First Time Out with the 800

[PDH]

After a good bit of time in my test garden I finally felt comfortable enough to take the new 800 on a relic hunt. It was cold and windy but I was itching to try out my new toy. First spot was a small field next to my house that I have absolutely pounded over the years. As expected, I didn't find anything except a couple rusty nails. The odd thing is that the nails were giving up a solid repeatable tone and a 17 TID from every direction. A 16-17 is the same reading that I get from CW bullets in my test garden. The other odd thing is this. In my test garden I have a 3 ringer buried at 7 inches with a rusty nail over the top of it a 5 inches. The 800 does not signal on that target in any of the single frequencies, park, or field modes. Both targets are completely discriminated out. It does recognize it as Iron in all metal mode though. Why the 800 doesn't respond to the bullet/nail target but sounds out loud and clear on a rusty nail all by itself has me a little confused. It's gonna take more time to figure that one out.
The second stop on my outing was a 60 year old homesite that was torn down about ten years ago. I have tried hunting that spot with many other detectors but because the ground is so polluted with both iron and modern trash the other detectors were basically ineffective. The 800 didn't have that problem. I was really impressed with how the 800 sorted through the trash. Although I only spent about 45 minutes there I was able to pull out an old quarter, a fired 3 ringer, and a couple of whatsits. Looking forward to some above freezing temps so I can take her out for another spin.

 

[jmaclen]

Hi PDH

sounds like you are jumping right in to learning some of the cool things about the Equinox 800.

I am not a relic hunter but I do gold prospecting in the Gold modes and detect lots of unintended relics at like a ratio of around 100 to 1 between non gold targets (iron, tin and lead) and gold nuggets !!!!!!!
Anyway I hunt for nuggets in multi Park 2, multi Field 2 and multi Gold modes with discrimination set at -3 to -9 so I won't be pounded by all of the iron trash and magnetite signals in the SW USA gold fields. I use the horseshoe button to check targets for iron vs non-ferrous probability. Often I will hit targets that have TIDs in the mid to upper teens. That's the large gold nugget range so I always double check those by engaging the horseshoe button. Old rusty square nails, bolts, nuts, and any other substantial rusty iron targets will usually also have numbers below -2 mixed in with the 12 to 19 or so numbers so it is easy to determine that I am over a rusty, oxidizing iron target by double checking with the horseshoe (all metals accepted) button engaged. Without using the horseshoe button and just hunting in my discrimination pattern I will just see the mid-teen numbers. The Multi IQ simultaneous frequency features of the Equinox (I think?) are what causes most of this by detecting the strongest signature of the target which would be the rusted part of the nail in this case while discing out the actual iron. Some natural iron oxide minerals =magnetite and hematite will TID partly in the mid teens too as hot rocks. In single frequency use the results are not the same. I also don't get as much of the upper iron signal mid-teen TIDs in multi Park 1 and Field 1. It must have to do with the lower transmit frequencies which are more weighted in those two modes and maybe the ground mineralization where I hunt.

Did you check the nail over the 3 ringer in single frequencies only or in multi too. If you didn't check in multi please try it and see what happens especially in Park 2 and Field 2 with the iron discriminated out up to say -2. You could also experiment with the Iron Bias settings after you get more comfortable with the Equinox 800. I have detected "masked" nuggets directly below iron targets in the field in multi. I doubt the high frequency single modes would have hit those nuggets.

Oh I almost forgot. Lowering the sensitivity a bit might also lessen this iron mid teens id effect. I used do do that on my Tek T2 and the signal would clean right up.....who knows
Enjoy,
Jeff

 

[PDH]

Thanks Jeff for the input.