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New to the F70

I recently bought a demo unit for a great price from one of our sponsors. I have always wanted to try this machine. Since the ground here is frozen I have only been able to take it to a small beach near here. Beach is hunted to death, but I am just burying coins to get a fell for the sounds and numbers. My question is I have the machine set up at 70 sens, threshold at -3 and disc at 20. When I bury a quarter I am only getting a moderate signal at 5 " and not much below that. Any suggestions appreciated. Stock 10" coil by the way.
Pastor Bob
 
Salt or freshwater beach?
 
Pastor Bob, I have the F70 and you should be able to hit this quarter at 8-9" easy. I have found it does not matter if it is salt or fresh, and your settings are like mine. There is plenty of room, however, to get a lot more aggressive. Did you do a ground balance? My guess is you didn't but if you did, then something is impeding the signal, try a different set of phones of ear buds. A quarter at 5" should knock your ears off. try moving your Thres up and down one number at a time, I would leave the Sens alone at first. Move the Thres up until the machine starts to overload and make unnecessary noise then back off. One step at a time. I have hit targets, mostly aluminum objects down in salty sand 10". I am using an 11" DD coil but I am thinking the stock 10" is not that far off and somes say is a bit deeper than the 11"DD but it is a differnet kind of search pattern. Maybe someone with the 10" doing beach searches could answer this. One other thing you should try -- take you quarter and go to some higher, non-sand dirt, and bury it to compare, see if it changes. Good luck, Dan
 
The problem isn't your detector, it's the freshly buried soil. Disturbed soil gives crappy depth.
 
dbax said, "I have found it does not matter if it is salt or fresh." I find this rather odd, since all I have read and been told, fresh to salt makes a LOT of difference due to the difference in salt mineralization. I have also been told that a single frequency machine, with relatively low frequency, is not the best for salt beaches. It is fine in the dry sand, but, not in the wet or surf.

I'm not the expert here, so, get another opinion, but, this is what I have been told and one of the reasons I got the CTX to go with my F75.
 
I had the F70 with the 10 and 11 inch coils and it wasn't a great detector in my opinion. The target I'd was jumpy, it was seriously prone to emi. I could only turn the sens up about 3/4 before it was too unstable to use. I have a video on youtube where the F70 couldn't hear a standing liberty quarter with a nail next to it, absolutely NO signal. Just my thoughts. -Jay
 
Just for giggles, drop disc to 4 or below...drop sens to 55, -2 thresh, DEmode...tones of your choice, no notch...give it a fairly fast sweep, not a slow crawl...you should get a ping on a 5"Q...no trouble...
Mud.
 
MichiganJason said:
I had the F70 with the 10 and 11 inch coils and it wasn't a great detector in my opinion. The target I'd was jumpy, it was seriously prone to emi. I could only turn the sens up about 3/4 before it was too unstable to use. I have a video on youtube where the F70 couldn't hear a standing liberty quarter with a nail next to it, absolutely NO signal. Just my thoughts. -Jay

That vid was made on your first day with it, we have no idea of what your settings were, and like many you think turning up the sense all the way is the only way to get major depth...which is incorrect thinking.
There are also many other adjustments you can do to deal with EMI.
Limited hunting time with this so far but I am making an effort to learn as much as I can about it and how the settings actually affect performance and it is amazing me on almost every hunt.
I have found many targets with iron right next to or even laying on better targets, I don't seem to have a problem but your site and soil could have many different things happening than mine that affect results up to this point.
My opinion...the F70 is one of the greatest detectors for the price you can buy.
Different opinion...different strokes for different folks.
 
I'm not an amateur and that should have hit that SLQ if even just a little. I'm glad yours seems to work for you. We have mild ground here in Northern Michigan and even much cheaper detectors performed better than the F70.
 
This seems to be the general consensus on the F70...either you love it or hate it....I'm in West mich, and am not at all experienced compared to most of y'all, the 70 seems to work very well for me..this will be my 4th year employing it....I've traveled with it, had it as far west as Salt Lake City, north into Idaho, south into GA and all points in between with no trouble...its got way much power, and I run it at half throttle...it does what I need it to do, find gold, silver and clad quickly, cheaply and often. So I'm a more than satisfied user...again, not experienced enough with alternate machines to provide any deeper feedback..seldom or never ground balance...
Mud
 
MichiganJason said:
I'm not an amateur and that should have hit that SLQ if even just a little. I'm glad yours seems to work for you. We have mild ground here in Northern Michigan and even much cheaper detectors performed better than the F70.

Not saying you are an amateur but there was something really wrong going on in this test.
Probably not you, could be an equipment problem...it happens.
I have a Compass Judge 2, a Compadre, a Vaquero, and an F2 and you are right I am sure all of them can hit that coin easily...but I am positive my F70 could have done it too and just as easily and from any direction.
I will try to replicate your test when it gets warmer and find out for sure because something is weird here and I am curious.
If you get a chance please tell me some particulars.
I believe you said the depth was about 4" but firm that up, also what size nail and how close did you place it and its orientation to the quarter?
Also your settings if you can remember them.
Thank you.
 
I'm hearing ya REVIER. If anything, I have to stepdown on sense to keep a clear signal. My grounds have been phasing between 83-99. And I'm pulling quarters from 3"-7" next to lightpoles and powerboxes. I have had targets "averaged" by the F70 because of nearby trash. But not "nulled out". One quarter came in at a 68. But I figured the tabs, gumwrappers and assorted litter was knocking down the TID.
 
shadowulf said:
I'm hearing ya REVIER. If anything, I have to stepdown on sense to keep a clear signal. My grounds have been phasing between 83-99. And I'm pulling quarters from 3"-7" next to lightpoles and powerboxes. I have had targets "averaged" by the F70 because of nearby trash. But not "nulled out". One quarter came in at a 68. But I figured the tabs, gumwrappers and assorted litter was knocking down the TID.

Like I said, something weird here.
No way, shape or how should this have happened according to what I have seen in my holes with good targets right next to iron of all kind and sizes.
Experimentation will tell us more.
 
Update. Since the weather here is lousy I built a tester box with soil from a bag and 7" plastic pots. I put a quarter in the bottom of one and a penny in the bottom of the other. In playing with the sens. and Thresh. I was able to get some signal but not great. For the record my SE Pro could not do much either.
 
Pastor Bob, again your testing method is flawed, flawed, flawed. You can't get any accurate readings in disturbed soil. You have no uniform ground matrix like you would in undisturbed soil. In undisturbed soil the ground matrix is such that all the molecules have a linear alignment with all +(plus) and -(negative) of the molecules aligned. This makes for a very consistent medium to transmit a signal through. When you have mixed up soil you have no uniform ground matrix or medium to transmit through and depth suffers immensely.

My test garden has pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters with one of each buried at 4,6,8,10, and 12 inches. It is a little over a year and a half old and still not very good. It can take 3 years for the ground matrix to re-establish, and even longer. If you want to do a half way decent test use a sharpened 3" diameter pipe and cut plugs out of the ground, place the coin flat on the bottom, and re-insert the plug. At least this way most of the ground matrix is not disturbed.

The reality is that an air test in an EMI free area is a decent test. Air is an excellent medium to transmit through. It is better than ground. Realistically your air test results are the best depth you can get. In ground, depending on your type of ground you will only see a percentage of your air test. Dave Johnson at Fisher will even tell you this. Ground is nowhere as good of a medium as air and will have more signal loss.
 
The F70 will go DEEP!....it just it is hard to tell a good signal from bad....I have dug some DEEP stuff with the 10' coil...Sorta makes it Exciting!
 
You must learn the language of the F70. This does not happen over night. All the chatter is part of that language and much of the jibberish can be adjusted out without loss. You must endure the pain staking process of elimination to get the full understanding of this remarkable detector. If your going to jump to the conclusion that the F70 is inferior you probably won't keep it long enough to prove otherwise. Lots of people are happy finding them used, in like new condition for about 1/2 to 2/3 of new price. False signals many times expose themselves as to where they originate once you learn to use the tools of the F70. Confidence, dirt, and depth meters are many times crucial in deciding weather to dig or not. Lower the discrimination, learn all the sounds of the different medals, look for iron icons in the display when suspicious jumpy high tones are present. Slowly lower sensitivity /and or threshold a step at a time when these symptom occurs. I'll bet you will notice a good portion of these fuzzy, jumpy false tones will be weaker and less frequent with these power reductions when the iron icons are recognized as their source. I hope you find these answers before giving up on the F70 .-------HH----IB
 
I think some of us had the "advantage" of owning lesser detectors that were "squawk boxes". And that makes it easier to tolerate the chatter.

Really, try a lower sens and thresh (say 40, -3 respectively) and see if that quiets things a bit. If you still get too much chatter, take the sens to 35 or 30. I'm running 35 next to parking lot lights at sports parks and can hit zincs right next to the lightbase. I do get some EMI, but I can hear through it.
Also, I only dig on repeatable, consistent hits. Like IB said, the fuzzy jumpy hits will fade. And you will soon tune in your "ear discrim" to what the detector is trying to say.
 
I run mine in program 2 which ,if im not mistaken is AT ( all metal ) but still gives target ID if i want monster depth. And ground balancing is crucial..
 
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