ok I started playing around with manual at some worked out sites...

[mascard1]

without loosing any measurable depth.I think it will help a lot of folks who want to try for more depth in higher manual sen. to play with the gain adjustment as running it to high will contribute to the E-Trac becoming very noisy/unstable.Just some food for thought/experimentation.

I run manual all the time...just does not seem to get the depth with +3....that"s how started.....and I run the stock coin program ..pretty much...I have my gain at 16...that seems to keep the falsing down and I can tell if it is deep!...still a bit noisey......still dig nails every now and then.....I dig a lot of 1900 to 1930 or so pennies, real deep ...they come up at fer.1,2................con .29,30......but they sound great!.....I am in Sacramento.

 

[Thrasher]

I just got on here and saw this thread yesterday, so I went home last night and did myself some air testing. In auto 19 +3 (which is 22), I was picking up a silver dime at only 6 to 7 inches, but when I switched to "manual" 22, I was picking it up at 10 to 11 inches .... I turned it up even more until it started chattering and then turned it down 2 notches (manual 26) and was picking up that dime at 12 to 13 inches..... I don't think I will ever use auto again on my machine.

 

[silversweeper]

I run in manual most of the time, as high as I can go and get the machine to remain stable. If the etrac signal jumps around a whole lot when I'm holding it still, then I notch it down by twos until it steadies out. I rarely go below 24 though. And sometimes if it's jumping around erratically, a noise cancel helps. Every once in a while I'll switch over to auto +3 when I've located a good signal in manual, just to see if my e-machine will still pick it up, and most of the time the signal dissappears completely so that's why I force myself to listen to the chatter in manual. I've also noticed that often when my auto +3 is running at about 20-22, if I switch back over to manual and set it at the same level, I'm still getting signals in manual that don't register in auto...which I've always thought was a bit odd. However, be prepared that the numbers will often not be accurate in manual running hot. Most of the time the conductive number will be close or right on, but the ferrous side will vary. At least that's what I've found to be the case. I listen more for the strength and sound of the tone, even in TTF. And as for digging junk and iron, I do dig quite a bit of it BUT I usually have a pretty good feeling that that is what it is before I dig a hole to find out. Just my "2 cents" worth...
HH.