MrBill or Eric (long)

[Anonymous]

Just got my Aquastar and have some questions/comments.
Sorry to ask so many questions right out of the chute, but could not find them in the manual you sent. Would appreciate your review of settings and questions before my first time out.
1. Quality of this unit appears suberb and very solid.
2. Air testing was rather disappointing. The Excalibur claims air testing is not representative of it infield performance, but I have not notice significantly better depth than my CZ20. Is this indicative of the kind of performance I will get?
3. Control settings and some questions:
Internal:
Tx power - I have set in economy until
I get accustomed, then will go for the
deeper stuff.
Rx sensitivity - set to max (why?)
Audio volume to max - my pref
Audio tone to 1K - my pref
SAT speed - set to fastest. I hunt salt
water beaches. How will this
affect operating characteristics?
How will it affect my coil swing
speed?
External controls:
Pulse delay - set at min. - I want max.
sensitivity for small stuff like chains,
etc. Will I need a slower sweep speed?
And what other affects will this have on
overall operation?
Frequency - Is this mostly for stability?
4. What is reverse discrimination and how is it
used?
5. I understand that you may be able to tell
iron targets by a "double Beep." Is this so
and can you explain or is it self-
explanatory?
6. Is the volume of the target signal an
indicator of depth?
7. Pin pointing is as usual?
8. What is the wattage output of this unit as
compared to normal units and what is the
affect on other units? Sometimes I hunt
with others. I think Bill went through
this, but not sure.
9. Why is there an Rx sensitivity control if
interferences can be compensated for with
the frequency control?
Thanks for your patience and help
Jerry
Orange Beach, AL

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Jerry,
I have the first Aquastar built by Eric. While my unit is not exactly like your. It is pretty close. So I will try to answer most of your questions. You said that you have set up your Aquastar with the TX power on economy and the SAT sped at the fastest setting. You have really detuned the Aquastar. To get the maximum depth, first set the Tx power so that you are transmitting full power. Then at least set the SAT speed at the 1/2 position. The slower the SAT speed, the more depth. So after you get more time on the Aquastar. Experiment to find the slowest SAT speed that will work in your area. First remember the Aquastar is set up for finding gold. If you do an air test coin regular coins such as pennies, quarters and dimes. The depth is say around 10 to 12 inches I am guessing. To be honest, I could care less if I do dig any coins except for nickels. I only want to find gold and platinum. But now use a nickel and you should get at least 15 inches. Play with the setting of your sensitivity control to get maximum depth. To get maximum depth, you will have to search with a very slow sweep speed. Now on the external controls. Yes, you do want minimum pulse delay. Frequency is to eliminate electrically interference. There is no reverse discrimination on the Aquastar. You dig ever thing with the Aquastar. You can not believe how small some of the targets that you will find. The volume of the target is a indication of depth. Most PI machines put out a voltage spike of 110 volts. The Aquastar puts out 430 volts. I have been told by White SMPI owners that they can hear me over 30 feet away. I have to get with in 4 feet before they interfere with me. Now the most need advice, start working out so you will be in shape for the deep holes that you will be digging. Then remember to back fill in these deep holes.
Terry in Hawaii

 

[Anonymous]

Jerry,
I will try to phone you about your settings.
What were you trying to air test with ?? Quarters, and dimes just won

 

[Anonymous]

I'd like to add to Terry's suggestion about digging. I put cold shrink on my scoop handle after experiencing fatigue, pain, and slipping trying to remove huge amounts of wet sand. You are going to be amazed how deep "The Monster" will pick off small targets like swim suit snaps, bobby pins, grometts, etc.. Hope to see some of your finds of the forum, HH

 

[Anonymous]

Mr Bill and others
Posted my first day results on the Finds beach forum if you want to read (long).
I have some questions now (like you didn't expect that).
1. I seem to be getting a fairly sever fluxuation in threshold at 10uS. Even at 15 - 20 I still get some, but I believe I am getting used to it. But, it is definitely different than a target signal. Is that normal and if I adjust the SAT speed down, do I lose performance or lose smaller jewelry - Not that I could dig any deeper in the water, but maybe for the dry beach areas?
2. I also seem to get an increased treshold during my sweep toward the ends and usually toward deeper water or from drier to wetter sand -make sense? I had two of my own problems at first. My scoop and then after my trash pouch started getting full, I had to move it behind me. Boy howdy, this thing is sensitive.
3. Why would anyone want to run in "high power" mode in the water? I actually had 3 targets that I could not physically dig out. Am I missing something by not using full power?
All in all, it was an interesting and tiring day. Like I said on the other forum, I have never gotten blisters from detecting in water. The machine is considerably different from other machines I have (Excal. and CZ20) and is going to take some more getting used to. However, I really think I am going to like it, and it will probably be my first detector of choice.
After looking at the detector when I first got it, I can honestly say that it is the most solidly built and well thought out from a practical point that I have seen.
Congratulations of a great machine - now I just need to figure out how to make it produce.
Thanks
Jerry

 

[Anonymous]

neptune will open the door you jest have be there when he does cause you definitly got the right stuff fore the job i dig these old crusty bottle caps all the time been down there for a long time old pulltabs and crusty old bobbypins so this tells me im down a level which others dont hit enjoy your new machine takes some time getting used to it all that old stuff is i call possibles (GOLD) happy hunting larry ca

 

[Anonymous]

<EM> I seem to be getting a fairly sever fluxuation in threshold at 10uS. Even at 15 - 20 I still get some, but I believe I am getting used to it. But, it is definitely different than a target signal. Is that normal and if I adjust the SAT speed down, do I lose performance or lose smaller jewelry - Not that I could dig any deeper in the water, but maybe for the dry beach areas?</EM>
<STRONG>Couple of things come to mind here. Be certain the coil wire is not moving. Secure tightly to rod, especially the lower one. From reading lower on, your in lower power mode. Try lowering the receiver sensitivity. You will find that it may not affect your depth at all. You just may be over powering the front end of the detector circuit with to much receiver gain ??? Try running the SAT speed higher.</STRONG>
<EM> I also seem to get an increased treshold during my sweep toward the ends and usually toward deeper water or from drier to wetter sand -make sense? I had two of my own problems at first. My scoop and then after my trash pouch started getting full, I had to move it behind me. Boy howdy, this thing is sensitive.</EM>
<STRONG>Be certain the loop is being sweep parallel with no up swings at the end of your sweep. Sweeping from dry, to damp sand, to water all in one sweep may produce falsing. Generally slowing down your sweep speed, and/or a increase in SAT adjustment is called for.</STRONG>
<EM> Why would anyone want to run in "high power" mode in the water? I actually had 3 targets that I could not physically dig out. Am I missing something by not using full power?</EM>
<STRONG>For the most part, depending on location, high power is to much for water hunting. Are you missing something by not using "full power" ?? You have to be the judge of that. You will go deeper in full power.
I strongly recommend "The Scoop". It

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Jerry,
It will take you a few trips to get used to the Aquastar and what it is telling you, but you seem to be doing OK, from your post on the Beach forum. Just hang in there and the gold will shine in your scoop.
Threshold variation is normal as you sweep from dry sand to wet sand, or from wet sand into the water. This is because sea water is a conductor and gives a signal at the short delays we are using to get sensitivity to small objects. Wet sand is more conductive than dry sand, and into the seawater is again more conductive than just wet sand. The result is that the threshold goes up, the closer you get to the water. The circuitry in the Aquastar, tries to bring the threshold back down again and the SAT adjustment determines the rate at which this happens. Try sweeping a bit slower and making the SAT adjustment a bit faster. Many people who are used to motion VLF's sweep a PI too fast. As has been mentioned, keep the coil as flat and parallel to the beach as possible to minimise height signal variations. I am amazed how many experienced THer's swing the coil in an arc. This also has the disadvantage that your detection range is reduced towards the ends of the sweep.
Eric.

 

[Anonymous]

Just a little explanation of the TX power switch may be in order. In the MAX position, the width of the TX pulse is 100uS. Switching it to ECONOMY, reduces the width to 50uS. If the pulse frequency stays the same and the TX pulse current is limited by the resistance of the coil circuit, then the current drawn from the battery will drop to half. In the case of the Aquastar, it will drop from about 500mA to 250mA. In the latter setting the battery life will be double what it is in the MAX position.
How does this affect the detection performance of the detector. Assuming that the TX current is resistance limited, the the pulse current is the same in both cases, but is only there for half the time in the economy mode. This will not greatly affect the signal from most gold items, such as rings, bracelets, chains etc. as a 50uS TX pulse is long enough to excite the maximum signal. However for objects with longer time constants, 50uS will be too short and the signal will not reach its maximum. Copper coins, clads, silver coins and large silver rings fall into this category. They will still be detected at good range, but it will be noticeably better in the MAX position. Even then, quarters and larger coins will not give as good a detection range as you might expect. If we widened the TX pulse to 200 or 300uS we would see an improvement in these objects, but battery life would be unacceptable, unless we reduced the TX pulse frequency.
However, the primary application of the Aquastar and Deepstar is to find gold rings and other relatively small gold objects, and its characteristics have been optimised for this purpose.
In the above explanation, I mentioned the example of the TX pulse feeding a resistive coil and the current exactly halving. In practice, the width of the ECONOMY mode TX pulse is such that the current is starting to be limited by the coil inductance, and is a bit less than half. This reduces the object signal marginally on small objects, but I doubt it would be noticed in practice.
Eric.

 

[Anonymous]

I believe that after my second day (today) I am kind of getting into the swing of things. I have slowed my sweep speed down and this has helped with the threshold fluxuations - and given me more deep targets.
I feel like I will really get to like this machine and it will become my first choice detector.
I will let you know how things are going. I should have another posting on the Beach forum in a few hours.
Thanks again
Jerry