DEEP - ON. :starwars: FAST - OFF

[Neil]

I made a trip out after work. Looking forward to a 4 day weekend coming up!

I headed out to an area I have been hitting pretty hard to do some DEEP and FAST experimenting. I set up my detector with my Normal Settings, I am doing these from memory, so if I slightly misname something, excuse me.

Quick Mask
Ferrous - 25
Conductive - 5
Sounds - Conductive
Tones - Multi
Response - Normal
Variability - 29
Limits - 30
Gain - 25
Deep - ON
Fast - OFF
Sensitivity - 23 today and the Noise Cancel settled on 10

Standard 11" Minelab Pro Coil



I had barely turned the detector on when I found what I thought was a very deep coin. It was giving a higher tone and reading 18/34 - 18/35 pretty consistently from about 3/4 of the way around the target. Had trouble from a certain angle. The depth gauge was indicating a target at the VERY bottom of the scale, no upward movement at all. There was another metallic object about 20" away that did not seem to be interfering with what I was doing.

I turned DEEP - OFF and swept the target again. The flutey sound of a deep coin wasn't quite as obvious, a little more broken, but still something that would capture my attention.

I turned FAST - ON and re-swept the target. The target sound was now quite broken and much shorter. Worse, not better.

I changed the sensitivity from 23 up to 30 and had problems with stability. I then turned the sensitivity down to 15 where the AUTO setting was suggesting I have it set. I lost the audio signal. I changed to FAST OFF, no signal. I changed to DEEP ON, no signal. The signal returned barely when I reached a sensitivity setting of 21.

I knelt down and started recovering the target and quickly reached the limits of my Lesche digger. The pistol probe said the coin was off center on the bottom of the hole. My coin popper probe has a 9.5" shaft and I was past that. Sitting at 11" at more than a 45* angle was a brass Salt Lake City Ulatco Childs Fare Trolley / Bus Token. It is square, is the width of a nickel and says Good For Childs Fare, Ages 5 - 12 on the reverse. I was, and still am impressed with the E-Trac ability to find this target that deep in this soil.

I returned my settings to 'normal'.

About 10 feet away, I found another target that was much more difficult to get a good read on. Audio was coming in pretty high, but wasn't very clean. There seemed to be some surrounding NULLING going on. The target was reading all over in ferrous and was coming in high 30's low 40's conductivity depending upon which angle I approached. It was reading at 3/4 of the depth scale.

I turned DEEP OFF and the audio improved a little bit as I circled around the target. The display was showing a 9/30- 9/31.

I turned FAST ON and the audio immediately improved and cleaned up dramatically.

I changed the sensitivity up and down. Going up from 23 to 25 was ok. Past 25 and things were very unstable. I could drop down to 18 before I lost the signal.

I removed the plug and pinpointed the target in the hole with the pistol probe. At 7" was a wheatie/nickel/wheatie sandwich laying flat in the hole. There was some rust blood in the soil around it as well from something that had rusted away and was gone. '48 and '57 wheaties and a '47 nickel.

I returned the settings to 'normal'.

My last decent target came along about a half hour later. A deep target that was reading classic wheatie, bordering on deep silver dime. I was getting 11/44 on the display and the target had the nice flutey sound that reveals it is getting towards the outer edges of the detectors reach. It was reading near the bottom of the depth scale, but still had some room.

I turned DEEP OFF and still picked up the signal but it was a little bit different character to it than I am used to. It was a definite 'good' target, just sounded different.

I turned FAST ON and the sound lost some of it's smoothness and became shorter in duration. Worse.

Playing with the sensitivity setting was the same. Increasing much above 23 caused erratic operation and random sounds. Dropping to 17 and the target disappeared.

I was excited that I might have a Merc dime. I haven't found a silver dime the last couple times out. I removed a deep plug and pinpointed the target in the bottom of the hole. At 9" was a Lincoln Penny. Flipping it over revealed the Lincoln Memorial building. (Fitting for the weekend I guess). Wow, what a disappointment. Not a Merc, not even a Rosey, not even a wheatie; it was a memorial penny. At least it was copper and not corroding zinc.

I hunted for another 2 hours and found only clad.

My take on this little experiment is this;

I am very used to running with DEEP - ON and FAST - OFF. My ears are attuned to the sounds.
The settings that I am using seem to provide exceptional depth in the areas I have been hunting.
The FAST - ON setting improved the sound of mid-range targets, but worsened deep targets.
DEEP - ON improved the sound for Deep targets.
Too much sensitivity made my detector very erratic and I would lose deep targets.
When sensitivity is lowered to the mid-teens, I am losing my deepest targets.

This was actually quite interesting for me to do. I typically concentrate on the search and recovery of targets and not so much playing with the detector settings. Not sure how I am going to take advantage of the FAST - ON settings for the mid-range stuff.

Perhaps the FAST - ON will be more valuable with a smaller coil when searching through the super high trash areas.

Anyway, feedback is appreciated.

Good luck,


Rich -

Excellent post Rich. I do the same type of testing to see what works best in my hunts with my detectors. sometimes I get lazy, which I have been with deep on at the beach but I will be testing this also now that Ive read your post and this thread. This is what good posts are all about

 

[Bilko]

What a marvellous read! I don't have anything to add except that I work in non-trashy conditions and use deep on,fast off, multi conduct and don't ignore anything. If I miss it, then it wasn't to be

 

[synthnut]

Gaz,
I guess whatever works best for you .....That's what makes this machine so nice ....We can all set it up the way we like ..... Yes , I agree that it's good that we can all discuss our findings in an adult manor ..... You say TomAtoe and I say TomAHto ...... Same fruit , just a different way of approaching it ....Jim

RIch,
Good read ...... When you were saying perhaps to put the Fast - ON with a smaller coil ....You're really not going to need it ....The smaller coil pretty much pinpoints targets because of it's size where I really don't need the fast - on ......... The fast on to my use works better in trashy area's so that the machine recovers faster with targets so close together so I don't have to wait so long for the machine to recover ..... Another thing that I have found that really helps me a lot is to keep my E Tracs Sensitivity in Auto mode so that it will automatically adjust to conditions, but for a kicker , I will add a +3 to it , to add a little kick to the auto mode ..... Since the Auto mode is an average of 3 signal channels , and then kick it up a notch by adding the +3, and allowing the E Trac to ride the entire structure automatically works really well for me ..... I find that I not only get some great depth this way, but the signal is pretty smooth too !!!....I don't have to worry about having too much or too little Sensitivity .... I'm not sure how the E Trac smooths things as well as it does in Auto mode , but it really is a wonder all on it's own ..... It may or may not be an optimum way to set things up , but in most cases , it really works well for me ....I run the E Trac this way on the beach however ....I'm pretty much wide open there .....

 

[UtahRich]

RIch,
Good read ...... When you were saying perhaps to put the Fast - ON with a smaller coil ....You're really not going to need it ....The smaller coil pretty much pinpoints targets because of it's size where I really don't need the fast - on ......... The fast on to my use works better in trashy area's so that the machine recovers faster with targets so close together so I don't have to wait so long for the machine to recover ..... Another thing that I have found that really helps me a lot is to keep my E Tracs Sensitivity in Auto mode so that it will automatically adjust to conditions, but for a kicker , I will add a +3 to it , to add a little kick to the auto mode ..... Since the Auto mode is an average of 3 signal channels , and then kick it up a notch by adding the +3, and allowing the E Trac to ride the entire structure automatically works really well for me ..... I find that I not only get some great depth this way, but the signal is pretty smooth too !!!....I don't have to worry about having too much or too little Sensitivity .... I'm not sure how the E Trac smooths things as well as it does in Auto mode , but it really is a wonder all on it's own ..... It may or may not be an optimum way to set things up , but in most cases , it really works well for me ....I run the E Trac this way on the beach however ....I'm pretty much wide open there .....

Synthnut,

In general, I've shy'ed away from using Auto- sensitivity, even with it being set at +3. It is usually running low enough in my area due to mineralization that I don't get such good depth. I seem to be ok with manually setting the sensitivity based on feedback from the detector.

I have put together and saved a couple different hunting modes with variations of FAST, DEEP, GAIN, 2 TONES and so forth and have started to experiment a little bit. Haven't drawn any conclusions yet. I hunt with my standard settings and then do some cross checking on iff'ers to see if it will clean up something I am not sure about.

I've only had my E-trac since early this year, so I am still getting acclimated to it's ways. I am finding rusty silver coins and coins w/rusty nails on a regular basis, so I am confident that I am finding these types of targets. I am also finding what I consider, very deep coin sized targets in the 9" + range, so I feel that I'm at least in the game with my regular settings.

Depth limitations are there based on physics, so without giving away the depth that I have been experiencing, I am hoping to increase the number finds in trash, with trash, on trash, on edge and so forth that others have passed over. From my experiments so far, I don't know that there is a signal best group of settings that will do this for all locations that I hunt in all types of ground. But, I do want to minimize the number of setting changes in hopes that I can become as proficient as possible with one group of settings, and take advantage of a few tweaks in specific instances where I can use the to my advantage.

So far, it does seem that using FAST - ON helps make iffy signals on my E-trac audibly more obvious when I have rust involved with the target. I've only had some mid-range depth targets that I have confirmed that with, nothing at the bottom of my depth gauge.

I am considering hunting with my secondary search mode that uses Fast On, Deep Off and Gain Jacked up to the maximum in one of my hard hit areas and see what gives. I get very few targets out of this area from each of the hunts and I haven't had any real deep goodies found there; all less than 9".

I have a variation of this search mode that uses single tone and I may try that as well.

Good luck out there,

Rich (Utah)