First hunt with the Etrac

[Jim upstate NY]

hunted the last hour and a half into dark.. was gonna wait till teh weekend but supposed to rain, so just headed across the street to my neighbors yard.. house built in 1790.. anyway I ran in park mode so not to be overwhelmed with all the iron, in conductive and high trash and difficult ground.. had fast on and deep off, and auto sens to start... was pretty much in a null most of the time, with some high tone falsing on bigger iron.. makes you stop and look the crosshairs were right off the disced out portion of the lower right, so in high iron in conductive you may need to modify this pattern, or you will get quite a few high tones..

Hunted a while before digging the first target, which was a wheat about 4 inches deep.. next target was teh old copper bell, then third target a 12-23 reading.. luckily it was reading pretty solid and I remembered that the cu/ni indians came in there and I got the flying eagle.. after that started digging more signals and got quite a bit of aluminum trash that was coming in at the 12 ferrous reading and all over the conductive scale.. most didnt sound that great, but was digging it anyway. I did get a few clad and an president token and the gun which didnt really sound as big a target as it was.. reading 12-47 I think.. but pinpoint was small?

Couple things I noticed as compared to the explorer.. the coin tones in conductive or no where near as high as the tones on the explorer in ferrous or conductive. I guess because of the expanded conductive screen and coins coming in before the highest cond numbers, where on teh explorer they read closer to max.. kind of strange digging coins with such low tones.. the digital readings were pretty good at looking in though.. another thing I am not sure what the purpose is for... not sure whats gonna read over in the 50 range thats going to be any good

I do know that it doesnt seem to get as much depth in auto as the explorer seems to, I switched to manual at 22 about half way through as I was digging some 6 inch targets that were fairly weak on audio, so figured I better switch to manual to get deeper.

Another thing I noticed and not sure if its just my ears or not, but I could hear the tones changing thru the null, and then the tone would hold thru the null, threshold returned and I would get back to the low tone.. I was running threshold at just audible and in teh lowest tone available.. but while hunting in teh nulls, I could hear faintly the disced out target tones.. not sure if thats how its designed, but kind of wierd.. I have pretty good hearing so maybe some of you haven't noticed that... not really a bad thing... can hardly hear it, but at least I could tell when I was going over disced out targets besides iron.. would work great if we had a good ferrous audio mode..

 

[jimpugh]

n/t

 

[wpaxt]

Jim,

Adjust the variability from the factory preset of 25 to the max of 30. That should help with the tones quite a bit.

Bill

 

[wpaxt]

You may find page 73 of the manual of interest with regard to the trash density feature & how the audio is affected by it.

Continued good luck with the Etrac in the field.

Bill

 

[Brian(upstateNY)]

n/t

 

[Jim upstate NY]

n/t

 

[Jim upstate NY]

although they were not deep or ion the thick iron.. I am sure the se would have gotten them all if I got over them.. I only go over once in a while.. and hunt an hour or so.. maybe got 10 hours in over there on the 3/4 acre.. SE has found a half cent, large cent and barber quarter and quite a few wheats..
but there loads of roofing nails and other iron near the house, and thought it would be a good test at the etracs ability in iron. only a few memorials I found in that iron mess with it.. The se pulled out a few wheats down about 6 inches from that area.. but I did have the sens lower on the etrac to try and lower the iron falsing I was getting in conductive audio.. worse part is I know thats where most all the old stuff is gonna be.. concentrated on that front yard pretty hard, with no old ones found with the etrac.. I just wish I could try it in ferrous wide open, but the one switch to that was impossible... sounded like a machine gun, with high tones popping and disappearing... hopefully I will get used to it before giving up and just use the explorer.. the iron area seems tough, with the expanded screen it seems to come in a lot more areas than it did on the explorer.. so a simple line of iron mask is not enough to hide the majority of signals from small iron