean the detector is unstable from interference or is it just the stuff in the ground there that is causing chirpy responses?
What do you use, conduct or ferrous sounds? If you are using conduct sounds with some iron mask, you may want to give audio 1, I use it because it helps me idenify nails that are chirping, trying to mimic coins. I listen for good warble, if it is a broken warble then I know it is a nail, it is kind of hard to explain but also nails have a noted silence before and after the signal.
If you are using ferrous then I would say that park is a tough one, you may have to play with the adjustments to see what works best.
HH
 
Hello,

You could try doing the factory reset and then putting in your settings all over again. I have an SE pro and when I got it the first three beaches I hunted with it I had alot of interference with it. I had a fellow email me who said to do the factory reset and basically start from scratch and sure enough its smooth as can be now at the same beaches. I have no idea how this helped mine but it did and maybe yours could benefit from it also. I usually run mine with just one or two bars of iron mask, just out of AM and reset the gain to 7 and use the deep option and it does get deeeeep...

Can you tell me what your F75 ground balanced out at in the park? So far its the best detector Ive used that will ID good at depth and get some real impressive depth also. It having a cheap feel to it and the handgrip is to small for me are the only things I can complain about it.
I still wish they could have come up with DD coils for the CZs, Id still have one.......

Neil
 
Steve, I was using conduct with the iron mask set at 10. I don't believe the chirping is from electrical interference as I was no where near any overhead or underground wires. I have never used audio one and I will give it a shot. Thanks R.L.
 
Neil, the F75 ground balanced in the mid 90 to 95 in this park and the meter had the bottom 4 numbers blacked out. I started out like a gang buster with the F75, but when I should have been better with it, I got worse. Maybe I was trying to hard to find coins that were not there. I found the F75 to be too high strung for me. I will try the factory reset. This park has some of the strangest ground I have ever seen. Dig down 6 to 8 inches and it is dark soil with a rust like hue to it. It looks just like the soil around a big piece of rusty iron. When I got home today and cleaned my detector, I took the coil cover off and it had a pretty good load of very fine sand in it. I won't get a chance to check it out till mid week. I hate to admit this, but I have never used the pinpoint button to find a coin. I have always used the sweep and drag method to pinpoint. The fellow I got my newest Explorer from told me how he does it and it worked great. I am the type to never change what I have had success with and sometimes that is a problem. Thanks for the advice. R.L.
 
RL, it sounds to me like that park has an abundance of small iron that is almost deteriated but not quite.
My best advice is you will have to slow down and double check a lot of signals, if they are nails, they will probably not repeat. You can eliminate a lot of those falses by turning your coil 90 degrees, if the signals disappears, then you will be able to mentally place it in the more iffy category then decide if you want to take a chance on them or not. Keep an eye on your depth meter, if it shows a shallow depth but you are getting a real iffy signal, then it could be a nail falsing. You can also try less iron mask, say -13 to -15 to see if you can tell more about some of the signals you are getting. I even go to the point of leaving the program screen clear and listen to some of the iffies that I run into, (toggling out of iron mask for a moment just to see how the signal sounds with the wide open screen), this is what I do and I use conduct sounds.
I think you will also find out if you are not getting interference that you will need to push up the sens so you can get the deep ones but it is according to how much shallow trash you have there.......
HH
 
When I spoke of the F75s ID ability being the best at depth I meant for a single freq machine. The Explorer is the overall best Ive ever used with the Sov just behind it than the F75.

On the beaches I hunt the F75 ground balances from about 0 up to 60, from wet to dry sand. Ive never used it inland:surprised:

That park does sound like its got some nasty ground.

Neil
 
I hunt a place like that, it is full of hot rocks and small bits of old iron. I hunted it with a Tejon, a T2, and F75, and an Explorer. The Tejon did ok with the small coil and the T2 found some stuff. The F75 did best in AM/one tone. It is slow and you have to keep your eye on the screen to watch for numbers that rise.
I am now hunting it with the Explorer. I have to keep the sens at 14 or so, at least I did until I bought a Pro coil. This new coil is worth every penny. It is almost as stable as my 8" FBS. I have hunted this place hard for two years and I still find the odd piece. It was a CW calvary camp, not many coins but lots of bullets and buttons, one box plate, a sutlers token and all the harness buckles and other calvary stuff.

The Explorer is really hard to beat once you learn it... I thought i'd never figure it out :wacko: but it finally clicked.

You really need to spring for a Pro coil, you wont regret it. I am wondering how a Whites TDI would do in a place like this...

Julien
 
First off I do not run in conductive sounds, just ferrous, but it should not be any diff. in the results.

A few things you can do in making the falsing more tolerable, and keep your sensitivity up is lower your gain to 6 or 7......and turn deep off. These 2 things not only amplify the deep coins but also amplify the falsing....so by turning them off or down...the coins will be a stronger signal and stick out much better than a false signal.

It will still be falsing but at a much more fainter sound and a coin will be a no brainer. Like someone else has said here on this post, the new SE Pro coil is much more stable and you should be able to run higher sens. with it.
 
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