Older Surf PI in black sand?

[Atlas]

Anyone have any experience with using and older SMPI in a heavy black sand situation.

I'm working an area where my CTX shows suggested sensitivity settings of 1 and I am mostly running in auto at around 4 (ground coin+open screen). Still get lots of false signals and genuine targets can be hard to pick out. I think the machine is getting down around 2-5" in this situation. I have tried manual sensitivity at the 5 level but not sure it made a diff.

I have an older SMPI and thought it might cut through this black sand. However, seems like I tried this a few years back and the SMPI just howled when I lowered it close to the black sand areas.

Any thoughts

 

[Grilled Scallops]

If you are good and you can keep your coil level when swinging, you don't have to ever ground balance your PI. You only get a tone from the ground when you move the coil vertically, up or down, relative to the ground. Sometimes very rapid changes in mineralization can cause tones, but these are obvious ground signals and would never be mistaken for a target. Some PIs have ground tracking to take care of this. Anyways, if your surf PI has a pulse delay control, you should be able to raise the delay until the signal from the sand is very minimal. Even at higher delays you'll still get way deeper than the 2-5" that CTX is getting.