First full day's test with the Deus at a Civil War camp. My findings/report & lots of questions

[The Wolf]

I had the day off so I decided to meet up with my buddy VaMark at a Union Civil War fort site. Here are my settings to start out with:

12KHz
Reactive- 2
Silence- 0
Audio Res- 6
Disc- 8
Sens- 90
TX- 2
Iron Audio- 3
Notch 8-30 (most items I don't want to find fall in this range)
3-Tones

The day started out great with a nice William's Cleaner bullet, percussion cap & a tiny rivet right off the bat, followed by some camp lead, and more camp lead, and more.... So I noticed this machine really likes the tiny pieces of lead. No way around it without the possibility of missing targets I suppose, so I don't mind digging them.

Then I got a really good signal in the 90s and after digging down 10" or so, out popped a large rusty nail. I got fooled numerous times on the iron signals just like this one, but all of them were large pieces, and really rusty. Not your typical small square nails.

I didn't recover many deep targets, but I tested the depth on the bullet and it was getting decent depth. I played with the silencer, reactivity, TX & sens until I got the depth I wanted.

Then I decided to try the really trashy spot next to the old house on the property. I cranked the reactivity up to 5, and silencer to 0. Man! This machine is lightning fast through the junk. But I did notice on my second pass through this area, the signals are much easier to pick out of the junk if the Audio Response is decreased to 3. Also something in the house (still inhabited) didn't like the 12KHz, so I changed to 18KHz and it calmed down quite a bit.

Another area yielded and eagle button back & brass rivet. Both ID'd in the 30s, so I dialed my notch back to 8-25.

Also I had to use the ground notch feature (85-90), to avoid the coil falsing on limbs, etc. THANKS FOR THE TIP CZ!!

I like the pumping ground balance, but after that I'm confused when to use tracking & manual.

I found myself just hunting with the tones after a while and not even paying attention to the target ID on the screen. I just felt like the TIDs weren't very reliable, but the tones were awesome.

THE #1 THING THAT REALLY MADE ME SECOND GUESS THE DEUS.........was that after only 4-5 hours, my coil battery was completely drained and flashing dead! All of the components were fully charged at the beginning of the hunt. The control box and headphones were still showing a full charge after I quit for the day. Now maybe this was user error on my part as I ran the machine all day with the audio response on 6, up until the end. Not sure if this will drain battery life. My sens was at 90, and TX was on 2 all day. Any help on this particular issue would be greatly appreciated.

Questions:
1- How do I extend the battery life of the coil? What settings mostly affect the coil battery life?
2- Does the lower frequencies (4 & detect deeper than the higher ones (12 & 1 using the same settings on the same object?
3- When do I use the tracking GB method.
4- Is it better to have a lower disc and utilize notch for unwanted targets & is too much notching a bad thing?
5- The WS4s seem to hurt my ears after a while, do these get more comfortable with use as they stretch a bit?
6- Would it be better for me to utilize full tones instead of just 3? Would that help with the iron issue or the junky spots?

I think that's all the questions I have for today. HAHA. Thanks in advance. I know I will learn this machine and love it, but it may take a little time. HH

 

[samandnoah]

Hey Wolf --

Congrats on some good finds! You've got a lot going on in your post, and I can only address some of it.

On the battery life, I do know that TX has an impact, but 2 should not have drained it that quickly. I do know that when I was using TX = 3 that it definitely ate battery time. I suspect, but don't know for sure, that GB tracking uses more battery. Did you do a lot of GB tracking?

On the WS4s, I used to have the older style, and found them comfortable. I recently got a new pair, and they are definitely a little tighter. I'm hoping they loosen up some, too.

On the rusty nail situation, I'm a big advocate of using a nearby 4 kHz program. People usually talk about using it for bottle caps, but I find that it is a good test for most rusty objects. And, I also find it helpful in checking the likely ID of some targets where I've now gotten a lot of experience going back and forth (BTW I usually use 12 kHz as my main frequency). For example, sometime partial pull tabs ring up right around 51 or 52 in 12 kHz, just like a nickel. So when I switch over to 4 kHz, if it rings in right around 39, it's almost certainly a nickel. If it rings in 42ish, then it's a pull tab.

On depth, on another forum there's a person who's done quite a bit of testing, and seems to believe that 18 kHz gets you the greatest depth, and is completely the opposite of that video which showed 4 kHz having better depth. I think there are so many factors at play, that it all depends.
Rich

 

[DrJoeprime]

I can address the coil charge issue. My Deus at 3+ years of age still gives me a mnimum of 10 hours solid hunting.

Make sure you are getting a full charge (the solid charge light goes to slow blinking).

Joe (California)

 

[The Wolf]

Thanks for the tips. I reloaded 3.2 last night in hopes that it would fix the coil charge problem. We will see this weekend if it fixed the issue.

SAM- I did a very minimal amount of GB tracking, mainly just manual. I'm hoping the charger just wasn't seated properly or something. On the nails, I did design a 4KHz program to check with and I didn't notice any difference really in depth or target ID. Also didn't see much difference in any of the frequencies regarding depth.

 

[CZconnoisseur]

I started using the Deus with "tracking GB" but found out really quickly that in trashy areas this is not the best choice. Where I hunt there tends to be a lot of buried sheet metal, bolts, spikes, etc from a variety of things. Manual GB allows me to get deeper and iron falsing is almost nonexistent now vs when I got started four months back. When you first turn on Deus, sweep the ground a few times and notice the top right numbers - these are the ground reading values. You will want to average the values and set your manual GB about 2-4 whole number points above the average value. Pumping allows you to get ultraprecise GB readings, but if you're detecting area larger than a king-sized bed - you'd want to get a ballpark GB reading and then set a little higher for smoothest operation -AND- maximum depth. If you suspect deeper coins are still in your "hunted out" area -you can set manual GB a couple whole number points BELOW the readings and also lower reactivity to get those 9-12" deeper signals.

This machine will eat up all the camp lead if you let it! Don't know how many pieces of it I could barely detect around 12-14". It's a lot of digging for just an ounce or so of lead - however, simply finding it really showed me the true potential of this detector!

I started with Disc set at 10 while using factory programs and had a lot of success just "out of the box". I had 0-10 notched out PLUS Disc set at 10 - but I was reading on another forum where this is not necessary and may cost you up to one inch of maximum depth on a coin-sized target. Henrikras is a forum member here and has posted a few YouTube videos pertaining to the Deus. His YouTube ID is Henrik_Rasmussen...He is a firm believer in low disc - more notch type of settings and once I tried out what he suggested it seemed like I could find coins a little deeper and comingled with trash.

Here's a link to an independent study of Disc vs Depth at some settings:

http://www.findmall.com/read.php?83,1676004

Don't know how scientific this test was - but I believe it was all done with the 9" coil

Lower silencer settings will allow you to "hook" a higher-conducting signal with greater ease - but deep iron will sometimes sound off like a keeper. The adjacent 4 kHz program is almost foolproof in this situation. This is why you can pull behind yourself at higher reactivity settings - not only is the default silencer value at -1, but on the initial pass you may have missed the squeak from a masked/partially blocked coin due to a large iron nail, for instance.

Iffy signals - This will take a little getting used to but if you regularly wade through a lot of iron to get to the goodies then you'll want to investigate anything that's not ferrous in the beginning. Have dug a lot of chirpy, cut-off high toned signals and when I go to retrieve the target I pull out a huge iron nail. Sound familiar? RESCAN at this point and more likely than not - you will find a pleasant high tone (usually a Wheatie in my case) that has been missed by everyone else. This is what Deus was meant to do - separate ferrous from non-ferrous!!! On this side of the pond our challenges are a little different, but most of us are still looking for the higher conductors among the iron...and we have the equipment to do just that! Happy Hunting!