A
Anonymous
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Here is a story and a question for those that design detectors like George Payne, Dave Johnson, and anyone else who may be able to help with an answer. I all my years of detecting, and reading about detecting I have never ever seen this subject brought up or addressed anywhere. So it is either something peculiar to my area, something that no one else has ever noticed or talked about. So I thought this Forum and the PI Forum are the best places to Post this as these seem to be the two Forums where the Engineers are. I am an Electronics Tech by trade. I fix it after it breaks but I don't have the training to design the circuitry....wish I did but that's another subject <IMG SRC="/forums/images/smile.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="
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Anyway this may or may not be the first time you have heard about this phenomenon. There are 4 Freshwater Lakes that I hunt on a regular basis and that I have been hunting for over 20 years and the effect that I am about to describe happens in all of them. It seems that Freshwater has the exact opposite effect on how a detector sees mineralization as Saltwater. The 4 lakes that I am talking about have "Normal" mineralization. I put normal in quotes to indicate that if you took a manually ground balanced metal detector to these lakes and if the metal detectors had a preset marking for normal mineralization these beaches would ground balance in the toward the low minerlaization side of this preset area. An example would be a Teknetics Mark I. It had an area marked in blue that was the Normal Mineralization area for it's ground balance control. On these beaches the Mark I would Ground Balance toward the right hand side of this Blue area indicating Low Normal Mineralization.
What happens next is the strange part and the opposite of what happens around saltwater. When you enter the water and go out until you are in about 1 foot of water if you recheck the found balance it will no longer be balanced and the Threshold will go negative as you lower the coil toward the bottom of the lake. To correct this and achieve a good balance again you find that the new setting of the Ground Balance control is now even more toward the Low Mineralization indicating that you now have a lower degree of mineralization than when you were on the Beach. It appears that the fresh water is actually lowering the ground mineralization or at least how the detector sees the mineralization. Now I will take it a step farther. In these same lakes when you reach a depth of 3 feet...about waist deep if you recheck the Ground Balance you will find that it is wrong again and that the trshold goes negative as you bring the coil near the bottom of the lake. Rebalancing now takes you almost to the very end of the ground balance control at it's lowest mineralization setting. Now the last and final step. You are now out in 5 feet of water and again check the ground balance. Again it's wrong with the Threshold going negative as the coil approaches the bottom of the lake. But now you are out of adjustment range there is no way to achieve proper ground balance as the detectors ground balance control it at it's lowest possible mineralization setting. I have made these tests myself over many years with many detectors and the results are always the same. I used to hunt with a Teknetics ST and even this machine would run out of ground balance range on the Low Minerlization side when I would get out into the deeper water of these lakes. So does the Tesoro Tiger Shark I had forgotten about them until recently as I had been using Minelabs with thier auto ground compensation circuitry. But recently I have been experimenting with the new Troy X-5 and even with it's 10 turn Ground Balance Control it has exactly the same problem in the Freshwater. WHich is why I am bringing up the question about this here. There was never really anywhere to bring this up or to bring it to the attention of the people that actually design the detectors that we use. Obviously there is some type of mineralization albiet low or diluted in the deeper water as the threhold does change. If there were no mineralization at all the ground balance control would have no effect and there would be no change in threshold as the coil is lowered to the bottom since it would be like trying to ground balance in air. The only manually ground balanced machine that was ever able to be ground balanced in this environment was a Fisher Gold Bug 2 and that was only after I had talked with Fisher and they told me which control inside the detector to adjust to shift the rainge of the ground balance circuitry. I believe that this is something either area specific or that detector designers aren't aware of since I have never heard mention of it before and since detectors designed for water hunting such as the Teknetics ST and more recently the Tesoro Tiger Shark as well as land machines can not adjust to this low of mineralization. Great pains are made so thet detectors can handle heavy mineralization but there is little mention of extremely mineralization environments. Freshwater Lakes may just be such an environment. I would think this could actually be a water detector designers dream. In this environment a detector that is capable of being properly ground balanced in extremely low mineralization can probably achieve extreme depth equal to or better than in Air Tests!!! In these lakes the deepest seeking detector I had used was the Teketics ST and it was capable of extreme depth in these lakes even though I could not get an exact ground balance when I was in the deeper water. I haven't found anything really old in these lakes for years. Now that I am starting to experiment with the Troy X-5 in these lakes I am starting to find deep old coins and jewelry but I am running into the same old problem of not being able to ground balance properly when in the deeper water. The only other machine to recently find anything really deep in these lakes is a PI. The Aquastar 2.
So how about it. Has anyone heard of this before or is it something peculiar to my area..I am in Souther New Jersey. I am really interested in hearing any and all thoughts on this and if in the future maybe there could be VLF Water Machines with an expanded ground balance range on the side of low mineralization. Hopefully this is something that you never heard about before or that will peak your interest or that will cause others with manually adjusted detectors to try in the lakes that they hunt and see if it holds true in other areas too. as well as stir up some lively and informative Posts here on the Forums!!! I think the reason that it may not ahve come up in conversation before is that most people jsut ground balance thier machine at the water's edge and then hunt without ever checking or trying to rebalance thier detectors in deeper water.
I am POSTING this on Carl's Forum as well as on Eric's PI Forum.
Thanks for reading this very long Post!!!! I am really looking forward to everyone's thoughts on this.
HH
Beachcomber
">Anyway this may or may not be the first time you have heard about this phenomenon. There are 4 Freshwater Lakes that I hunt on a regular basis and that I have been hunting for over 20 years and the effect that I am about to describe happens in all of them. It seems that Freshwater has the exact opposite effect on how a detector sees mineralization as Saltwater. The 4 lakes that I am talking about have "Normal" mineralization. I put normal in quotes to indicate that if you took a manually ground balanced metal detector to these lakes and if the metal detectors had a preset marking for normal mineralization these beaches would ground balance in the toward the low minerlaization side of this preset area. An example would be a Teknetics Mark I. It had an area marked in blue that was the Normal Mineralization area for it's ground balance control. On these beaches the Mark I would Ground Balance toward the right hand side of this Blue area indicating Low Normal Mineralization.
What happens next is the strange part and the opposite of what happens around saltwater. When you enter the water and go out until you are in about 1 foot of water if you recheck the found balance it will no longer be balanced and the Threshold will go negative as you lower the coil toward the bottom of the lake. To correct this and achieve a good balance again you find that the new setting of the Ground Balance control is now even more toward the Low Mineralization indicating that you now have a lower degree of mineralization than when you were on the Beach. It appears that the fresh water is actually lowering the ground mineralization or at least how the detector sees the mineralization. Now I will take it a step farther. In these same lakes when you reach a depth of 3 feet...about waist deep if you recheck the Ground Balance you will find that it is wrong again and that the trshold goes negative as you bring the coil near the bottom of the lake. Rebalancing now takes you almost to the very end of the ground balance control at it's lowest mineralization setting. Now the last and final step. You are now out in 5 feet of water and again check the ground balance. Again it's wrong with the Threshold going negative as the coil approaches the bottom of the lake. But now you are out of adjustment range there is no way to achieve proper ground balance as the detectors ground balance control it at it's lowest possible mineralization setting. I have made these tests myself over many years with many detectors and the results are always the same. I used to hunt with a Teknetics ST and even this machine would run out of ground balance range on the Low Minerlization side when I would get out into the deeper water of these lakes. So does the Tesoro Tiger Shark I had forgotten about them until recently as I had been using Minelabs with thier auto ground compensation circuitry. But recently I have been experimenting with the new Troy X-5 and even with it's 10 turn Ground Balance Control it has exactly the same problem in the Freshwater. WHich is why I am bringing up the question about this here. There was never really anywhere to bring this up or to bring it to the attention of the people that actually design the detectors that we use. Obviously there is some type of mineralization albiet low or diluted in the deeper water as the threhold does change. If there were no mineralization at all the ground balance control would have no effect and there would be no change in threshold as the coil is lowered to the bottom since it would be like trying to ground balance in air. The only manually ground balanced machine that was ever able to be ground balanced in this environment was a Fisher Gold Bug 2 and that was only after I had talked with Fisher and they told me which control inside the detector to adjust to shift the rainge of the ground balance circuitry. I believe that this is something either area specific or that detector designers aren't aware of since I have never heard mention of it before and since detectors designed for water hunting such as the Teknetics ST and more recently the Tesoro Tiger Shark as well as land machines can not adjust to this low of mineralization. Great pains are made so thet detectors can handle heavy mineralization but there is little mention of extremely mineralization environments. Freshwater Lakes may just be such an environment. I would think this could actually be a water detector designers dream. In this environment a detector that is capable of being properly ground balanced in extremely low mineralization can probably achieve extreme depth equal to or better than in Air Tests!!! In these lakes the deepest seeking detector I had used was the Teketics ST and it was capable of extreme depth in these lakes even though I could not get an exact ground balance when I was in the deeper water. I haven't found anything really old in these lakes for years. Now that I am starting to experiment with the Troy X-5 in these lakes I am starting to find deep old coins and jewelry but I am running into the same old problem of not being able to ground balance properly when in the deeper water. The only other machine to recently find anything really deep in these lakes is a PI. The Aquastar 2.
So how about it. Has anyone heard of this before or is it something peculiar to my area..I am in Souther New Jersey. I am really interested in hearing any and all thoughts on this and if in the future maybe there could be VLF Water Machines with an expanded ground balance range on the side of low mineralization. Hopefully this is something that you never heard about before or that will peak your interest or that will cause others with manually adjusted detectors to try in the lakes that they hunt and see if it holds true in other areas too. as well as stir up some lively and informative Posts here on the Forums!!! I think the reason that it may not ahve come up in conversation before is that most people jsut ground balance thier machine at the water's edge and then hunt without ever checking or trying to rebalance thier detectors in deeper water.
I am POSTING this on Carl's Forum as well as on Eric's PI Forum.
Thanks for reading this very long Post!!!! I am really looking forward to everyone's thoughts on this.
HH
Beachcomber