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I have a problem - eTrac and AT Pro - performance!

S

Shayne

New member
This is going to seem strange. I have an eTrac and just today, I received my new AT Pro. I bought the AT Pro mostly for beach and shallow water hunting. To test the Pro, I hit a small lot ( one acre) near my house that I have hunted for nearly 40 hours with the eTrac. In that 40 hours, I have found 75 wheat pennies, several buffalo nickles, two V nickles, four mercury dimes and one Roosevelt dime with the eTrac. I was always wondering why I had not found more silver. Anyway, in three hours with the AT Pro at the same lot, I found one Indian (first one - 11 Inches), seven wheat pennies, two buffalo, four mercury's and two Washington silvers (same hole) - 17 coins. The AT Pro was nailing the silvers at over 10 inches deep (settings were Pro and Zero Discrimination).

Here is the question, how is it possible that the AT Pro is deeper and the eTrac missed all of those silver coins? I know I have walked over them in the past. I have a slow swing speed. On my eTrac, I hunt with the stock Pro Coil, the SEF 6X8 DD and the SEF 4.5 X 6 DD. I run a baseline discrimination pattern that starts at 18FE to 35FE, Fast On, Deep Off, Normal, Multi, 15 Threshold, 30 response, Manual 21-23 and everything else is pretty much standard. I did dig more iron with the AT Pro (not much), but I attribute that to my learning curve. What are your thoughts? Is there a way to test the eTrac to determine if it is working to its full potential? The machine is relatively new - 3 months old. Please advise...
 
One must check targets with both machines and prove if one will not hit targets the other will.My AT Pro will hardly peep on my 9" silver dime in test garden while my E-Trac nails it hard and even IDs it fairly well.Very small gold items will hit better with the AT Pro without a doubt but silver coins should not unless you have a faulty E-Trac.
I have found many good coins at so called hunted out areas and was amazed that they had not been found long ago by me or any number of others who had hunted in the past......
 
the pro coil should have got them but i dont think the other two coils would have unless the conditions were right. id stab a hole in the ground at an angle with a long flat bar and stuff a coin down there. stomp it down real good and see if you can find it. try both machines. ( if you cant find it with either machine....you buried it too deep). also i found it to be helpful to do a master reset occasionally and dont leave your battery pack in the machine when your not hunting. i dont really know why...but it does help.
 
I'll try all three recommendations, bury a coin, master reset and remove the battery. You know, one other thing I have noticed, is that my eTrac operates more stable when the battery is down one bar. With a full charge, it seems like there is too much power and it causes some mild interference.
 
Ray-Mo. said:
One must check targets with both machines and prove if one will not hit targets the other will.My AT Pro will hardly peep on my 9" silver dime in test garden while my E-Trac nails it hard and even IDs it fairly well.Very small gold items will hit better with the AT Pro without a doubt but silver coins should not unless you have a faulty E-Trac.
I have found many good coins at so called hunted out areas and was amazed that they had not been found long ago by me or any number of others who had hunted in the past......
Click to expand...

How long have you had your AT Pro, Ray? How do you like it? Just curious, I don't plan on getting one anytime soon.

NebTrac
 
I have compared my Etrac with several ATPro's and noticed they have trouble descriminating the difference in the high tones. For example my Etrac said 35-42(trash)-ATPro said silver and dig. Dug several of these targets and all were trash. Other than that they seem to do well. Not sure on depth comparison yet. But will post soon.
 
I wonder if you would get the coins @ 11'' with Etrac if your sens had been higher, deep on, and less discrimination??? One way to find out... bring along a buddy, find a deep target with the AT pro and compare/adjust settings to see if you get it with Etrac. 11'' inches on a coin should be easy for the Etrac but settings and discrimination all play a part and since you were running zero disc with the AT it doesn't seem fair to judge based on that when you were operating the Etrac with fe #'s 18 thru 35 knocked out.... coins and other NON ferrous items if mixed in with iron can read up to 27 fe... If this line was notched out then you would get null over target in close proximity to iron...

Just 2 crusty zincs.... HH
 
Shayne said:
This is going to seem strange. I have an eTrac and just today, I received my new AT Pro. I bought the AT Pro mostly for beach and shallow water hunting. To test the Pro, I hit a small lot ( one acre) near my house that I have hunted for nearly 40 hours with the eTrac. In that 40 hours, I have found 75 wheat pennies, several buffalo nickles, two V nickles, four mercury dimes and one Roosevelt dime with the eTrac. I was always wondering why I had not found more silver. Anyway, in three hours with the AT Pro at the same lot, I found one Indian (first one - 11 Inches), seven wheat pennies, two buffalo, four mercury's and two Washington silvers (same hole) - 17 coins. The AT Pro was nailing the silvers at over 10 inches deep (settings were Pro and Zero Discrimination).

Here is the question, how is it possible that the AT Pro is deeper and the eTrac missed all of those silver coins? I know I have walked over them in the past. I have a slow swing speed. On my eTrac, I hunt with the stock Pro Coil, the SEF 6X8 DD and the SEF 4.5 X 6 DD. I run a baseline discrimination pattern that starts at 18FE to 35FE, Fast On, Deep Off, Normal, Multi, 15 Threshold, 30 response, Manual 21-23 and everything else is pretty much standard. I did dig more iron with the AT Pro (not much), but I attribute that to my learning curve. What are your thoughts? Is there a way to test the eTrac to determine if it is working to its full potential? The machine is relatively new - 3 months old. Please advise...
Click to expand...



ok what is your ground setting it must be in difficult at all time there is a video on mlotv that shows the etrac blanking silver in other settings and when he switched to ground difficult it bleeped off good and proper so run in DIFFICULT ALL THE TIME
 
I run both and I feel the E-Trac is slightly deeper on coppers and silver but the ATP has the faster recovery which would give it an advantage in a trashy site. I would say the coil on the E-Trac is reducing your depth. I had the SEF and didn't find it to be all that great myself. The 11" pro coil should give you about 3" more then the 6x8 SEF.
 
Shayne said:
I'll try all three recommendations, bury a coin, master reset and remove the battery. You know, one other thing I have noticed, is that my eTrac operates more stable when the battery is down one bar. With a full charge, it seems like there is too much power and it causes some mild interference.
Click to expand...
Shayne Etrac work the same if battery on max bar or on lower, dont worry about it, use Etrac without discrimination and compare with AT Pro, in most situation they can be the same. but in some not. you need some near you to compare them. good luck
 
I have been using the manual ground instead of auto and unless the area is very unstable, I like it better and have gone very deep. (Especially silver and copper)
 
I have been using the E Trac for 2 1/2 years and got the AT Pro for christmas. The AT Pro is a good detector but no where near as good as the E Trac on silver or old copper's. The E Trac should never miss silver. Either you have something wrong with your E Trac or your not running it right, for the area's your hunting. I've hunted area's with the AT PRO that I've hunted with the E Trac and couldn't find anything I missed. I think it takes at least a hundred hours on the E Trac to learn how to use it right and what it's telling you.
 
Southwind said:
I run both and I feel the E-Trac is slightly deeper on coppers and silver but the ATP has the faster recovery which would give it an advantage in a trashy site.
Click to expand...
I would have to disagree. If your running both in an all metal or say AT in all metal and Etrac 2TF their recovery time are the same with no noticeable difference. Compared to a guy who had his since November, and we scanned the same targets at a fair grounds. Really trashy. He was sayin target good 82 dig. Mine 34-40 trash. Him: 89 dig- mine 35-42 trash. We dug every target we compared. We did find a lot of coins, but we did dig a lot of trash his said wasn't. The only ones the etrac missed as well as his was smashed bottle caps, rang 12-40. This happened all friday afternoon. He was sayin well gotta dig the trash to get the goods. But I don't see an advantage, of recovering over a target if it is wrong. As far as depth is concerned I haven't been able to compare. But it won't be long before him or a good friend of mine will test them. For the the price the AT is hot but your comparing Apples to Steak. Probably gonna get slammed for saying this, but getting tired of hearing the AT is a better machine, when compared it isn't. Now it is tons better than anything out there for 600 bucks especially with the tid and and multi tones.
Something may be wrong with you machine. If you can find another Etrac owner and scan some deep targets and see if you are at par with theirs. With only three months on the machine you may want to spend some more time with it. She does have a learning curve.
 
Gonehunting said:
I would have to disagree. If your running both in an all metal or say AT in all metal and Etrac 2TF their recovery time are the same with no noticeable difference.
Click to expand...

Then why did the E-trac perform so poorly in the Monte iron nail board test video, because as far as i can see the AT pro did better in that test.:shrug:
 
Honestly you can't get an accurate reading by air testing an FBS machine. You perform that same test on iron vs good metal ie coin that has been in the ground longer than a year and then you can have a more real world idea of the true difference of these two machines
 
If you are discriminating FE 18 - FE 35 you are leaving good stuff behind. I've recovered a lot of Merc's at a couple local places that have hit down in the FE 20-25 range, I suppose due to soil and/or co-located iron.

My FE setting starts at FE 27. I frequently see the famous 'cursor bounce' way down into the ferrous side of things and feel this is a pretty safe cut off point.

Good luck out there.

Rich (Utah)
 
You absolutely have to check targets with both machines. It never ceases to amaze me how much stuff is still in the ground. Even with a DD coil , if you miss 1/2" of turf on a sweep while you move forward you could be, and probably are missing targets.

Just as a example, for the last month I have been hunting a small turf patch at an old park with 2 buddies. The patch is maybe 50' X 50'. One guy uses an EX II, me & my other buddy use Etracs. We have all been doing this for a number of years & know our machines well. And trust me, we have gridded the place from multiple directions. Yet just last weekend my buddy with the Etrac pulled out 6 more wheats from the same area.

So next time out, mark several targets with poker chips. Then go back to the markers with a second machine & check the targets. You'll know a lot more after that.

Bill (S. CA)
 
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