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Back from 4 more hours at the beach with the E-Trac

B

Beachcomber

New member
First the good news In the dry the Auto Sensitivity ran itself all the way up to 29. In Manual at the same location I was able to run the Manual Sensitivity all the way up to 28 before there was any noticeable nulling or falsing. I could easily have hunted at Manual 28 in the dry sand and I did for a little while and dug some deep coins...over 12" and I checked the signals in both Auto and Manual and both detected the coins easily. Then I headed back out to the wet sand to hunt for gold. But no gold today but did find a silver ring and a silver medal and 2 junk mood rings. Unfortunately I did run into a situation where the E-Trac can not be set to an optimal sensitivity level :( The beach I was hunting today has some sections that have black sand mixed with the normal beach sand. Normally the wet salt sand has no detrimental effect on Auto Sensitivity as the detector seems able to lower the sensitivity of the channel that is most effected by the salt while still raising the Sensitivity of the other channels. But today when I got into areas where there was mineralization in the wet salt sand the Auto Sensitivity lowered itself all the way down to 22 and that was with the added 3 steps. And even though I was at the highest auto level of sensitivity the machine was running extremely quiet with no falsing or nulling. I tried both ground mineral settings but that didn't help on this beach. The interesting thing was that I could run 22 in Manual Sensitivity with very little nulling. The setting for best depth and performance in Auto Sensitivity seems to be whatever it takes to just get it to start nulling and then back it off one step. But in this instance I could not get to that point there just was not enough override adjustment. I think I needed at least another 2-3 steps of positive override. I think someone made a post last week and mentioned that they thought that the E-Trac need 5-6 positive steps of manual override of the Auto Sensitivity. After today I would agree with them. Other than that the machine continues to work great with good depth. Also when I was up in the dry sand and was running Sensitivity at 29 I got a deep quarter signal with the depth meter all the way at the bottom. I lowered the Sensitivity to 20 and it could not detect the coin. I could not detect the coin until I got up to 24 and then just barely. When I dug the target up it was a quarter and it was down a little over a 12". Hope this information helps.

HH

Beachcomber
 
n/t
 
Not too sure about more than +3 for Auto....The lads at Minelab know what they're doing, believe me.

The old saying could be applied...."The more you have, the more you want".

I had a tough time on the beach today with my Eco-Trac, trying to detect on a falling tide that left the sand saturated.

There was a heavy overlay of deposited sand, as well.

Eventually I found a big silver coin, down in the black layer, well over 12 inches deep.

One of our old Silver Half Crowns. 1926. It made up for all the hard work.

When I was a lad they were called "Half Dollars"

It is presently soaking in Baking powder, wrapped in tin-foil.

24 hours of that generally does a nice cleaning job.

The last one I found there was over five years ago..............Looks like we're all having a good time with the E-trac.

"Nice one. Minelab"...................MattR.UK.
 
Thanks for your reports Bernie..I'm glad you like the Black Widows...I would never think of using another headphone!!!!! Some guy yesterday came up to me and asked if I had the Eagles game on while hunting??????? Thought I had a radio on(HEADPHONES) my head...that's a new one!!!! :>) Ran into my "FRIEND" that leaves the holes and trash yesterday...I'll send you a picture of why one should always pick up their junk!!!!!!! :>) I was going to ask if you could change the response on the audio to what I call "elongate" small/deep targets like the XS on the E-Trac but I see you already answered that question...thanks again for posting your E-Trac findings.HH,Harry
 
Hi Matt,

While they seem to be good at covering most things the Engineers can't predict or program for every situation that we will run into in the field. The E-Trac was running well below what it could have been set to if we had more leeway. Both my Sov GT and Explorer running in manual sensitivity would have run circles around the E-Trac on this particular beach. This is not a guess this is fact as I have been hunting this particular beach with both those machines for years and know what can be expected of them. Also after using the E-Trac for the past few weeks I know it was operating well below what it is normally capable of. Since in Manual Sensitivity all 3 Sensitivity channels are locked to the same level and go up and down in unison there was no way in Manual to compensate for the saltwater by lowering an individual channel and unfortunately while the Auto Sensitivity circuits were compensating for the salt when mineralization was added to the mix it overcompensated really lowered the Sensitivity to the point where even a +3 setting could not get up to where the machine had reached the maximum usable amount of Sensitivity. So far this has been the only time I have run into this. All the other beaches that I have hunted so far the E-Trac was able to get to the point of maximum usable sensitivity and even a little beyond. It also means that on this particular beach I will need to use either my Explorer or my Sov GT but not the E-Trac. Hey we have always known that no detector is perfect for every situation. This just happened to be a beach where the E-Trac is not the best detector for the job.

The bottom line is that if you can only get the E-Trac to run at a Sensitivity setting of 22 or less in Auto or Manual you can only expect to get about 8" depth on coin sized objects but if you can get it to run at a setting of 26 or higher in either Manual or Auto you can expect to find coin sized targets at 12" or a little more.

Congrats on the Silver Half Crown. Please post a photo if you can as I am sure others besides myself would enjoy seeing it!!!!

HH

Beachcomber
 
They are a big set of headphones for sure :) Now I know why you can never hear me when I am talking to you out on the beach :) I have been running in Smooth Audio Mode. It has an even longer sound creatively called "Long" :) :) :) :) I will give it a try the next time I am out.

HH

Beachcomber
 
To speed things up, try boiling the coin in a tablespoon of salt and two tablespoons of baking soda in a cup of water while being put on a strip of aluminum foil in a pan.

It will remove the sulphur stains and clean up the silver without any rubbing. It will bring out the grain on the coin and not effect the value of that coin. DAb and not wipe the coin dry. Then put the coin in a glass with lemon juice and let it sit for about 15 minutes. The lemon juice will further the cleaning without destroying the value and put a film on the coin to prevent further oxidation or sulphur staining.

I learned that from a professional coin restorer.
 
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