Fisher F19 first tests, first impressions.

[dfmike]

I'm a big F5 fan as you know. I sold my F44 and used the money towards an F19 that I got for a good price. I wanted to try a detector operating at a different freq for some time. Something that would possibly allow me to hunt in trashier places or highly mineralized ground more effectively and I was also looking for a few features I had on my F44 like back light and iron audio. The fact that the F19 uses the same coils as the F5 was also a big factor in my decision to get one.

The menu system is easy to understand and straightforward. The display is clean and well organized. It's not quite as informative as the F5 nor is it as easy to read at arms length. The back light works exactly like the F44 but the iron audio that they call FeTone works much better and is a feature I immediately appreciated. Basically it allows the detector to run the discrimination mode at zero and literally kills the sound of all iron targets which is the equivalent of 0-40 on the F19 scale. Normally one would notch iron but then depth starts to suffer. Here Iron is not notched, the detector detects it silently if you will. No fatigue, maximum depth (save for all metal of course).

So far I didn't have much time to test it outdoors. About 15 minutes on the front lawn. I found 3 shallow copper pennies and an old Hot Wheel car that was about 7 inches deep. That was in discrim mode at zero, gain at max, no v break, no notch. The detector came with the Fisher 11 DD coil and it's the only one I used so far. I want to test the concentric coil on it even though I know the F19 is not designed to use one. In air tests I was surprised to notice that with the same targets that I tested my F44, F5 and Omega 8000, it gave me the same depth give or take 0.5 inches in all metal with threshold at zero. That's on a copper penny, silver dime, silver quarter, silver ring. It trumped the F5 on a 2 dollar Canadian coin by 2 inches. It's the lowest conductivity target of the bunch so that could explain it. I tested the 11 DD coil of the F5 on it just to see if it would perform exactly the same and it did. The F5 coil's epoxy around the base is thick and doesn't let the plastic seams show through. The one on the F19 almost seems transparent or much thinner. It's possible the F19's coil is an older model and Fisher updated the way they seal their coils.

Bill (Dirtfishing) on youtube seems to get slightly higher numbers than I do in his air tests of this machine especially on the nickel where he gets 15 inches in all metal.

I'm looking forward to trying it out where it counts... on the ground.

 

[still looking 52]

Good luck with your new rigg, this will definitely put some excitement in your next hunts. Probably pretty nice weather your having up there in Canada right now, we're burning up here in WV.

 

[dfmike]

Thanks still looking. We are burning up to. No detecting for me today or the last few days for that matter.
I'm itching to go back to the old foundations in the woods where I found my old 1912 silver 5 cents and the 1889 large penny. The F19 with small coil could possibly open up new targets in the iron trash. Between the heat, deer flies and hoards of mosquitoes it's mission impossible for the next month or two. I think I'm going to like this detector but I wish it had the live phase readout and threshold control in discrimination mode like the F5.

 

[dfmike]

Another thing I have noticed about this detector. If the object is not some kind of alloy or heavily corroded iron, it will lock onto it with one specific number that never waivers. No 2-3 number range.

 

[dfmike]

I took the F19 to a really trashy area today. As much as I like my F5, the F19 makes me wish it had FeTone and V-Break really bad in areas where constant multiple targets in all ranges make my ears bleed. Can't have it all I guess.

I remember seeing videos where guys would say how much the F19 likes nickels. I can concur. I never found so many nickels in such a short time. Also, this machine is quiet, very quiet even at maximum gain. Almost zero chatter in disc mode 0 with FeTone taking care of silencing iron. It almost makes me wish I could set the gain to 110 just for depth. Is still think the chatter would be minimal.

 

[REVIER]

This sounds like a great machine.
Never used one but I can give you a few insights that I have discovered using my 13kHz F70 in mineralized ground here in Birmingham Ala. with lots of extra iron that you might experience
Your ground is not mine, your detector is not the same either so I am not sure if any of it will transfer over, some of it or what but just a few things to look out for.

First, mine finds nickels also better than any other coin or at least the deepest coin I have found so far in my devil soil was a worn V nickel as thin as a dime and 8" deep...with the 5"DD sniper coil.
In a land where getting past 5" is a problem this was a Herculean effort and shocking find, a friend that was hunting with me that uses an E Trac looked at the hole, the coin and that small coil and just shook his head.

Next, for those that hunt in heavy mineralization you have to watch out for something that happens on my Fisher, maybe yours too, and this effect was also confirmed by Keith Southern who hunts in Tennessee soil with that famous red clay mineralization....up- averaging.
Many Fishers are programmed to do this and this feature is a key reason why I have been surprisingly effective in my spots.
Up to about 3" my VDI numbers seem about normal but as you go deeper those numbers go higher.
At 4" they start to rise at least 10 numbers or more, at 5" even higher and past that to 6" or more in depth they soar every time.
My numbers are nickels 32, zinc cents, 61, Indian head cents from the mid 50's to low 60's, dimes and copper cents in the low 70's, quarters in he low to mid 80's and halves and silver dollars in the low 90's.
Here I look for targets at the 5"+ level, definitely 6" or more because there seems to be a lost layer of great targets at that level and every coin I have ever found at that depth so far have had these numbers.
Nothing solid, always a block of numbers are what I look for and about a range of about 5-8 numbers that don't drop to iron from at least 2 directions in disc plus I usually check it again in all metal or use disc as a check if hunting in all metal.
At this 5"+ levels here are the numbers I have seen every time...I repeat, EVERY TIME on every silver dime, every copper cent including IH's and yes...even nickels.
High 80's to low 90's like from about 85-92.
A Peace dollar I found at 4-5" was a solid, repeating 98-99 on every pass...something I have never seen before and I can't believe I actually decided to dig it but I only did because it was so unusual.
If it is deep and not iron this is the behavior I have seen on every non ferrous target and by now I have many in my collection since I recognized and learned this strange behavior and language.

Not just coins either, deeper targets of all kinds are always up averaged in this soil like can slaw and aluminum of all kinds, zinc items and everything else.
Out of the soil they all return to normal numbers, in the soil they do not come in at recognized areas if deeper.
I talk about needing to learn a new language to hunt here deep and this new numbering system is a big part of that.

Lots of iron falsing going on around here too since I hunt in heavy iron infested sites and even though this same high number behavior is seen all the time it rarely repeats and definitely doesn't repeat from 2 directions except in some rare instances but be aware because I have seen it happen.
Most of the time high number iron falsing happens at least 3-4" away from an actual iron target so I always use the pinpoint button to zero in on all target locations first and more than 90% of the time by turning 90 degrees non ferrous targets will either change to much lower and jumpier numbers or disappear completely...when this happens it has been iron every time for me so far.

You don't have the tone selection I do on my detector but I don't think that matters all that much because I seem to be most successful using all metal or in disc I use mostly monotone most of the time for the most solid, stable and info filled signals with the least amount of problems with EMI...and I have a lot of that at some of my sites.

I have had success with 3 different coils in both heavy mineralized and iron infested sites but I seem to be the most successful using the small 5" DD sniper.
For hunting in trashy sites especially, there is enough crazy, bouncy insane behavior going on in this kind of dirt the least amount of targets I can manage to get under the coil at the same time the better I can notice the good ones and target them for a more thorough examination.
I know that a fast sweep speed can work on the Fishers to achieve some pretty good depth but in my situation slow speed works way better.
There are so many signals where I hunt due to ground mineralization, trash and all sizes of iron that unless I go at a crawl I can easily miss something good that is heavily masked.
By moving very slow I can usually get at least a piece, a hint of a good target that is trying to hide.

As far as settings I have used many and they all seemed to work pretty well.
It is said on the T2/F75/F70 platform you do not lose depth as you raise the disc that seems to be common on many detectors and I believe this is true.
That very thin and very deep V nickel I found was located with some unusual settings I was using at the time of disc maxed out but with foil and nickels notched back in and it was as solid and good as signal as I ever had that deep in this rough soil.
However with much practice I have settled into using two other methods that seem to work even better for me and enables me to notice good targets easier.
One was what I call the blast-through method...all metal, all other settings maxed out or close to maxed out.
It took time to start to pick out patterns using these extreme settings, tons of jumping, chatter, noise and all else but eventually I realized with slow coil movements, listening for the more solid sounding tones from the false ones and watching for those fleeting blocks of higher numbers that somewhat repeated I learned to pick out the nonferrous targets at will...but it took time.
I learned to do this in very good low mineralized soil at a site that was infested with iron but I was pleasantly surprised when I learned this technique worked just as well in highly mineralized soil that was fairly clean, loaded with iron, trash or both.
Using disc I usually turn up the gain as high as possible without constant chatter, the thresh works good at positive numbers but can be pretty noisy so I usually lower it into the low to medium negative numbers and look for those same telltale blocks of repeating numbers no matter where they end up to be, (except iron unless I am into digging relics), and I usually use disc down to 1 or 0 and use monotone for my tone selection.

Don't know if any of this will work on yours or if it can help you at all but you got a Fisher so if you learn it and it's little quirks and behavior you can't help but be successful.
Good luck and have fun!

 

[dfmike]

Thanks REVIER for all the info.

I doubt my soil is as difficult as yours. I never had my numbers go higher at depth on any target so far. Every time I get unusually high numbers it's usually a soda can laying flat close to the surface or just about any target that is bigger than a coin and really close to the surface or very big and deep. This is true of my F5 and it seems to be the same on my F19. The only thing I find difficult to remember on the F19 is that all targets give higher numbers than the F5 since the iron ID covers a much broader range. Unlike the F70 or F5, the screen only shows a number which one has to associate with a target. I will learn to remember the number/target combination in time.

I used to turn my F5 to all metal on most targets that I would be unsure of or that would seem to be at fringe depth in discrimination. I forget to do that on my F19. Thanks for the reminder.