Mr. Bill or Eric ...

[Anonymous]

While enjoying some entertainment on another forum, I had a question arise. I have been running my Aquastar II as hot as I can stand. In the Gulf waters, I can run it with the pulse delay around 13 as long and the water is relatively flat and I don't get in too deep water (otherwise I have to increase the setting to about 20). I also use the Max Power setting and Receiver Sensitivity at 3/4 from full CC (which I understand to be 75% wide open) and SAT Speed at almost the slowest setting. At the same time, I have to sweep the coil fairly slow to keep from getting too much feedback from the saltwater. I use this technique to try and pick up the small gold stuff, but I pick up alot of other very small stuff too - like tiny pieces of iron, tiny hooks (can't imagine why someone would use these here), brads, etc. I am beginning to question my strategy and believe that I am wasting alot of time digging tiny stuff in an effort to get smaller gold items that may have little value or worth. By adjusting the Pulse Delay to an increased setting to around 25 - 30, will I eliminate these tiny items and still keep the great depth and sensitivity for rings, etc? How will the increased pulse delay effect the detectors overall operation and effectiveness? At what Pulse Delay setting will I begin to lose depth and sensitivity to gold objects like rings? Is there another setting approach that I should consider rather than increasing pulse delay?
Thanks for any Advise.
HH
Jerry

 

[Anonymous]

Jerry,
It looks like you got the detector adjusted a little counter productive. <IMG SRC="/forums/images/smile.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="">
Try this. Before raising the pulse delay up, turn up the SAT control up. You may also need to turn the receiver gain back a bit. I would start that a 1/3turn clockwise from the fully counterclockwise position.
Ideally the settings would be, highest power setting, slowest SAT, highest receiver sensitivity, fastest pulse delay. Conditions should predict if we can run at full throttle.
As you cut back, (raise), the pulse delay, it will adjust the response of the detector to small low conductive items. With the Aquastar II, changing the pulse delay will not degrade the depth of the detector on items it still can see. So to your question, adjusting the pulse delay will not affect the overall performance of the detector, just performance on targets that would have been seen by the faster delay speeds adjusted out.
My recommendations for the starting adjustments on the Aquastar II, would be this.
<UL> <LI> low power <LI> 1/3 receiver gain <LI>15uS. pulse delay <LI> middle range on SAT control <LI>set threshold as to "just hear" threshold audio </UL>
This should take care of most roughness, and give you good experience on how the unit operates. If you make changes, they should be one at a time, and don

 

[Anonymous]

Jerry...
Did we learn something while we were having a little bit of fun? Sometimes I have to poke 'em a little bit to get 'em to understand what I am talking about. You have hit the nail on the head with your question. If they will tell you how to back off on the sensitivity for those areas where you are being slowed down by those tiniest of targets you will spend less time moving between deep larger gold targets. You will still have all that horsepower available for when you hit those clean deep sand areas where you can crank that baby up. It is not bad to own a vehicle that will go 160 miles per hour in case you ever need to. You just need to be able to control the speed so you can your destintion with the most ease.
Now Bill you asked me over here....don't get angry again. Jus' tryin' to be helpful
The Mayor

 

[Anonymous]

Bill has helped a lot. This PI stuff is new to me, so I haven't been able to "connect all the dots" yet. But, I now have a different setup to try and it makes sense. I really like the Aquastar - I just had it "reved-up" too much. It was picking up tiny pieces of wire 18" down. Bill told me how to detune it some to avoid some of those things. I think it is great to be able to adjust the detector down when you need to and still have the ability to "crank" it up.
HH
Jerry