Disable Saltwater and gain 2” depth

[bklein]

I was running some air depth tests at a park and noticed that there was a 2” depth improvement going to Relic mode from Beach. What the deal? I saw that Relic had Saltwater disabled while Beach had it enabled. Went to Beach, set Saltwater to disabled, and got the extra 2”! See if you experience the same. Using 11” coil and tested on nickel, quarter, and gold ring. Why did it take me 4 years+ to discover this?? I don’t recall how bad it is running in the wet with Saltwater disabled but maybe its worth it. A couple years ago I was running Sensitivity like at 27. Over the last 8 months or so I have been able to run at 30. Tomorrow I’ll get some beach time to see if this gets me some targets.

 

[IDXMonster]

It will be inevitable that someone will have their settings slightly different and get different results, but!.....I noticed the exact same thing a couple years ago doing air testing. I was setting up for the most depth I could get and ran across this issue with the same findings...Seawater may stabilize the machine by actually LOWERING THE SENSITIVITY “behind the scenes”? It seemed that Seawater, for a land hunter, was able to settle the machine down when hunting terrible ground that had seen a lot of fertilizer...but again...is this just a lowering of Sensitivity via some circuitous route that we don’t see on the screen? It’s good that you figured it out, I don’t recall ever posting my experience because I thought perhaps I got a bad test or I was just plain wrong. Now anyone else interested in this should run this test for their own purposes, if need be.
Thanks for bringing this up again...

 

[Jason in Enid]

Thats all fine and dandy until you actually get to the beach. The saltwater setting wasnt included to make air tests better, it was to deal with conductive salt at ocean beaches. If you are in the dry sand and not having a problem with chatter, then you obviously dont need it. However, it doesnt take much moisture for that "dry sand" to start interfering and THAT is when you need to enable saltwater.

 

[IDXMonster]

The question I have Jason is...what exactly is the machine doing to stabilize itself? Is this actually lowering sensitivity on a certain channel that is unstable? Is it actually discriminating in some way? I don’t have that particular environment to worry about but as always, if there’s a real answer, I’d like to know how it works. I’ve seen before where at least 2 people have posted that when there is substantial EMI present that cannot be rectified via a Noise Cancel procedure that enabling Seawater stabilizes the machine to a noticeable extent. I haven’t tested this procedure but it almost sounds as if this is being done with discrimination. But nothing shows up different on the screen in either pattern selection. So how could this be?
If you know, or know who knows, I want to know!

 

[bklein]

Tested it out today at two beaches. In the water, forget it, you need Saltwater enabled. In the wet sand its debatable. Any moving water will make sounds but with it enabled you hear low sounds in the 28-32 range that might be targets. They are associated with good targets - I’ll tell you why: I hit a hot quarters area. 38 quarters! Crazy. Had nothing to do with the Saltwater mode but these low tones were only in this area. Some quarters made the good high pitch in Saltwater disabled but a garbled tone with it enabled. This area was roughly 10 feet square. No other targets but the quarters. They were not recent drops - been in there awhile. At the first beach, found only $1 in change in the dry as well as 5 Modelo beers!
My feet are distroyed from all the walking.

 

[Jason in Enid]

Minelab is always stingy with the secrets of the hows and whys. All we really know is that when the CTX was first released, a lot of guys complained about its performance in salt. The seawater setting was the first update ML released for it. How it does it.... all we can do is observe behavior and make educated guesses. Personally, I just care that it does work.

 

[IDXMonster]

True dat! And in the end, I’ve said it before also...I care that it DOES work! If that’s the price of the secret then it’s all good...

 

[Digger]

The CTX 3030 has three internal signal channels (high, medium and low) used to identify targets. The CTX 3030 continually measures the magnetic ground interferences that affect these channels and adjusts the level of Sensitivity individually for each channel, to provide the most stable TID for each channel. Sensitivity controls the detector’s response to received signals from metal targets under the coil, as well as electronic noise and ground noise. Seawater mode doesn't actually "lower" the sensitivity. But it does isolate one of the three Sensitivity channels. HH Randy

 

[IDXMonster]

The CTX 3030 has three internal signal channels (high, medium and low) used to identify targets. The CTX 3030 continually measures the magnetic ground interferences that affect these channels and adjusts the level of Sensitivity individually for each channel, to provide the most stable TID for each channel. Sensitivity controls the detector’s response to received signals from metal targets under the coil, as well as electronic noise and ground noise. Seawater mode doesn't actually "lower" the sensitivity. But it does isolate one of the three Sensitivity channels. HH Randy

That is indeed interesting Randy, I absolutely appreciate you taking the time to chime in on the subject. I also hope that you are well(er).

 

[LawrencetheMDer]

I appreciate the info since I do mostly saltwater beaches in Florida but have been doing a lot of dirt digging this summer, including a CW site and every inch counts.