ground balance x-terra 50

[petebarrell]

Tried the 18 khz coil on beach for the first time today and no matter what i set the sensitivity at (first making sure i had a clear area in front of me) i was unable to ground balance. gave it a go on wet sand and dry but with the same result, because i intended to detect just with that coil left the standard coil at home so unable to compare.
Anyone who can come up with any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
thanks
Pete

 

[Mike Bearden]

And if that doesn't work I would have to question the coil. It may be that you got a bad one from the batch ?
I haven't had the chance to run the 18 khz coil on salt beaches yet but had no problems in freash water including when submerged other than setting the sens down about 3-4 notches compared to the stock coil.
Mike

 

[wpaxt]

Hi, Pete.

Sorry to hear that the 18.75 kHz coil gave you some trouble at the beach. I am assuming that this was a saltwater beach, correct? If you search under posts by me you will see my field test of this coil at our beaches here in S. CA and I was able to use it. Perhaps there will be some info in that post that will be of help to you.

You mention that you weren't able to GB the machine on the beach. What exactly happened here? Were you not able to adjust the GB between the high & low tones? Or were you getting continual falsing? Were you able to attempt to hunt?

My own personal feeling with regard to the X-Terra 50 is that many are overly concerned with finetuning the GB when in fact, as the manual states, sensitivity is more often than not the culprit when the machine becomes unstable. I would suggest that you try setting the GB to the preset level (I believe it is 6; check this for me since I don't have the manual handy) and then adjust the sensitivity until the machine runs quietly. Remember that the higher frequency coil is going to be noisier by its nature since it is much more sensitive to lower conductivity items. Hopefully this will work.

Also, the manual tells you that the display will indicate if the GB is out of whack (two dashes in discriminate, -9 in all metal).

If it doesn't, try the higher frequency coil in a non-salt environment (your backyard, perhaps) and see if it exhibits the same behavior. If it does then perhaps the coil is bad, but I don't think I would make that assumption at this point.

I hope this helps.

Bill (S. CA)

 

[petebarrell]

Hi Bill.
Thanks for the rely, yes it was a salt water beach and correct there was no differance in the higb and low tones, what i did was drop the sensitivity down to 8 and ran the GB at6 but as soon the coil touched the the wet sand it became erratic.
Have used this coil inland with no problem.
Pete

 

[wpaxt]

Pete,

Well, it sounds like you did the right stuff. I don't think that the coil is bad; perhaps you may have hit a good patch of black sand. I know that when I have used the 18.75 kHz coil I had to bring the sensitivity down below 8. Did you get any of the error indications on the display?

Also, and this is very important, remember that the X-Terra's ARE NOT designed to be scrubbed on the sand/ground. You have to keep the coil about 1" above the ground. When you mention that the machine began to act erratically when the coil touched the sand you may have hit on the problem. When I first field tested the 50 I had to constantly remind myself to break my old habit of "scrubbing." Try this next time out & see if makes a difference.

Bill