Can someone explain the Fe and Fe2 settings for me.

[Ex-Sox]

Or the difference between them. When I was researching the Equinox, this setting was one that caught my attention. I would love to have a better understanding of these settings before my next trip.

 

[Ex-Sox]

Am I right in thinking that, in an area that is blanketed with nails, I should go higher on my Fe settings to eliminate the falsing chirps?

 

[Tom Slick]

The higher the setting, the more the detector tries to call questionable targets Iron. This can help in eliminating iron trash targets from being dug. Everything is a trade off - The higher the setting, the more likely the detector will call a masked good target "iron" if the good target is near a piece of iron (or nail). In an iron infested site you can raise the I/B so you don't dig too much trash but you run the risk of missing those co-located masked targets. The Original Nox 800 had an Iron Bias titled FE with a setting of 0 -8. Minelab came out with a software update the included adding the F2 settings or adjustment. They did this while keeping the original FE so you can toggle between FE and F2. The F2 goes even lower than the FE but they kept to same 0 -8 adjustment numbers, but the scale between FE and F2 is different. A setting of 4 on the F2 scale is the same as the FE setting of 0. so you can see that the new F2 has Four settings that are lower than FE - 0, and those are F2 settings 3,2,1 &, 0. Those new to the NOX 800 should probably start out with an Iron Bias setting of about 4 on the FE scale or about 6 on the F2 scale until they find out how much iron they're digging. Then you can increase or decrease the setting as you become more familiar with the detector's behavior. The ideal would be to eventually work your way down to F2 - 0 as you become accustomed to the Nox audio. This will achieve maximum unmasking abilities.
I'm sure others will chime in with possibly a better way to explain the difference between FE and F2. Hope this helps.

 

[Smalltowndetectorist98]

The day that the nox and I really got along for the first time was out at my local lake park. Setting were park 1 with 5 tones sensitivity at 22 and a ground balance of around 15 and fe2 of about 7. First hole I dug has 3 huge rusty nails in it but when I first swung the hole I could hear that silver squeak. Sure enough after the 3 nails out pops a silver roosevelt at about 6 inches or so. I will say that I have dug a ton of iron when I mess around with the iron bias but I have dug more coins that have had iron in the hole than ever before. Found a wheat penny with an iron buckle in the same hole and sounded just like a coin. If you have your iron bias too low rusty bottle caps will come in around a penny and that is a real problem. Most of the time I leave the iron bias at 6 which is what it comes with but for the real iron infested sites I always switch it over to FE2. Just depends on where you are hunting. It is a very important thing to have set up as you can walk over masked coins very easily without the right settings on it. Just my 2 cents.

 

[Ex-Sox]

Thanks fellas, this will help. Most of the places I hunt are iron infested so I will play with the F2 next time out! I appreciate the help, I haven't hunted with it turned up higher than 3.

 

[laplander]

The new software is centered around eliminating metal screw caps. I didn't see any real difference with bent rusty square nails, round metal rings etc.. Try it yourself leave the iron bias at 0, either one then find a good iffy iron signal and start cranking up the bias and see if you can make it go away. Then dig it and see what you get, it only takes a few minutes to experiment in your live test garden. Form your own educated opinion. JMO
HH Jeff

 

[jmaclen]

What Tom said is how I understand it. I mostly use my Nox 800 for gold prospecting so I just leave both Fe and F2 on 0 so I won't mask any small gold targets.
On my Nox 600 which I use for any other detecting I leave Fe on 1 and F2 on 0. I turn down the iron tone volume to its lowest audible setting or I might disc out -9 and maybe -8 if the iron gets to be too much. If I don't want to hear any iron I use the basic default discrimination settings, turn up the threshold tone, listen for it nulling on iron targets and double check with the horseshoe button. It is really nice to have so many ways to deal with iron on the Equinox.

Jeff

 

[Ex-Sox]

I will try that experiment next time I go out laplander.