Paging Mr. Mike Hillis to the white courtesy phone :detecting:

[Cal_Cobra]

Mike I picked up a C$ from BuckeyeBrad who's been patiently (I believe ) helping me learn this monstrosity

To try to pick up all the hints and tips I can, I've been reading all of the C$ related threads on the C$ Classroom and adding the helpful bits to a file for reference.

While reading the 79+ pages (I started backwards and have thus far only made it to page 59), and caught a bit you posted about some "hot" jewelry settings. Last night I decided to air test those settings and had mixed results (all gold rings seemed to more or less register as nickels or pull-tabs).

Did you ever get a chance to test out your experimental settings with iron disc'd down, and minimal sens and positive thres settings ?

I'm getting the impression that in order to find jewelry and gold, one has to dig ALL positive TID's.

Thanks !
Cal

 

[BuckeyeBrad]

I just mustered up another dose of patience . Remember, I'm still a C$ user too! I've seen several folks laboriously come up with statistical "sweet spots" for gold jewelry for what it's worth, but the fact remains that as you suspected, gold can literally come in as any of the ID facets of the C$, yes, even the high coin and iron under certain circumstances. Mass, alloy, position, and collocation.

 

[Cal_Cobra]

Sorry Brad, I didn't mean to singe your ears

We've definitely discussed this topic, but I'm curious if Mike's experimental settings were more fruitful then the typical 525 or other similar mid to high SENS and negative THRESH settings

When I tried the settings Mike was working on, I didn't see much difference in air testing, BUT as a C$ noob I believe air tests vs real world in-ground applications are not the same animal.

I'm looking for that magic gold jewelry setting, you know the setting that only goes off when the big gold is at your feet, under all the trash

 

[Mike Hillis]

Hi Cal,

When I was looking at the low conductive range I was trying to see how I could discriminate out the tiny trash foil while keeping the larger items. Basically trying to integrate some disc into the notches.

My tests showed that once I went into the +2 and greater threshold settings, I could, in fact, cancel out the smaller responding low conductors by saturation of the threshold tone. It works to some degree depending on sweep speed and target size. You can also mimic the same effect and control it better with very negative threshold settings. Between -75 and -99 has a great effect on trash targets. Gaging signal strength on a scale of 0 to 100, a setting of -99 requires at least 15 points before it can even register a response. A setting of 0 will allow a signal response strength of 0. Small objects tend to read both lower in conductivity and respond with less signal strength. By using the extreme negative threshold settings you can effectively limit responses in the low conductive ranges to stronger signals, like rings or larger mass items.

In the end, I used the sensitivity setting to control my coil response field shape and the threshold setting to control how much signal was required for a good target lock. It worked particularly well with the large coil on the smaller low conductive targets. The key is to get stable target locks. At the end I was only using my large coil and looking for stable id locks regardless of id number. I got some nice items out of some bad ground doing that.

Hope that helps some.

Mike

 

[Cal_Cobra]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for explaining that, you definitely came up with some very interesting conclusions. That gives me some new settings check out. You were testing these with the 10" coil ?

Thanks,
Cal

 

[Mike Hillis]

Both 8" and 10" coils. I just liked the 10" coil better for the way I hunt.

Mike

 

[Cal_Cobra]

There's an old Victorian hot springs hotel near me that goes all the way back to the early Spanish explorers when they found the Springs early in their recognizance of California. Beginning in 1773, a series of Spanish explorers visited the area. Enjoyment of the pools and drinking of the waters for their health giving affect became common practice as Yankee immigrants tumbled out the gold fields of 1849 to more settled occupations in the San Joaquin Valley. In the 1800's a Victorian hotel was built, and the wealthy and affluent visited the hotel for relaxation and treatment of ailments from the mineral springs. During the 1920's the San Francisco Seals used the Springs for spring training, Clark Gable wooed the Spreckles girl at the Springs. Fatty Arbuckle, Francis X. Bushman also frequented to hotel.*

The place has quite a history, and it's kind of out in the middle of nowhere, still barely standing. Who knows if I'll find anything there, or if the place has been hunted to death, but if nothing else it could be a promising place to hunt (I suspect it's quite trashy). I think I'll try your settings here and see if I can strike gold !

Thanks,
Cal

* text shamelessly plagiarized from the web

 

[vlad]

I prefer the 10" loop also. More depth and still superior separation. Plus you can always turn down the sens.

 

[Mike Hillis]

I loved that show. I had a crush on agent 99

 

[BuckeyeBrad]

n/t