Enable ground balance

[jyblood]

To enable auto ground balance or auto ground tracking as I call it,Do you check or uncheck the little box?I've heard it both ways on different forums.Here in central Alabama we have varying degrees of highly mineralized soil.At an old home site last week in fairly decent soil I was able to get 5 silver dimes at 6-7 inches.I was running manual sensitivity 27,ground-coin separation,stock coins program (using the discrimination).Most of the time I had a good threshold but would occasionally loose it.Even without a threshold a good coin signal would overcome the loss of threshold.Anyway I was getting silver dimes at 6-7 inches with good and fast VDI readings.Yesterday in Birmingham about 35 miles away with the same settings I would completely lose the threshold as soon as I started swinging and the VDI update extremely slow..It would still hit a good coin but never deeper than 3 inches.I went to auto +3 which ended up with sensitivity at about 14-16.This gave me a good threshold faster VDI update but still only 3 inches deep.I never dug anything past that all day.I beginning to think that no detector company has figured out how to deal with this highly unrealized soil problem.Any help will be much appreciated,Thanks.

 

[hershey1]

Sounds like you did not disengage the manual ground balance before going back to auto+3. Push ground balance button and go to manual ground balance. Remove check from manual box. Now put your machine in auto. This will or should get your depth back as before. I had the same problem when I first got my CTX 3030. HH

 

[Digger]

To enable auto ground balance or auto ground tracking as I call it,Do you check or uncheck the little box?I've heard it both ways on different forums.

What you said (above) is just the opposite of how it works on the CTX3030. hershey1 got it right when he said to uncheck the ground balance enable box. Enabling the GB is being able to set a level of ground balance, and maintain that same setting as you hunt. Disabling GB allows the CTX3030 to automatically neutralize the effects of the mineralization (similar to tracking), while you hunt. HH Randy

 

[Dino - UK]

A tip from a guy at Minelab....

One Tip CTX: don

 

[ML]

I'm brand new to the CTX and have done well in the week that I have owned it. Just looked after reading this post and found that my GB enable box is checked - duh. So I am to remove the check, correct? Thanks

 

[Digger]

Unless you are hunting in highly mineralized ground, you will likely get better results by removing the check from the Ground Balance Enable box. If you remove the check, it will put the CTX3030 into the "auto ground neutralizing" mode. This allows the CTX3030 to compensate for mineralization "on the fly". Some may refer to this as an Auto-Tracking mode. If you have a check in that box, it enables Ground Balance. When properly adjusted at highly mineralized sites, having a "set" ground balance will allow you to detect targets that might be masked by ground noise. It also allows for more accurate TID in highly mineralized sites. Refer to page 22 of the manual for information on how to properly set the manual GB. As a side-note, if you run with Ground Balance Enabled, you should consider using Ground-Coin Separation. HH Randy

 

[ML]

Thanks, Randy

 

[jyblood]

I went back to Birmingham this afternoon.I did a noise cancel then ground balance then I unchecked the enable ground balance box.With auto+3 sensitivity,ground-coin and stock coins program it balanced out at 14-16 with the green showing 10-12.Was only hitting targets at 3 inches or less.Though I did find a 1906 V nickel and a 1925 merc at 2 and 3 inches.Next I tried manual 27 sensitivity swing real slow but it couldn't handle it.Tried at manual 20 sensitivity with slow swing and was able to get alot of clad down to 4 inches.If I sung too fast I would completely lose the threshold but going slow I could keep it fading in and out and updating good VDI numbers. This seemed to be the best settings for me on the north side of red mountain here in Birmingham.By the way you do know that red mountain is where all the iron ore came from that allowed Birmingham's steel industry to be labeled the Pittsburg of the south.If you have good soil I doubt that any way you do the ground balance will keep you from hitting dimes at 7-10 inches.I wonder if I had a 6 inch coil that it might be able to detect deeper in this bad soil?Any thoughts? Thanks for all the help

 

[sube]

The 6 may hit deeper because it well see less ground than the stock but you well have to try one to see , all place's are different . Maybe you could borrow one from a member on here to try . sube

 

[TheGeorgiaCanuck]

Try running in Ground-Coin mode since the mineralization is high. Unless the area is trashy, then try running in High-Trash mode. Both give good depth and target acceptance in high mineralization.

Low Trash
The Low Trash setting provides very stable Target ID

 

[jyblood]

Sube,you may be right about the 6" coil.Most people that use them in good soil with high trash say that there isn't much loss in depth.I think the small footprint may allow me to run a higher sensitivity without losing the threshold and therefore greater depth.Thanks