new Xterra 705 user

[reffitt20]

I recently bought a x terra 705 and I am coming here for advice. I started off with a Garret Ace 250 for a year and became fairly efficent with it. I have access to great spots to hit and in a year I found four silver dimes, one silver quarter and lots of wheat pennys, and alot of clad and so forth. I really like the ace 250 but like many of us I found myself wanting more depth and descrimination so i got the x terra 705.

I understand there is a learning curve for each machine no doubt but I have read Randy Horton digger guys book and did alot of research but I am not having any luck finding coins yet. After five or more hours still no coins at all.

My detector has the 9" concentric coil and I jump in between All metal mode and all the settings 1-4. I did everything that sounds clean.

One thing I do know is I have not heard one clean signal 34 or above which ofcourse the silver coin targets.

Do I just need more time on machine? am i getting to ancy?

Whats the number one thing I need to work on to dig silver? Settings? Swing Speed?, ground balance?, noise cancel?

thanks for your help in advance

 

[team sidewinder]

You need to ground balance and noise cancel ever time you start out. I leave my 705 on tracking also with sensitivity on 23 or a little less. 4 tones and 2/3 second swing. You should be finding coins if they are there. Patience young grasshopper. The silver will come.

 

[team sidewinder]

Guess I should have added that 99 tones and all metal are also working well for me now that I have started using them more. When not using AM I use mode 1. Good Luck.

 

[Digger]

Whats the number one thing I need to work on to dig silver? Settings? Swing Speed?, ground balance?, noise cancel?

Those are all important factors. But if I had to name the most important "ingredient" for finding silver coins, it would be location. Research is key. But if that site has been detected by others for the past 40 years, the odds of finding old silver coins is greatly diminished. Think outside of the box and try to find areas that others haven't taken the time to locate. Much easier said than done, but they are out there. As to detector settings/usage, as team sidewinder said, NC each time you start up your detector. And either properly ground balance your X-TERRA at each site, or run with Tracking. Set the discrimination level so that you aren't rejecting keepers......set the Threshold to a barely audible sound......sweep speed varies (for me) by location in that the more plentiful the targets, the slower I sweep. Having a sweep speed that requires 3 - 4 seconds each direction is probably average. Sensitivity should be set to a level that maximizes depth, without causing chatter. The best advice I can give anyone new to the X-TERRA is to practice in your yard. If you don't have a coin garden (test plot), build one and use it. Bury targets at various depths and learn what settings and sweep techniques work best for you. Learn to listen to what the X-TERRA is telling you, not just showing you with the TID. HH Randy

 

[Gerryk2]

Randy, you sidewinder both said to set noise cancel eaxh time the machine is started up. I have never touched noise cancel because i wasnt in an area with power lines or high tension wires. Did I miss a step by not setting noise cancel?

Gerry

 

[Old Longhair]

Randy, you sidewinder both said to set noise cancel eaxh time the machine is started up. I have never touched noise cancel because i wasnt in an area with power lines or high tension wires. Did I miss a step by not setting noise cancel?

Gerry

Yep! you did.
Many things can cause EMI besides power lines, and buried ones you can't see. Nearby Wi-Fi will do it, as will the cell phone in your pocket. I've even had farm fences in the middle of nowhere (not electric) that created fields near them with what they accumulated out of the air.
The biggest thing that it will affect is apparent stability. If you've found places that you've had to lower the sensitivity significantly to run stable, I'd go back, Noise Cancel, and then see if you can run hotter.

 

[Gerryk2]

I will run it tomorrow when i go out. I have only had one place where I turned the sensatity down and I figured that was from the trash in the ground.

 

[Mark in S.E. IA]

I feel that the number 1 problem for ppl that are new with the Xterra and are having problems finding coins is that they swing the coil way too fast. Like what Randy said, A 3 to 4 second from right to left and if your in a area with a lot of trash and or iron you should slow down to a 5 second speed. I was in a field yesterday and it was so full of nails that I was swinging about a 5 second swing speed and I know darn well that if I was swinging any faster that I would of missed the few coins and tokens that I found. It's also good to check your Noise Cancel and GB at the start of each hunt.

 

[reffitt20]

thanks for all the help! I am glad I came to this forum for advice because on the friendly one its pretty dead. So I need to reset Ground Balance and Noise Cancel every time, slow down my swing speed. I knew minelab makes high quality products I just need the time to get comfortable with it but I am just running out of time with deer hunting starting to get good and winter fast approaching. But thanks for your help! 99 tones sounds a little intimidating at this point to be honest.
When do you turn off auto-matic ground balancing? before pin pointing an object or after a few minutes of swinging?

 

[BillF]

I think you might be confusing auto GB with tracking. At new sites where you don't know the makeup of the soil, auto GB, its more accurate than manually setting it. When you switch to search mode then you're done. GB is set.
Tracking will continuously adjust to conditions. I personally don't use it often because I don't always remember to turn it off when I get a good signal. If you don't it will adjust itself to your target and you will lose the target. Don't let that stop you from using it, some are very successful with it.

 

[Old Longhair]

FWIW, I have never "lost" a target with Tracking turned on, and I believe it to be a myth/fallacy.

 

[BillF]

See, the manual discusses that and it has scared me off it because as I said, I never remember to turn it off before sizing it up. Do you turn it off Longhair, or are you able to get the target pinpointed? I would like to use my 705 to its maximum capabilities. I don't seem to have a problem with setting GB and using it for hours but it makes me wonder if tracking wouldn't find me more good targets.

 

[Old Longhair]

I rarely turn it off. It does what it is intended to do, and it's not intended or designed to "absorb" targets the way that you hear folks saying. It's digital aspects and programming parameters work differently than analog machines that might lose targets, and rumors of such behavior are easily started and nearly impossible to quell.
FACT: In order for your 705 to "lose" a target with Tracking ON, the target would have to be close enough in properties to ground minerals that it would be nearly impossible to detect with any machine.

DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ ON THE INTERNET!

 

[Old Longhair]

thanks for all the help! I am glad I came to this forum for advice because on the friendly one its pretty dead.

I saw your post over there and decided not to answer because you were asking here too. With Randy and others here responding, it would have just been redundant, as you will get no better advice than you'll get here.

 

[BillF]

Its not the internet. The manual says that repeated passes over the target will diminish the signal, and it is recommended to turn tracking off at that point. I probably misinterpreted that as "losing" the signal.
Thanks for clearing that up, I will definitely be trying it in the field again.

 

[reffitt20]

I have another question. When it comes to coin signals are they usually clean? numbers not moving more than two places? 32-34, 38-40? It seems when I'm swinging I am getting all kinds of numbers then I hear a high tone that rings up well but it isn't consistent enough. I go to dig and I pull nail after nail out of the hole then re-check the hole and nothing. I guess short and sweet question does coins usually come out clean and loud? Will your other tip of slowing down swing speed help me isolate good signals?

I'm sorry for all the questions but I am grateful for your time.

 

[Old Longhair]

For the purpose of clarification, Tracking adjusts itself so quickly that you would have to virtually stop the coil on top of a target for the machine to adjust to it to any notable degree. For it to do as you fear, it would be more likely to do the same when your swing speed simply slowed regardless of how many passes you make over the target.

 

[Old Longhair]

I have another question. When it comes to coin signals are they usually clean? numbers not moving more than two places? 32-34, 38-40? It seems when I'm swinging I am getting all kinds of numbers then I hear a high tone that rings up well but it isn't consistent enough. I go to dig and I pull nail after nail out of the hole then re-check the hole and nothing. I guess short and sweet question does coins usually come out clean and loud? Will your other tip of slowing down swing speed help me isolate good signals?

I'm sorry for all the questions but I am grateful for your time.

Yes, they are clean, as in not scratchy,clipped, distorted, etc...
They might be two toned, or change tones as the machine gets a better "look" with subsequent passes.


And yes, swing speed plays a roll. Slowing down will help eliminate a lot of the iron falsing that you're experiencing.

 

[BillF]

Thanks so much! As I said, I will be giving it a fair chance next time I'm out. I try to help when I can but obviously don't have the ML experience many of you do.

For the purpose of clarification, Tracking adjusts itself so quickly that you would have to virtually stop the coil on top of a target for the machine to adjust to it to any notable degree. For it to do as you fear, it would be more likely to do the same when your swing speed simply slowed regardless of how many passes you make over the target.

 

[team sidewinder]

I have another question. When it comes to coin signals are they usually clean? numbers not moving more than two places? 32-34, 38-40? It seems when I'm swinging I am getting all kinds of numbers then I hear a high tone that rings up well but it isn't consistent enough. I go to dig and I pull nail after nail out of the hole then re-check the hole and nothing. I guess short and sweet question does coins usually come out clean and loud? Will your other tip of slowing down swing speed help me isolate good signals?

I'm sorry for all the questions but I am grateful for your time.[/quote

As OL mentions inconsistent tone or inconsistent TID is a dead giveaway that it isn't a coin or worth it to me to dig. As t much as I hate to admit it that after going a long time without finding anything I tell myself that maybe that inconsistent tone or TID is something to dig but it never is and the old metal detector never lies even though I think it must be making a mistake on this one. Not.