Find's Treasure Forums
Welcome to Find's Treasure Forums, Guests!
You are viewing this forums as a guest which limits you to read only status.
Only registered members may post stories, questions, classifieds, reply to other posts, contact other members using built in messaging and use many other features found on these forums.
Why not register and join us today? It's free! (We don't share your email addresses with anyone.) We keep email addresses of our users to protect them and others from bad people posting things they shouldn't.
Click here to register!
Need Support Help?
Cannot log in?, click here to have new password emailed to you
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
HELP! Explorer 2 Questions/Problems
- Thread starter Mag99004
- Start date
Chris(SoCenWI)
Well-known member
Mag99004,
Everything you state is completely normal.
First of all depth. You say you can not run above 16-18 in manual because it is too noisy. If you run in Semi-auto you are essentially just turning down the sensitivity even further, possibly even down to single digits. (Semi-Auto seems to vary about plus/minus 12-14 from the set point). It sounds like you are in an area with lots of electrical noise. Take your two detectors out in the country far from any electrical wires and then try comparing them on depth. If you are far from sources of interference you should be able to crank the sense to upper twenties and still have a stable machine. I have been doing lots of detecting in urban areas the last couple of years and can very rarely run above 18-20. My finds of older coins is way off and I am sure this is the reason.
Speed. AS A RULE: If you are in trash you must go slow to let the machine see each target; swing too fast and it is more likely that the Explorer will not have had enough time to recover from the last target seen to respond to a new one. Within reason the EX will detect deeper on a faster swing, this is reason for the minelab "wiggle", but in most places you hunt it will be trashy. Definitely try different speeds, sometime quick will see what slow won't and visa versa.
Not sure why it is blanking on your coin. Open it up to no discrimination. I suspect that you have a chunk of iron trash next to the target. Iron trash is everywhere.
Rusty iron nails will still fool you 5 years and thousands of hours of experience later. They do have some tell-tale characteristics but coins buried deep or next to iron can behave much the same way.
Pinpoint going blank acting opposite of what it should is almost always caused by hitting the pinpoint button to close to a target. Lift the coil way up and then switch in and out of pinpoint mode again.
Sounds to me like you are doing everything right but are hunting in an area with lots of electrical noise and probably lots of trash in the ground.
Chris
Everything you state is completely normal.
First of all depth. You say you can not run above 16-18 in manual because it is too noisy. If you run in Semi-auto you are essentially just turning down the sensitivity even further, possibly even down to single digits. (Semi-Auto seems to vary about plus/minus 12-14 from the set point). It sounds like you are in an area with lots of electrical noise. Take your two detectors out in the country far from any electrical wires and then try comparing them on depth. If you are far from sources of interference you should be able to crank the sense to upper twenties and still have a stable machine. I have been doing lots of detecting in urban areas the last couple of years and can very rarely run above 18-20. My finds of older coins is way off and I am sure this is the reason.
Speed. AS A RULE: If you are in trash you must go slow to let the machine see each target; swing too fast and it is more likely that the Explorer will not have had enough time to recover from the last target seen to respond to a new one. Within reason the EX will detect deeper on a faster swing, this is reason for the minelab "wiggle", but in most places you hunt it will be trashy. Definitely try different speeds, sometime quick will see what slow won't and visa versa.
Not sure why it is blanking on your coin. Open it up to no discrimination. I suspect that you have a chunk of iron trash next to the target. Iron trash is everywhere.
Rusty iron nails will still fool you 5 years and thousands of hours of experience later. They do have some tell-tale characteristics but coins buried deep or next to iron can behave much the same way.
Pinpoint going blank acting opposite of what it should is almost always caused by hitting the pinpoint button to close to a target. Lift the coil way up and then switch in and out of pinpoint mode again.
Sounds to me like you are doing everything right but are hunting in an area with lots of electrical noise and probably lots of trash in the ground.
Chris
Chris(SoCenWI)
Well-known member
If you are out in the country and sure there is no electrical interference you should be able to crank up the sensitivity.
Try this: In your house go to a completely open screen, hold the coil as still as possible a couple of feet off the ground. Put it in manual sens and start cranking it up. You have gone too far when you start hearing signals and the cursor is bouncing around. That will give you an idea of electrical noise sounds like. Generally indoors you won't be able to turn it up very far before it goes batty. Noise Cancel is used to try counteract ambient electrical noise. Try noise canceling and then perhaps you can turn it up a notch or two. Generally with wideband electrical noise Noise Canceling won't help much.
Outdoors away from electrical appliances you should be able to turn it up much higher, but there will be a point where it goes nutty and you have to back down the sens. This is the setting you should try detecting at. Once you start swinging the coil over the ground it may sound nutty again, but when you stop and hold still it should stabilize. This is due to lots of targets in the ground. Decreasing sensitivity means you are telling it to ignore smaller and deeper signals.
There are places that ground mineralization will not allow you to get much depth. Not sure if Oregon is one of them. I've heard of places in Upper MI where experienced users could not get more than 4-5 inches. Not much you can do about this; no detector can do better.
Chris
Try this: In your house go to a completely open screen, hold the coil as still as possible a couple of feet off the ground. Put it in manual sens and start cranking it up. You have gone too far when you start hearing signals and the cursor is bouncing around. That will give you an idea of electrical noise sounds like. Generally indoors you won't be able to turn it up very far before it goes batty. Noise Cancel is used to try counteract ambient electrical noise. Try noise canceling and then perhaps you can turn it up a notch or two. Generally with wideband electrical noise Noise Canceling won't help much.
Outdoors away from electrical appliances you should be able to turn it up much higher, but there will be a point where it goes nutty and you have to back down the sens. This is the setting you should try detecting at. Once you start swinging the coil over the ground it may sound nutty again, but when you stop and hold still it should stabilize. This is due to lots of targets in the ground. Decreasing sensitivity means you are telling it to ignore smaller and deeper signals.
There are places that ground mineralization will not allow you to get much depth. Not sure if Oregon is one of them. I've heard of places in Upper MI where experienced users could not get more than 4-5 inches. Not much you can do about this; no detector can do better.
Chris
I never thought of noise canceling or adjusting the sens in the air. I always assumed you had to do in with the coil to the ground. But thats a good idea, if its main purpose is to counteract interference in the air versus then that will give me a good idea of where I should set it at. One of my problems has been knowing where to put the sensitivity at. I get stumped at times because I don't know if its just a trashy area or if I really have the sens cranked up too high.
Since I run in advanced digital it has the default discrimination. I've heard some people saying they hunt in IM at -10 all the time. I always thought hunting in IM was only useful for relic hunting. Do you find you have more success with editing, running in IM, or using the default disc pattern that comes up in Advanced Digital.
Also, is it normal for digital reading to be less accurate once the coin is buried. I know pennies ring up around 7 24 for me, however if they're in the ground more than 2-3" it sometimes reads 3 20 or even 0 18 range. Thanks again,
Eric
Since I run in advanced digital it has the default discrimination. I've heard some people saying they hunt in IM at -10 all the time. I always thought hunting in IM was only useful for relic hunting. Do you find you have more success with editing, running in IM, or using the default disc pattern that comes up in Advanced Digital.
Also, is it normal for digital reading to be less accurate once the coin is buried. I know pennies ring up around 7 24 for me, however if they're in the ground more than 2-3" it sometimes reads 3 20 or even 0 18 range. Thanks again,
Eric
Chris(SoCenWI)
Well-known member
Eric,
Noise cancel shifts the receive frequencies by a small amount; listens for noise, then shifts again, listens, etc. It does this ten times and tries to pick the frequency shift that resulted in the least amount of noise. If you are waving the coil around while noise canceling you might be causing the detector to detect signals; it thinks this is electrical noise and that might cause it to pick an channel that is not optimal. I've never found noise cancel to make a huge amount of difference for the most common source of electrical noise- power lines. I've tried both in the air and on the ground. If you do it on the ground you should try be in a clean patch, which is almost impossible at many sites.
Remember Noise cancel only tries to eliminate ambient electrical noise, nothing to do with sensitivity or mineralization. Electrical noise will be both in the air and the ground.
Sensitivity. If you hold the coil still, either in the air or on the ground and the detector is nulling or chirping then you definitely have the sensitivity up too high. Most(not all) experienced users turn up the sensitivity in Manual to the point where it starts to chirp and then bring it down a couple of additional notches. Sometimes once you start detecting you will need to bring it down a couple of notches. Semi auto adjust the sensitivity to where the explorer deems is best. Try switching between sens 1 manual and auto while outside and see what it does for depth. Then when you are inside switch between where you can set sensitivity manually and get a stable detector and then switch to semi auto. You'll see a much more depth in semi auto in the first instance and generally much less in the second.
The last thing on sensitivity is try doing your adjustments with an open screen. I've seen people try do it with most of the screen blacked out and it is in a constant null. Opening the screen revealed the machine going batty.
If you are running the factory settings you will have the coin program selected. This is about the same as running iron mask -8 or so. The coin program discrimination pattern is slanted a bit on the right side of the screen, in iron mask it is straight up and down. Absolutely no difference other than that. Iron mask is just a easily variable discrimination pattern- has nothing to do with what kind of hunting you do, nor does iron mask have any special ability to handle iron trash over regular discrimination.
I hunt almost exclusively with an open screen except for bottle caps(lower right corner) discriminated out. This means I am never in a null except for over a bottle cap. Since I run in ferrous this means a bottle cap signal would sound like a coin to me. The only time I use a pattern is when hunting a park that is loaded with pull tabs and similar trash. Then I black out the entire bottom two thirds of the screen.
And the reason for using little discrimination is because of your last question. Yes, If you only detect through air the ID is pretty accurate. If you are trying to find coins IN the ground accuracy suffers. Depth, mineralization, and the presence of trash cause the ID to get worse. If you have a tight discrimination pattern you will miss many of the coins. Basically learning in patterns or doing lots of editing is a waste of time unless you are hunting for clad.
As you gain experience you will learn which hits that fall out of the normal ID range are most likely to be coins. This takes much time and digging many signals. I really believe in using the smart screen instead of digital to watch how the cursor bounces as you go over a target multiple times. This is generally what will give you the evidence whether or not to dig. Also the less discrimination you have the more the cursor can bounce. Find Mike Moutry's Explorer settings somewhere, there are some nice screen shots that illustrate this.
Chris
Noise cancel shifts the receive frequencies by a small amount; listens for noise, then shifts again, listens, etc. It does this ten times and tries to pick the frequency shift that resulted in the least amount of noise. If you are waving the coil around while noise canceling you might be causing the detector to detect signals; it thinks this is electrical noise and that might cause it to pick an channel that is not optimal. I've never found noise cancel to make a huge amount of difference for the most common source of electrical noise- power lines. I've tried both in the air and on the ground. If you do it on the ground you should try be in a clean patch, which is almost impossible at many sites.
Remember Noise cancel only tries to eliminate ambient electrical noise, nothing to do with sensitivity or mineralization. Electrical noise will be both in the air and the ground.
Sensitivity. If you hold the coil still, either in the air or on the ground and the detector is nulling or chirping then you definitely have the sensitivity up too high. Most(not all) experienced users turn up the sensitivity in Manual to the point where it starts to chirp and then bring it down a couple of additional notches. Sometimes once you start detecting you will need to bring it down a couple of notches. Semi auto adjust the sensitivity to where the explorer deems is best. Try switching between sens 1 manual and auto while outside and see what it does for depth. Then when you are inside switch between where you can set sensitivity manually and get a stable detector and then switch to semi auto. You'll see a much more depth in semi auto in the first instance and generally much less in the second.
The last thing on sensitivity is try doing your adjustments with an open screen. I've seen people try do it with most of the screen blacked out and it is in a constant null. Opening the screen revealed the machine going batty.
If you are running the factory settings you will have the coin program selected. This is about the same as running iron mask -8 or so. The coin program discrimination pattern is slanted a bit on the right side of the screen, in iron mask it is straight up and down. Absolutely no difference other than that. Iron mask is just a easily variable discrimination pattern- has nothing to do with what kind of hunting you do, nor does iron mask have any special ability to handle iron trash over regular discrimination.
I hunt almost exclusively with an open screen except for bottle caps(lower right corner) discriminated out. This means I am never in a null except for over a bottle cap. Since I run in ferrous this means a bottle cap signal would sound like a coin to me. The only time I use a pattern is when hunting a park that is loaded with pull tabs and similar trash. Then I black out the entire bottom two thirds of the screen.
And the reason for using little discrimination is because of your last question. Yes, If you only detect through air the ID is pretty accurate. If you are trying to find coins IN the ground accuracy suffers. Depth, mineralization, and the presence of trash cause the ID to get worse. If you have a tight discrimination pattern you will miss many of the coins. Basically learning in patterns or doing lots of editing is a waste of time unless you are hunting for clad.
As you gain experience you will learn which hits that fall out of the normal ID range are most likely to be coins. This takes much time and digging many signals. I really believe in using the smart screen instead of digital to watch how the cursor bounces as you go over a target multiple times. This is generally what will give you the evidence whether or not to dig. Also the less discrimination you have the more the cursor can bounce. Find Mike Moutry's Explorer settings somewhere, there are some nice screen shots that illustrate this.
Chris