Mike (Virginia Beach)
New member
I posted this on the Explorer Classroom forum too, but I'm not sure if everybody checks both forums like I always do or not and I wanted to share it. 
And that experience was right in my backyard!
I have a test garden, running along the rear of my backyard in front of my privacy fence. I have about a dozen targets buried out there, about 3 feet out from the fence and at least 3 feet apart. All along the fence I marked with a Sharpie pen (and have had to "refresh" the markings a few times) what is buried there. All targets were buried at least 5" deep and several at 6", 8", and one or two at 10". They've been there for over 5 years, so they have a little "halo" going, though certainly not as much as some of the stuff we seek out there does. I have a minnieball, musketball, silver and clad dimes and quarters, a nickel and a penny.
When I planted these targets I had my first machine, a Garrett GTAx 750. I didn't realize at the time that there was a power line a few feet from my dig spots, further out and much deeper. I found that out a few years later when they dug it up for a repair. Anyway, I could hit SOME of the targets with my Garrett, but not all. I subsequently got a DFX and hit the garden with it. I got more of the targets, but not all. And it was clear there was SOMETHING in the ground at that time, because with the DFX it was a bit unstable in that area. When I got my CZ-70 I was able to get all of the targets, which is a lot easier when you KNOW where they are than when you don't. And it took some work, but I could hit them all. And not being a threshold machine, it was completely stable...at least it seemed so, because it's either "hitting" or it's not. Then I got the Sovereign Elite. With practice and tweaking I was able to get most of the targets, though with a little less certainty than the CZ. I should also note that a few of the targets with the CZ were also "iffy". The last machine I tested out there was the Quattro, which I had about this time last year. It did well too...better than the Elite, not quite as good as the CZ, and pretty unstable due to the power line as well as probably some house construction trash from about 1980 when my house was built...that test garden definitely represents some of the hunt sites I have hit in the past that are iron-rich, trashy, or have EMF issues...a challenge for any machine and some do better or worse than others.
Enter the Explorer II. When I got that machine I didn't take it out to my garden... didn't really think about it. I took it out to some heavily hunted sites that I had done well at with all the other machines and did well with the Explorer II. And I feel I caught on to it fast, thanks to these forums and folks like those that post here. I really like Charles' program and I link to it frequently. I like to run in IM -16 a lot and I run the sens in manual as high as I can and stay semi-stable. A lot of my hunt spots like woods and fields DO like sens at 28 and run a nice threshold, so I run it there. I have dug and posted quite a few nice finds that were from very respectable depths. Once I hunted an old home site I call "The Barber House" because of all the great stuff we've found there over the years, including many Barber coins, CW and RW buttons, and even a 1793 coin. The place is a TOUGH HUNT, iron in every swing and lots of roof tacks, etc. I commented on the Explorer forum in my post that day that I had found some things that I passed over previously by dropping my sens to 24 and even 22 and was hitting some stuff that would disappear when I raised it up. My buddy JW at KellyCo told me at the time to try lowering it to about 18 and you'll really be surprised. Well I have to admit thinking "Heh...THAT'S not going to happen...", thinking that was a tad low to be of any value unless maybe I was under a cell phone tower.
Well, he may have been right, it looks like. Because today I got a wild hair and decided to take the Explorer outside and check those targets, many of which are clearly deeper now because the CZ can't hit them all like it used to. I had the Explorer II in IM -16 and running sens 25, Gain at 7 and it was a carnival...all kinds of noises and unstable. I hit the first target, the musketball and got a really BAD signal that I would have never dug. Raised the sens a little, lowered it to 22, put it in 25 at Auto, went to a disc pattern that would hit a coin or a bullet...I was able to improve the signal only marginally. So I moved to the silver quarter at 8". Here I got a silver tone and in Smartfind or Digital I could "work it" to convince me to dig, but the audio as well as the display was all over the place and inconsistent. Had I not KNOWN what was there, I would probably have never hit it in the first place, no less dug it. I went from target to target and they all sucked, basically. I remembered how in that other really bad site that lowering the sens had helped a lot, but low should I go??? I was at 22. So I went to 20. The target that a moment ago was a all over the place stabilized out nicely and was giving me nice tone, nice Smartfind, and nice digital. It was a Merc dime at 7" on the fence marking...it showed around 10 on the pinpoint and was "barely there", doing that "pulsing" pinpoint you get on the deeper targets, rather than a solid one...where you KNOW it's a coin...it was a definite DIGGER! I went back and hit all the other targets and they were all GOOD....ALL DIGGERS! And here's where it gets REALLY nuts...I lowered the sens to 18 and they all got BETTER, a couple of them reading at max depth on the meter and almost out of pinpoint range completely. And yet, the signals were near classic. I was very excited, I have to say. I dropped it a little more to 17 and then 16 and 15 and it was downhill pretty much on most of them when I went below 18. But 18 was OPTIMAL at THIS SITE. So what I learned was that I have several sites that I need to now revisit because they are worse, as bad, or close to as bad as my test range. And I have a new respect for this machine, because in the past it was my feeling that if I was running less than 24+ I was certainly missing stuff. I now know that sometimes you miss stuff BECAUSE you're running 24+, or even 20+.
I know this is a long post, but I thought it should be shared. I've been hunting with this thing for many months and doing well with it, but have often thought it would be nice if it were a little more stable. Running the sensitivity down that low made it MUCH more stable and it still had incredibly impressive depth. But the real story is the target masking that was occurring at the higher sensitivity due to the rough ground. I'm REALLY looking forward to hitting a couple of sites I had thought were DONE because I'm now sure they are NOT. I know that this is normally lower than what we all would like to run the sensitivity at and I will still run 28 in my clean spots, but I learned a valuable lesson today...there's no benefit to running high sensitivity if the ground you're in is too hot for the machine to handle it.
And that experience was right in my backyard!
I have a test garden, running along the rear of my backyard in front of my privacy fence. I have about a dozen targets buried out there, about 3 feet out from the fence and at least 3 feet apart. All along the fence I marked with a Sharpie pen (and have had to "refresh" the markings a few times) what is buried there. All targets were buried at least 5" deep and several at 6", 8", and one or two at 10". They've been there for over 5 years, so they have a little "halo" going, though certainly not as much as some of the stuff we seek out there does. I have a minnieball, musketball, silver and clad dimes and quarters, a nickel and a penny.
When I planted these targets I had my first machine, a Garrett GTAx 750. I didn't realize at the time that there was a power line a few feet from my dig spots, further out and much deeper. I found that out a few years later when they dug it up for a repair. Anyway, I could hit SOME of the targets with my Garrett, but not all. I subsequently got a DFX and hit the garden with it. I got more of the targets, but not all. And it was clear there was SOMETHING in the ground at that time, because with the DFX it was a bit unstable in that area. When I got my CZ-70 I was able to get all of the targets, which is a lot easier when you KNOW where they are than when you don't. And it took some work, but I could hit them all. And not being a threshold machine, it was completely stable...at least it seemed so, because it's either "hitting" or it's not. Then I got the Sovereign Elite. With practice and tweaking I was able to get most of the targets, though with a little less certainty than the CZ. I should also note that a few of the targets with the CZ were also "iffy". The last machine I tested out there was the Quattro, which I had about this time last year. It did well too...better than the Elite, not quite as good as the CZ, and pretty unstable due to the power line as well as probably some house construction trash from about 1980 when my house was built...that test garden definitely represents some of the hunt sites I have hit in the past that are iron-rich, trashy, or have EMF issues...a challenge for any machine and some do better or worse than others.
Enter the Explorer II. When I got that machine I didn't take it out to my garden... didn't really think about it. I took it out to some heavily hunted sites that I had done well at with all the other machines and did well with the Explorer II. And I feel I caught on to it fast, thanks to these forums and folks like those that post here. I really like Charles' program and I link to it frequently. I like to run in IM -16 a lot and I run the sens in manual as high as I can and stay semi-stable. A lot of my hunt spots like woods and fields DO like sens at 28 and run a nice threshold, so I run it there. I have dug and posted quite a few nice finds that were from very respectable depths. Once I hunted an old home site I call "The Barber House" because of all the great stuff we've found there over the years, including many Barber coins, CW and RW buttons, and even a 1793 coin. The place is a TOUGH HUNT, iron in every swing and lots of roof tacks, etc. I commented on the Explorer forum in my post that day that I had found some things that I passed over previously by dropping my sens to 24 and even 22 and was hitting some stuff that would disappear when I raised it up. My buddy JW at KellyCo told me at the time to try lowering it to about 18 and you'll really be surprised. Well I have to admit thinking "Heh...THAT'S not going to happen...", thinking that was a tad low to be of any value unless maybe I was under a cell phone tower.
Well, he may have been right, it looks like. Because today I got a wild hair and decided to take the Explorer outside and check those targets, many of which are clearly deeper now because the CZ can't hit them all like it used to. I had the Explorer II in IM -16 and running sens 25, Gain at 7 and it was a carnival...all kinds of noises and unstable. I hit the first target, the musketball and got a really BAD signal that I would have never dug. Raised the sens a little, lowered it to 22, put it in 25 at Auto, went to a disc pattern that would hit a coin or a bullet...I was able to improve the signal only marginally. So I moved to the silver quarter at 8". Here I got a silver tone and in Smartfind or Digital I could "work it" to convince me to dig, but the audio as well as the display was all over the place and inconsistent. Had I not KNOWN what was there, I would probably have never hit it in the first place, no less dug it. I went from target to target and they all sucked, basically. I remembered how in that other really bad site that lowering the sens had helped a lot, but low should I go??? I was at 22. So I went to 20. The target that a moment ago was a all over the place stabilized out nicely and was giving me nice tone, nice Smartfind, and nice digital. It was a Merc dime at 7" on the fence marking...it showed around 10 on the pinpoint and was "barely there", doing that "pulsing" pinpoint you get on the deeper targets, rather than a solid one...where you KNOW it's a coin...it was a definite DIGGER! I went back and hit all the other targets and they were all GOOD....ALL DIGGERS! And here's where it gets REALLY nuts...I lowered the sens to 18 and they all got BETTER, a couple of them reading at max depth on the meter and almost out of pinpoint range completely. And yet, the signals were near classic. I was very excited, I have to say. I dropped it a little more to 17 and then 16 and 15 and it was downhill pretty much on most of them when I went below 18. But 18 was OPTIMAL at THIS SITE. So what I learned was that I have several sites that I need to now revisit because they are worse, as bad, or close to as bad as my test range. And I have a new respect for this machine, because in the past it was my feeling that if I was running less than 24+ I was certainly missing stuff. I now know that sometimes you miss stuff BECAUSE you're running 24+, or even 20+.
I know this is a long post, but I thought it should be shared. I've been hunting with this thing for many months and doing well with it, but have often thought it would be nice if it were a little more stable. Running the sensitivity down that low made it MUCH more stable and it still had incredibly impressive depth. But the real story is the target masking that was occurring at the higher sensitivity due to the rough ground. I'm REALLY looking forward to hitting a couple of sites I had thought were DONE because I'm now sure they are NOT. I know that this is normally lower than what we all would like to run the sensitivity at and I will still run 28 in my clean spots, but I learned a valuable lesson today...there's no benefit to running high sensitivity if the ground you're in is too hot for the machine to handle it.
