I always liked the Cortes for what it is...............
I remember I had some good info in one of my file folders, don't know where I got it from but, will post it here.
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The battery indicator bar on my Cortes has finally gotten small enough that I am seriously considering changing them. These are the original set of batteries and will be my first battery change. Its been almost 6 months since I first got it. I dont know how many hours I have on them because I wasnt keeping track. If I were to guess, I would figure maybe 30-35 hours? Maybe less, maybe more, like I said I wasnt keeping track.
I am getting pretty familiar with it now and like it better than I did at the beginning. So I thought I would share my 30 hours? of wisdom.
It took awhile to figure out the best combination of discrimination and sensitivity. The Cortes proved to be very sensitive to the smallest objects at zero discrimination. So sensitive that it was irritating to use with no discrimination and the higher I raised the sensitivity the worse it got. I spent probably the first 12 hours or so on figuring out what combination of the two worked best for me. I finally settled on a disc setting on the F in Foil as being the lowest bearable setting for me. This setting works well at all sensitivity settings from minimum to ultra-hot. The small micro trash is eliminated or at least broken up. Since I have been using this disc setting, the Cortes has been much more enjoyable.
The best setting for cherry picking high coins is to raise the disc to round tab, and flick the Notch toggle switch to Wide. You can crank the disc all the way over, but you lose a good 1-1/2 to 2 of depth performance if you do. By raising the disc only to the round tab setting, and using the Wide Notch setting, you only lose 1 of depth performance.
The Narrow and Wide Notch settings work. In the grass parks, I dig a set number of tab signals and then I switch the Notch over onto Narrow to knock out the tabs. The key idea here is to use the Disc., Sens., and Notch settings to limit the amount of audio information you have to act on. You can almost positively identify every signal through the use of the bar graph and Id number, but if the majority of signals are trash, I figure I am wasting time by doing so. By limiting the number of audio signals I have to process to those that have the highest potential to be good targets I get a better use of my time and more enjoyment from my machine and from the hunt in general.
I find the bar graph the coolest thing on the machine and is the first thing I look at when checking out a target. It was the bar graph that drew me to the Cortes in the first place and it is the bar graph that keeps me with it. It has the right number of segments divided by the right categories for my taste. Its easy to tell rusted iron and steel from the way it smears across the graph. Even steel washers.
I like the way they divided the range of target identification numbers in the middle conductivity range. There is only one number for iron (0) and one number for copper and up (95). The rest of the 94 numbers are spread between foil, nickel, round tab, square tab, and zinc categories. That gives a wide spread of id numbers within each of these categories which allows for fine point discrimination. When combined with the Sum mode, this make target id easy, because the Sum mode allows a single number id. A good example of this is determining between nickels and the new square? tabs that id as nickels. Using just the bar graph, both id as a nickel. Using just the Target Id number, they both fit within the normal spread of numbers you would expect based upon how well you are centered over the target with the sweep. But the Sum mode allows a single peak id number that is very stable. So the peak Id number for a nickel is 39. A peak Id number for that new pesky tab is 41. I have never dug a peak id number of 39 that was not a nickel. I have never dug a peak id number of 41 that was not one of those tabs. So for fine target discrimination, the ID number in combination with the Sum mode is a great benefit if you are in a place where you need to use it. Unfortunately, I do not have many gold rings to test their peak id values and see if there is any overlap.
Putting all the target id information together, you can go from broad target id based upon the Category id that is displayed, get a little more detailed information by the Bar graph, get a little more detailed information by the Target Id Number and finally a very fine target id with the Sums Peak Target Id Number.
I havent spent a lot of time with the Sum modes 9 audio tones. I typically work with one feature at time to learn it how to use it as if it was the only feature that I have available for target id. I havent yet performed any hunts where I use only the Sum mode audio tones for target id, but it is on my schedule.
The No-Motion All metal mode requires a manual ground balance, which I found to be easy to do. I always start in the middle because its easier that way. I turn the knob 5 turns clockwise, then two turns counter-clock wise, then pump the coil and usually have it balanced in about 4 pumps. I seldom achieve a perfect balance. Usually it is just a hair positive. I found the best threshold setting to be about the 9:30 position and I had to train my ear for it. I just found out that raising the threshold changes the audio strength of deep targets. Seems it is being call super tuning. Still experimenting with this to determine the best setting and why I would want to use it.
I am not particularly fond of the way the no-motion mode works because of the fast retune speed. It is almost like a auto ratchet pinpoint mode, or what I think in my mind what auto ratchet would be like. It seems like it automatically retunes as soon as you pass over the target. When I called the factory back in June, they called it a threshold overshoot null. I mean its ok and you learn how to use it but its not great and I would prefer a slower retune. The VCO is ok, and I soon learned to determine depth just by the VCO tone alone. All the target Id meter stuff works in this mode, but you have to get dead center to get a good bar graph reading and id number. I havent done any serious hunting in this mode yet and at this point I am not in a hurry to do so but I guess I should just to know what to expect if I ever need to do so.
Over all, I am getting more comfortable with the Cortes and how the different coil sizes and types perform with it. I wonder how I will feel at the next battery change?
