I am just scratching my head! I have hunted a new site 3 times..............

[big-ears]

it has old bottle parts, scrap metal, old pieces of wood, in short, a very old area just bulldozed. Not a speck of grass. My E-trac is in the basic coins program, auto+3, I have not been able to locate a single target! I finally tossed an old penny down and I get little response on it from 3 inches above the coin. What gives,,,,,,, I am blank, the area is a known civil war troop area. Old bricks and I am talking about bricks that are not much more than crude oblong rectangles they are so worn, this is a serious site, anything from gold coins to confederate belt buckles is possible, I should know, $30,000 in gold coins were found not a half mile away, a number of U.S. buckles were found here, even a single gold coin on a ring was found close by and I saw one old coke bottle that was going for $70.00 on E-bay, no one has touched it. I can't get an inch into this soil, what gives....I refuse to give up, maybe switching out of conductive would help, I don't know,,,,, any help would be welcome.

 

[Arturo de Zorro]

Are you in a constant null? if so a small coil should help and if not I would play with the sensitivity in manual, dropping the sen. has helped me at one site.

 

[Digger]

Sounds like the perfect place to use the Etrac. I know you said your Auto Sens was set to +3. I've had better luck in "congested" areas with a lower sensitivity and small coil. You can still run in Auto. But give it a shot with -1, or even a -3 if it is real trashy. I think of the sensitivity as headlights on a car. If it is a clear night, the brights work well. But if it is foggy or hazy, those brights send a portion of the light right back at you. Same goes for a detector coil transmitting signals into congested ground. Too much Sens. can cause the signal to bounce back from all the trash (or mineralization), not allowing the signal to penetrate into the soil. As for coils, you didn't mention what you were using. But a smaller coil doesn't have as much "footprint" 'at any one time, allowing it to analyze fewer targets. Thus, resetting faster and separating better. I have both the 6 inch Excelerator and the 6 X 8 butterfly. The butterfly seems to go a bit deeper. But the 6-inch has better separation characteristics. JMHO HH Randy

 

[buckeyetreasurehunter]

I am confused you say there is old bottles, scrap metal and wood which would make me think there are targets there and it is so trashy your threshold is gone the whole time. you also say you havent found a single thing, that makes me think that the area your hunting your not getting any signals and you have a threshold.

if you have no threshold and the area is THAT trashy, I would suggest first, make sure when you get to the site you noise cancel, start in like the high trash mode and swing as slow as it takes to keep the threshold as much as possible maybe 10 seconds or more for each swing.

I recently set up a mode where my hole screen is black except for coins, hunted a very trashy area and took my time, I managed 2 barber dimes and a nice token, I had hunted this area hard before. It is not the ideal way to hunt but in super trashy areas you might miss a few good targets but even with such extreme discrimination its better to find a few good targets instead of none.

 

[JohnTN]

Open the screen up. Don't worry about a loss of threshold with the Etrac a signal from a good target will break through the silence. YOU DO NOT NEED A THRESHOLD TO FIND GOOD TARGETS WITH THE E-TRAC.
If it is a highly trashy area with a lot of iron the factory coin program WILL indeed mask good targets, use as little discrimination as possible and go extremely slow.

 

[coinnut]

I agree with most of the advice here. There are many things you can try. I am doing a similar site here. It's a house from the 1790's that should have all kind of goodies. But the guy was a scrap metal dealer, so junk is all over. MY E Trac consistently "nulls'. Every once in a while I get a thresh hold back. I finally set my screen to just get rid of most of the iron. I believe I am blackening out 28-35. And on the conductive side, I blacken out 01-02. I am running ferrous sounds - two tones, fast on, high trash, auto+3, deep on, difficult ground. But the biggest adjustment I make is in my swing. I do what I now have labeled a "HOVER " swing. I don't swing from left to right like I'm clipping grass. I hover left to right, kinda like that hovercraft you see on video's that the government had a few years back. I go REAL SLOW!! this is important. The machine needs to null on the junk and the have time to read a non ferrous target. This takes time. So a swing can take 5, 10, or more seconds. It seems odd at first, but once you hear a target through the null, you will be slowing down trust me. As far as depth, remember new disturbed dirt is not always the best for a signal to go through. And I'm sure some of the smarter Electronics guys will correct me on this, but I think that when a signal hits a target it loses some of it's punch. So if your machine hits iron, most of the signal is lost and little is left to excite the other good target. I'm not sure I said that scientifically, but you get the gist. Too much junk leads to less depth. Go in a more open area and your depth seems to increase and it's easier to separate targets. Just my two cents worth.

 

[big-ears]

if you could see the area, you would drool, clean ground, between old bottles, square nails, antique doll parts, lantern parts etc. not a blade of grass.......3 feet from a very old railroad track long abandoned; soil is almost black. It would not surprise me if it was an 1800s dump I'm on top of. I'll start trying some of your suggestions.

 

[tony c]

A lot of the suggestions below are good but i don't care what else is below the coil,you should have NO problems picking up a coin at 3" if you do have a problem in clean ground there is something wrong with your machine or you have it set wrong,just remember the more discrimination you use the more it will null,i suggest using a small coil go really slow ,use as little disc. as possible and lower you sensitivity to at least auto,the etrac is a great machine in trash,just takes a little practice ,tony c

 

[digitrich]

Coal clinkers ground up dispersed in and amongst the soil will kill your depth, make sure you use difficult ground, smaller coil the better...watch your auto sensitivity, if it's in the ten range at plus three you are in some crappy soil. I would run auto with no plus anything. Turn deep off and fast on...deep on only works well in rather clean soil, with clear separation between targets. If my auto sensitivity goes down past say 12, I just hunt 12 manual and ignore falses, again, smaller than small coil or go nuts (3.5x7 or 5 SR). No Explorer or Etrac likes disturbed ground, especially if iron particles are mixed in. When the road department takes out a road and I try to detect the soil left, my auto sens drops like a rock. The combination of disturbed soil, high trash content and possible coal clinkers is just as bad as you can get. Drought may help, heavy rain or wet soil may make hunting impossible in such an area.

 

[big-ears]

You guys must be looking over my shoulders, your exactly right, the ground is very wet, and loose from the dozer. And I had the "sens" at +3................I'M BACK BABY! I'M GOING IN!

 

[dippodigger]

thinking about an etrac so this is a good place to start. I am trying to decide what to do but just not sure yet. I will keep lurking and getting information from all of you. thanks

 

[jbow]

Your best bet there will be a TDI or an InfiniumLS. I tried a site like that last spring. I even buried several coins at about 6" and they all disappeared to the E-TRAC, SE, T2, F75, Tejon, and SovereignGT... I know there are targets at this site but the whole lawn is black cinders. You might try burying a coin and try a machine with a manual GB and try adjusting it until you can hit the coin, but it's just a guess.... you are going to have a hard time there and may need to go all metal and dig every pip you hear that even tries to repeat.

J

 

[jbow]

n/t

 

[kered]

If i was to enter a site like that i think i would first take note of the Auto sens and then put the same in manual, change to quickmask with a completely clear screen, you could also put it into ferous if its sounding off every foot on nails(easier on the ears) and go from there, adjusting the sens up or down depending on the result. You will hear everything, iron included but it won't null and going slow you should be able to pick out anything thats not iron, if theres loads of targets a smaller coil might help too, although the stock coil is pretty good