Mike Bearden
Member
and not what I'd call a good surprise either while hunting in Virginia last week.
Started out on a small site located in Richmond where the ground goes from mild to medium and was using the Etrac while everybody else was using F75's and a Whites TDI.
The only reason I'm posting this here is partially in regards to mascard1 (OK ALL YOU EXPLORER OWNERS) post below.
The Etrac did OK in this first site while set-up in relic mode, matter of fact, it hit on some tiny 22 cal. rounds and a period pistol bullet and didn't seem to be bothered by the other detectors EMI.
Big time different story when I turned the Etrac on at the relic hunt in Culpeper though, it could NOT hear anything past 7" deep other than big iron in relic mode so I was forced to use all metal mode and crank up the sens as far as I could and lock it there ... otherwise it would de-tune itself and not hear anything.
There were quite a few Etrac's brought to this hunt .... but by lunch time of the first day .... the only person still swinging one that I know of was ME !!!
I managed to pull 4 or 5 buttons and few small pieces of misc. brass and a few bullets but it was a real struggle to make the Etrac hunt in really BAD ground.
There were NO typical good sounding tones, if it hit just a tad on the positive side and emitted a high tone EEK sound ... then I dug it and hoped for the best, 50% of the time it was a good target but EVERYTHING past 7" sounded like IRON.
I helped a guy set up his EX II for this same area I was hunting and he had no problem hitting good targets down to 10" deep, the screen ID was way off for the most part at depths past 8" but the sound was right 90% of the time.
Moral of the story .... the EX II simply handled the hot mineralized ground better than the Etrac did !!!
How often will this kind of thing happen ? Everytime you turn a Etrac on in Culpeper, Virginia.
Even though they all had some trouble, the F75, MXT, XTerra 70, and even the Musketeer performed better than the Etrac ... and quite a few others.
Of course on day 2 & 3 .... I didn't waste anymore precious time and went to the TDI since I was there to DIG RELICS and not fight with a machine.
Anyway ... this post is not meant to bash the Etrac as I'm sure it has it's strengths in other areas but not in Culpeper, Va.
I watched a guy using a Minelab 4500 just tear it up all day long ... although meant for gold nugget hunting the 4500 is a relic killer too & he didn't dig much iron either.
When a manufacturer builds us a detector that can hunt in heavy hot minerals like Culpeper and still perform normally ... we will have something to BRAG about then.
OK ... off my soap box now.
Good Hunting
Mike
Started out on a small site located in Richmond where the ground goes from mild to medium and was using the Etrac while everybody else was using F75's and a Whites TDI.
The only reason I'm posting this here is partially in regards to mascard1 (OK ALL YOU EXPLORER OWNERS) post below.
The Etrac did OK in this first site while set-up in relic mode, matter of fact, it hit on some tiny 22 cal. rounds and a period pistol bullet and didn't seem to be bothered by the other detectors EMI.
Big time different story when I turned the Etrac on at the relic hunt in Culpeper though, it could NOT hear anything past 7" deep other than big iron in relic mode so I was forced to use all metal mode and crank up the sens as far as I could and lock it there ... otherwise it would de-tune itself and not hear anything.
There were quite a few Etrac's brought to this hunt .... but by lunch time of the first day .... the only person still swinging one that I know of was ME !!!
I managed to pull 4 or 5 buttons and few small pieces of misc. brass and a few bullets but it was a real struggle to make the Etrac hunt in really BAD ground.
There were NO typical good sounding tones, if it hit just a tad on the positive side and emitted a high tone EEK sound ... then I dug it and hoped for the best, 50% of the time it was a good target but EVERYTHING past 7" sounded like IRON.
I helped a guy set up his EX II for this same area I was hunting and he had no problem hitting good targets down to 10" deep, the screen ID was way off for the most part at depths past 8" but the sound was right 90% of the time.
Moral of the story .... the EX II simply handled the hot mineralized ground better than the Etrac did !!!
How often will this kind of thing happen ? Everytime you turn a Etrac on in Culpeper, Virginia.
Even though they all had some trouble, the F75, MXT, XTerra 70, and even the Musketeer performed better than the Etrac ... and quite a few others.
Of course on day 2 & 3 .... I didn't waste anymore precious time and went to the TDI since I was there to DIG RELICS and not fight with a machine.
Anyway ... this post is not meant to bash the Etrac as I'm sure it has it's strengths in other areas but not in Culpeper, Va.
I watched a guy using a Minelab 4500 just tear it up all day long ... although meant for gold nugget hunting the 4500 is a relic killer too & he didn't dig much iron either.
When a manufacturer builds us a detector that can hunt in heavy hot minerals like Culpeper and still perform normally ... we will have something to BRAG about then.
OK ... off my soap box now.
Good Hunting
Mike
