First trip out with Deepstar, a few questions

[Anonymous]

I realize this isn't a Deepstar forum, but it seems like the most likely place to put this
I took the Deepstar out for it's maiden voyage this morning, and the "New Detector" law once again came true. It seems that anytime I get a new detector, I am at a loss to have the time to break it in So I only had an hour to play this morning, but it was enough time to get a feel for this awesome machine.
I hit a beach here in Santa Cruz, CA that I normally go to, and worked the wet sand and slopes, since there's not much garbage there. First target was a dog-tag-style necklace down about 3 inches. Next few targets were clad coins, anywhere from about 2-3 inches down to about 12-14 inches. Did come up with one small silver ring, down about 14" in the dry sand slopes. Nice, one ring is better than no ring
Now, Eric, the questions
I found it difficult to get the threshold set properly. It seems that the machine is very sensitive to lifting the coil off the sand, and when it comes back it retunes. It seems that it takes about 1-2 seconds to retune to where the threshold goes back to a minimum. So, the threshold was about 8-9 o'clock, and the sensitivity was at max. I tried bringing back the sensitivity to about 4 o'clock, and while that helped, it also seemed to decrease the depth capability noticably.
Can you help me determine where the threshold setting should be, and some hints for how to keep the threshold properly tuned? Is it me, or is the machine particularly prone to retuning? I'm sure a lot of it has to do with just keeping the coil level on the sand and keeping it close to the sand as well. Any hints or tips would be much appreciated.
The quality of the machine is superb, very nice job Eric. The rod/coil is very light, the box is heavy though, but that will help my neck muscles Nice audio too, and pinpointing is easy.
No, this isn't an advertisement, since I have no financial connection to Eric, but my first impression on the Deepstar is that it's a fine machine. Kudos Eric.
-J

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Jeff,
The Deepstar will generally give a background response from a beach, with just a few exceptions. On wet or damp sand this background response is due to the conductivity of the seawater between the sand grains. You will find that the signal gets greater nearer the water's edge where the sea water saturation is greatest. On dry sand, you may well get nothing. However, the make-up of the sand itself is important. Some sands contain iron minerals; particularly those derived from volcanic rocks. These sands give an additional signal to that of the conductivity and will also give a signal in dry areas. Sands which give little or no magnetic response are coral sands and sands derived from rocks with negligible iron mineralisation.
The Deepstar auto-tuning operates in a slightly different way than on, say, a Whites Surfmaster. The tuning is slower than a Surfmaster so that deep targets do not tend to tune out during the sweep. Hence the 1

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Jeff,
Posting on the PI forum was fine. They are a few other fellows that just purchased Deepstars that frequent the PI forum, I'm sure that information is helpful to all.
Try dropping back a notch on the Reject control. They really won't be much of a cut back on objects. I doubt you will notice it, and it will help smooth it out. Set the frequency control in different positions, and try that out. Most important, hold the coil flat to the beach when sweeping, no arcing on the end of your sweeps.
I would set up some small targets to test with. The smaller the better. Try to find the best sweep speed for maximum sensitivity. Also set two targets close together, and find the best sweep speed as to recovery time. Remembering these sweep speeds will defiantly aid you in finding the "deep ones".
Have fun,
Bill Crabtree
www.surfscanner.com

 

[Anonymous]

Definitely, not defiantly, sorry about that