Folks I have a couple of questions on ground balance. Picked up a Deus early in December and have spent each weekend working with it. I have read Andy's book and spent quite a bit of time reading the various forums. I have been very successful setting the machine for iron infested areas and had some nice finds out of areas that had been hunted before.The machine is wonderful at old house sites and can pick the good targets out of the iron. Today I hunted a spot in Richmond that had been pounded hard and was the site of the outer defenses of Richmond. trenches, cannon emplacements etc. Beautiful place to hunt. There was about an inch and a half of snow on the ground and the area was very low with standing water. The hole would fill up when you dig. The soil was good. No bad soil around here. I was hunting with reactivity 0, silencer -1, 5 tones and a disc of 3.5. I wanted depth since it had been hunted so hard. My friend was hunting with a minlab explorer II. We had not been hunting long and he doug a bullet about as deep as I've seen. He got down about 12 inches and called me over to read it with my machine. I could not read it. Gave him the pinpointer and after more digging he got it out of the hole. Must have been 14+". Needless to say that bothered me. I was running manual ground balance at 86 which was what the machine was reading. A short while later I got a deep reading and before digging decided to tweek that machine to improve the reading. I lowered the ground balance a few points below what it was tracking and the reading did not improve. I tried raising it and at around 91 the signal improved. So I continued the hunt with a positive ground balance. I dug 6 dropped bullets to his 4 while hunting with a 9" head. I had read that a negative ground balance would give a little more depth but today that was not the case. I dug some deep bullets.
So my question is: In clean soil what is the best ground balance setting? Negative, positive or dead on? I always balanced my machines in the past dead on but today made me re-think things. Keep in mind this is not mineralized soil. Any thoughts appreciated.
Andy
So my question is: In clean soil what is the best ground balance setting? Negative, positive or dead on? I always balanced my machines in the past dead on but today made me re-think things. Keep in mind this is not mineralized soil. Any thoughts appreciated.
Andy