Making a Pattern

[unearth]

Hello All-
First a question, then I'll let you know my first impressions of my E-Trac. My question is...where do you set the sensitivity, if it even matters, when you start to make a pattern? Can you make a pattern when in your home or is there possibly too much interference

Now for my impression...so far all I have been doing is reading this forum and playing with different settings as I hunt. Here in Ca. there is a vast difference where the sensitivity falls when in Auto at the different parks I hunt. The deepest coin I have found was a 6" deep memorial, but my friend, whom I was hunting with, found a 8" to 9" deep memorial. I've only got about 12 to 15 hours on the machine so far, so I'm still learning.
Overall I really like the way the E-Trac works. It's easy to use and surfing through the way the E-Trac works is a snap. I just need more time with it.
HH Gary

 

[Jim upstate NY]

If you mean you want to make an accept pattern its pretty easy.. you can do it inside if you have a probe or low sens and away from intereference
Go to the edit screen move to the one box that shows full screen with arrows, and push the accept button to completely blaken it out, may need to push it twice to go from all accept or all rejec, then move down from that full screen box..
on the left select your cursor size you want to use.. I used the large one to give a little on each side... then with the target you want to accept run it across the coil or probe to most stable reading then hit accept.. you will see that box open up clear.. just the same in a reject pattern except you start with an open screen... if using coil inside I would say drop sens to at least 5.. I used 10 with the x1 probe with no interference.. the explorer was much harder as it accepted at same time you went over target, where on this it doesn't accept till you tell it too, when you get the cursor exactly where it should be.. oh yeah if you get over lapping accepts you may reject some you already accepted so hit accept one more time and it reopens it all.. I am sure this is in the manual.. I just messed with it till I figured it out

to build a pattern start with a black screen as above and manually move the cursor around and accept/reject parts of screen you want..

thing is you really cant hunt with a tight pattern where you only accept a few things and get it all.. they dont always read the way they do in air and anything nearby may affect the reading.. its why they factory coin pattern is so much bigger than where coins come in.. and actually should even have more accepted as far as I am concerned

I have used on the explorer in extreme junk in parks, and I just wanted to pick off some silver and at least dime or bigger clad.. and just made a small box open in the top right.. dont hear much but when you do its usually a coin your looking for, without hearing every other piece of junk.. but I am sure it missed a few as well

 

[Beachcomber]

I haven't tried this yet but I think you should be able to create a pattern on the E-Trac while it is connected to the PC. This should eliminate most interference since the E-Trac's transmiiter section is turned off while it is attached to the PC.

HH

Beachcomber

 

[Rick(ND)]

I played around a little with making a pattern, but didn't use it and found it makes better patterns then the Explorers will. I was inside when I did this under florescent lights too, Just turned it on in factory presets and it chattered a little so I hit the noise cancel and it was very smooth threshold. Now I went to the edit mode and blacked the screen out (rejected everything) then hit the accept and waved a quarter across the coil a few times and it had a perfect pattern with no stray signals at all like we would get with the Explorers unless you went to manual sensitivity and lowered it to 1. I then tried other coins and they too made a perfect pattern with no stray signals either. Then I tried the small cursor and rejected some of the trash items that read in the same area and it too worked great, so I feel Minelab made this edit mode to learn and reject to work much better then the Explorers do.

I have noticed a few things on the E-trac from the little I have used mine and that is if the conductivity numbers are good, but the ferrous is 9 or lower it has been trash items, but if it read 11-13 it has been a good coin. The sounds don't sound right either if it is a trash item. A 1 ferrous with a conductivity of 41 seems to be a rusty nail with most of them real deep. If you get a iffy signal in the factory coin mode with the ferrous of 11-13 and the conductivity of a good coin then switch to the open pattern and it gets a little better, but the ferrous number read more at 35 it has been a coin in with a nail beside it or under it from what I have seen.