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First day out with the E-Trac. Found some clad, but have a lot of questions.

R

ronfin

New member
I took the E-Trac to the Park soon after it arrived. The ground was soaking wet. I turned it on and started swinging. Immediately started finding some clad coins. A few quarters (oldest a '65), a Nickel, few dimes, a few clad pennies, and a Wheat. Not bad on my first day with it. However, this is how I was doing with my BHD3300. The machine was very choppy. Every swing there was multiple tones. I'm assuming this was either major falsing, or a lot of trash. I'm leaning towards trash. I got some really good signals and shallow depths. 12-40, 13-46, 12-45 etc. I dug'em all. Bottle caps. Just bottle caps everywhere. Also, am I pinpointing wrong? Is the spot directly below the middle of the coil, or at the tip of the coil? I've seen YouTube videos where they just walk up towards a target and soon as they hit, this is their pinpoint spot. What do some of you do?

OK, a few quick questions:

1) What settings do you use hunting coins? Stock, or is there one someone made that everyone is fond of?

2) Falsing, or eliminating as much noise as possible. What do you all do in this situation?

3) Using the headphones or not using them? I switched between using them a little, then not. Do you listen for the loudest targets, or will you dig the very faint ones too, even if the numbers jump all over the place at depth?

Over-all i love this device. Very nice indeed!
 
First congrats on getting one you will love it.

Take and in the menu put it to TRASH HIGH this gives it the see through capability so that if a good non discriminated target is near a trash target it won't miss it because the trash target over powered the good target which it would do with it set to normal. Then set it to GROUND DIFFICULT for all hunting UNLESS it's a sandy soil area like a beach and also a plowed field with air in the soil (not compacted down) and if your sensitivity setting when running in AUTO mode goes above 22 I believe it is then you run the GROUND setting in the NORMAL setting. It has to do with the mineralization it sees in the soil.

Run it in AUTO sensitivity ( play with manual after learning the machine ) and go to Auto +3 if you can and it should run smooth and use the stock "coins" discrimination pattern for now later you can run a more open pattern. Listen for the good tones. I took several coins and placed them on the ground to see what the numbers where then i had an idea of what I might have just pased my coil over. Deeper ones will sound slightly different than shallow ones and can be a bit broken up but go by sounds first screen second. Give yourself a chance and just keep on hunting asd it will all come together for you after a few times.

Turn the THRESHOLD SOUND down till you just get a barely audible hum in your headphones. I have mine at 14-15 I barely hear it.

Do a NOISE CANCEL to see what channel it picks as the best for that spot for Electro Magnetic Influence (EMI) and the ground it sees under the coil. Make sure the soil under the coil doesn't have any targets in it, check it first before noise canceling.

Now just keep hunting and dig and learn what it is telling you by the sounds. At depth the Conductive number will be pretty steady the Ferrous will jump a bit, go by the Conductive numbers unless the ferrous number is like very high 25 into the thirties then it's iron junk. If BOTH Conductive and Ferrous numbers are jumping around then it is probably iron junk. Dig a few and see and then you will know and learn.
 
I agree with all the tips E-Trac Tom gave you. Couldn't have written it better myself (whatever that means). One thing I would recommend is changing out your headphones. I got a pair of Sunray Pro Golds and I am very happy I did. If getting a new pair is not in the cards for you, I definitely recommend wearing phones over not wearing them. You will miss weak tones of deep targets if you use the speaker. I personally see the speaker as a nice emergency backup plan in case my headphones were to break whilst hunting. You ABSOLUTELY have to dig the faint targets, those very frequently are the best signals I dig. Upgrading your phones is one of the best ways to hear these deep targets better, I recently learned this lesson after using the stocks for a long time, the difference is day and night (I Have a review in the minelab e-trac classroom forum if your interested). Good luck with your machine, it really is a great machine and I am sure you will learn to love it. It will just take time and experience and you will never look back. If you have any other questions, feel free to contact me/us on the forum, everyone is always happy to help. HH -Marc
 
Thanks so much everyone. Just read the manual front to back, and in the morning I'm setting up a "test bed". I'' burry some silver coins, tabs, nails, etc, and then work at listening to what each one sounds like and at what depth. I'll go back to using headphones also. Just took them off because I hate people sneaking up behind me. :)
 
You may want to try a pattern like the one I have in the link here. It is pretty tight but it will allow you to dig a lot of coins and cut down on the trash until you get a better feel for the etrac.


http://www.findmall.com/read.php?63,1582460,1585154#msg-1585154
 
You will also need to water you new test garden. Detectors do not like disturbed ground and therefore you will not get an accurate reading on your detector. I have found that watering my test garden packs the dirt in better and helps with getting the garden "ready" for learning. As for pinpointing, I swing one way until the signal is in the middle of the coil, then I turn 90 degrees and do the same thing. Now the target is right in the middle of your swing. The "sweet spot" on DD's seems to be right where the coil is attached to your lower rod. Another thing I highly recommend to anyone that doesn't have on is a pinpointer. I prefer the Sunray X-1 probe and use this on my E-Trac and my Se Pro. If the X-1 is not for you, I secondly recommend a Garrett Pro Pointer. I also have 2 of these and they are great. I wish you the best of luck in learning you machine. Who knows, you might come across something you try in your settings in the next couple of days and teach us all something, wouldn't be the first time. Good luck and HH -Marc
 
I have been cleaning out a section that is about 12 x 16 in my yard for a couple of years now. I dig every thing that beeps and have been over that area 50 times at least. When I got the Etrac I was surprised to find coins that a Whites 6000 and a Whites 5900 have missed. I am about to the point that I can almost say that the area is almost hunted out. It may never produce a coin from here on out but I can force the Etrac into producing iron falses by driving the sensitivity way to high for certain conditions. I learned a lot diffing every peice of foil and rust fragments, nails, tiny little hot rocks, and tiny parts to old toys. I think everyone can learn from this not just the new guys. I am still a new guy myself and will do this again in a new part of the yard and see how many things I can identify before I dig. I am also surprised how different the detection of different items is affected by dry ground, wet ground, and and frozen ground. If anyone else tries this I would love to hear the results. Idigid
 
Tons of good advice here! Be sure to use auto sensitivity. That will help with stability. Good targets will be much more repeatable.
 
I would buy Andy Sabisch book called The Minelab Explorer & E-Trac Handbook. It has tons of information about different situations you'll face with your E-Trac and recommendations on different settings and patterns. Read your manual a couple times and then read Andy's book twice. Go out and practice what you've read and try different things. Set yourself up with a practice garden with various types of coins and get a feel who how they read and what they sound like.

I would definitely use head phones (I have Sunray Pro Golds). The sounds are so much clearer and you can hear those faint deep signals where the real good coins lay. You may want to think about getting a smaller coil (Sunray X5 or MQ2 6) for the real trashy areas.

Good luck and have fun.
 
Lots of really great advise from all those above. I also use the Sunray Pro Golds great headphones. I also have a set of Killer Bee's Golds that are almost the exact same as the Sunray's both great headsets to use.
 
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