knarfj said:
Thanks for the insight Revier.
I noticed I got more depth using the 1 and 1F in my test garden. Actually those two are the only tone settings that give me an AUDIO hit on all my test coins, the deepest being 8 inches. But running 3H has me so spoiled I just can't bring myself to hunt modern ground with any other tone setting. Then again if were hunting ground where I knew the finds were old, deep and not trash loaded I'd then be game for using either of the 1 tunes.
HH
According to all that stuff I posted from Tom, he seems to think that 1 tone will give you the best audio response on deep targets if you are set up correctly, no matter what is going on while looking at the screen, and of course AT is very deep and pretty accurate, too.
Since I am looking to go as deep as possible this year and find some older coins I find myself needing to adapt to a new way of hunting with the F70.
Using the F2 I rarely dug signals that jumped too much on the screen more than 2 numbers, although I do realize that targets deep could very well do that.
I also didn't use my 10" coil all that much that could reach down deeper since jewelry was my goal and trashy sites were my preferred areas to hunt.
When I do hunt for clad and jewelry and even if I happen to move into trashy sites using the 11" DD coil or any coils I usually set the thing up closer to mud's settings with the sense down closer to 60, thresh in the negative numbers and use my favorite 4H tones because it is similar to hunting with the F2.
Hunting like this I can revert to my old way of not looking at the screen and just listening for good, solid repeating tones and
then check out the screen to see what I am scanning and that still seems to work for me.
On one of my first hunts with the 10" elliptical that 4H setting those nickel high tones really helped to alert me to a nice nickel signal and even though it was right next to trash it made me stop and go back to look at the screen and move the coil around the area to examine it better and I ended up digging a nice gold ring and paid for 1/3 of the cost of the F70 new with that one target.
Messing around on my last few hunts and playing with the tones I found I do like 2F for hunting in areas for depth and with some iron like hunting old horse trails up a mountain looking for old silver coins that also has several horseshoes and nails to contend with.
I have tried the 1 tone setting and I do think that actually does give a great audio response on the deepies, but for me it is actually fatiguing listing to that one tone and I think I like the 1F and 2F setting better because it is more modulated in that tone and seems to be less tiring for some reason.
On all these lower tone settings I had to retrain myself to not only listen for the good tones but actually look at the screen while I hunt which is way different for me.
I can usually tell most of the iron and a lot of the foil trash and avoid it but I especially don't want to miss any targets with odd numbers because who knows what they can be...maybe something deep and cool, and now I have to look at the screen way more to notice these.
Now in this park, which is pretty old and has much history but not a huge amount of iron, depth is what I was aiming for on this hunt.
This signal was way more bouncy in the numbers than anything I would have considered digging with my F2 and my 10" coil, although that would have been a mistake.
When I ran over this in 4H tones I did hear a few high tone signals and now I do remember switching over to 1F to check it out further and even though the numbers were still pretty bouncy, (due to the fact there were multiple coins and that copper wheatie in that first hole), I did hear a couple of nice high tones still.
At this point since I am still experimenting with different tones on strange signals I usually would have tried a few more things like switching to SL would have made too much noise I suspect because of the high EMI at this particular area, or I would have moved over to program 2 which I have set up in AT with high sense and threshold in the positive range which I use to check out deeper signals for more info, but I didn't do any of that because it was in the lower 40's with some heavy wind gusts close to 50MPH and I was just starting this hunt but was already feeling the cold.
I heard a few good high tones in 4H, got some decent solid sounding tones switching to 1F and even though I had some real jumpy numbers I still saw some numbers flash into the low 80's on my screen, I did use the pinpoint button to get a depth reading and I saw 7 and 8 numbers on the screen and that was enough so I stopped, dropped and dug and found the greatest coin spill of my career so far.
Would I have had the same signal on coins this deep using the 10" elliptical coil, I have no idea.
I know that coil goes pretty deep but not quite as deep as the 11" DD or maybe it might but the tone and screen info could well be different.
So far I have dug one deep target with that standard coil at 10" in this same park which was a beaver tail tab and was a one way hit only, actually a high tone but solid, and there were absolutely no numbers flashing on the screen at all which I have learned the F70 will do when targets are at the very end of its range, or with that coil it will act that way and I believe I read that the same thing will occur using the other coils.
All I know is I learned a few things on this one.
When searching deep in not so trashy and older areas I will be using that 11" dd coil exclusively.
I will probably use the 1F and 2F tone settings to do this hunting these type of sites most of the time.
I will make an effort to look at that screen on most signals so I can notice at least that first number that flashes which Tom seems to think would be more of a correct and accurate one.
The numbers on the screen don't matter anywhere as near as much as the tones I hear.
I will set my sense as high as possible and try to get the thresh into the positive numbers when I am able because even though it does skew the audio signal a bit it bothers me way less than it would using 4H tones.
The thresh also needs to be as high as possible because all signals get louder as you turn up that setting and I want to hear as much of everything I can at all times so I always have my volume turned to max on the F70 and my Killer B's headphones, too.
I did not notice what the confidence meter was doing on this dig but I will try to notice that from now on because I read that can give you some good information too...sometimes.
When in doubt, dig it, especially on the deep ones...it is the only true way to know what you are actually scanning and deeper targets can act weird and can act skittish, even the good ones.
I was told by people in my MD club that this park is "hunted out" and nobody has found anything but modern clad and maybe some modern jewelry in quite awhile.
Strange to me because this thing is 74 acres large so I can't wrap my head around that idea at all.
I am sure that this place has been hunted with E-Tracs and other deep units but no matter what there is no way every square inch has been covered.
My MD club has a local forum and after posting about this spill the president said I am really getting along with this F70 well and seemed surprised that I found these coins at all in this park.
Other units can go this deep easily so I believe finding these coins had more to do with this...
I happened to roll over this area that had the coins and even though it was a pretty bouncy signal I still heard and saw
something in the audio and the screen info that made me dig it so maybe he was right.
Me and the F70 are just beginning this journey together but we already seem to be getting along very well and I expect this relationship to evolve over time.
You better believe this old park will be at least one site we will be spending as much time as we can together.
There has to be way more laying around here than most suspect, I think, and this spill proves it.
I now see that instead of just bending over and digging shallow holes I will be dropping down and digging way deeper ones in the future.
As I continue to learn some of these holes might, probably will, contain trash but I won't mind because some might actually contain some great treasure like this one so I am fine with it.
I wanted to get this F70 to enable me to evolve to a new phase in hunting and my career and go deeper and find older, better targets at those deeper areas and on every hunt I can see that I picked the right tool to do exactly that.
Plus, all this new learning and deeper digging is much fun for me no matter what I am finding in these deeper holes.
