Patriot/F70 owners, Check this out.

[hsimmons75]

I made this chart to compare the effects of the sensitivity vs the threshold on the Patriot. Keep in mind that these are air tests. Also, this was done in my garage with everything unplugged but i still had EMI problems at the higher settings. I made this to figure out if there was a "sweet spot" in the Patriot's settings. I surmised that if I run with the threshold at +3 and adjust the sensitivity, I should be able to keep great depth. I tried it after planting various coins in my garden. All I have to say is REAL WORLD RESULTS ARE WAY DIFFERENT. With the threshold at +3, I could not get past a few small specks of iron to see the coins. I had to back the threshold down to -1 or less to be able to see the deeper coins. The coins were placed from 4 inches to 10 inches down in 2 inch increments. All coins were pre-1982 pennies. I couldn't even get the six inch coin with the threshold at the higher settings. So in real world results, it seems that the factory settings are a good place to start. if the ground is trashy, keep your threshold low. If it is clear, you can get some depth from bumping it up, but you are going to hear a lot of the smaller things that are in the ground. I give credit for the chart and thanks to WV62, I made the chart after one that he sent me.
[attachment 346554 PatriotChart.png]

 

[REVIER]

Thanks for the chart.
I would be curious to see the same test with 1 monotone, maybe SL speed on one run.
Still, you are hitting 10"+ on several different settings so that is great.

 

[hsimmons75]

I may do that someday, but that took me a good few hours yesterday, lol. I'm happy with the air test, but my results in the ground are not the same. There is so much trash in the soil around here. I swear someone fertilized all the lawns in the area with nails. I have to try the monotone with disc at 6 tomorrow. Lost a coin in my test bed at twelve inches. Couldn't locate it even though I just put it in the ground.

 

[REVIER]

If you go below 5 on the disc it also makes it a bit more sensitive.
Below 5 and past 20 changes the way this discriminates slightly, the effect is something like a little increase in sensitivity.
A bit more sensitive to EMI too but not all that bad down to 1 disc...0 disc can send it into chattering overdrive but I still hunt with it that way sometimes.

Mostly 1 disc, though.

 

[MarkCZ]

I may do that someday, but that took me a good few hours yesterday, lol. I'm happy with the air test, but my results in the ground are not the same. There is so much trash in the soil around here. I swear someone fertilized all the lawns in the area with nails. I have to try the monotone with disc at 6 tomorrow. Lost a coin in my test bed at twelve inches. Couldn't locate it even though I just put it in the ground.

Okay, we know that air test DO NOT TELL REAL FIELD RESULTS, now saying that lets move on a little.
First I've gotten VERY strange results with planted coins, especially past the 5" range, don't be surprised if in about three or four days if the 6" and deeper ones just disappear I've had that happen a bunch of times, the day I buried it I could detect it, then three days later POOF!
One modern and highly respected detector manufacture stated that fresh buried coins disturbs the "Ground Matrix" and the results are not reliable!!!!.
I pretty much gave up on test gardens deeper than 4" or so.

Now at one time my brother "WV62" and I had discussed the idea of planting coins using a different method.
The idea would be to take a plug out of the ground, then at the bottom of the hole insert the coin into the side of the hole leaving the earth above the coin undisturbed!!! then fill the dig back in. Now as far as I know neither of us has yet to test this coin planting theory, I know I haven't.

Your numbers are GOOD! meaning that with the perfect media (Air) your depth result shows the MAX depth you could get on a coin. The ground or the minerals in the ground is to a detector what fog is to us when we drive down the road. The amount of mineral content, amount of EMI can change from location to location and in the heat of summer solar radiation really effects our detectors.
You know what your MAX settings are, so the goal is to pick the best time of day for the area, which in the heat will be very early in the morning and another thing that helps is after a rain when the ground is cool and damp you'll find your detector will smooth out a lot. The idea is max, if the detector is giving you some problems at those settings then you have to adjust! Look at your chart at the hottest settings, then figure what you would need to do to move from max and loose as little depth as possible.
Would backing off the threshold first help? or
Cutting back the sensitivity give you better stability with less depth loss?

Another thing your chart tells you, lets say your going to go clad stabbing and your not planing on really digging much of anything, which settings are you going to run to reduce the deeper buired trash from interfering with your detector,
These charts tells a lot of different things about your detector, but when you get out in the field your still going to have to manage the controls,

I live in West Virginia and they are lots of roads here I drive 60 and 70mph on, but they even more that you can't drive 50mph and a good bit that 35 to 40mph can get you killed! Metal detectors are a bit like that, some days, some locations its 10" some other days and other locations its 7"

Mark

Mark

 

[hsimmons75]

Thanks for the input Mark, The funny thing with my test bed was that when I lowered the threshold and upped the sensitivity, I had way better tones. I think I just got rid of the small specks of rusty iron doing this. It kinda let me pick through or around the trash. I liked your analogy to fog. I likened my results to turning on the low beams. I feel that if my threshold is too high, I get decent signals from small trash.

 

[hsimmons75]

Funny thing happened today, I went out to my planted coins to retrieve them. I dig a few nails out of the way, then was able to hit all coins. The soil was a bit moist after yesterday's rain. I even got the twelve incher to hit in all metal. They were all copper pennies. This machine loves the copper pennies and dimes for sure. I want to note that I had to get some iron out of the ground first, but I was amazed.

 

[REVIER]

As far as the tones I found out early that higher thresh skews the tones if you are using any of the multi tone choices 3-4H into a squeaky type of sound I just don't like listening to.
Using 4H I rarely turn the thresh much higher than -2 for this reason although high thresh for me has been proved to have some pretty good unmasking abilities...in my iron infused dirt anyway.
Nowadays I use monotone or one of the other lowest three tone choices or all metal and even with maxed out thresh doesn't seem to be affected so much in this way at all.

On those masked coins you couldn't find till you got the iron out of the way.
This is my life, just about every signal I come across I have to deal with this same type of situation and it took time but I have observed some repeating behavior in severely masked and deeper targets that still helped me notice them.
Nothing solid, most involve a lot of jumping but definite clues are there that has helped to find me a lot more treasure than I thought possible in my devil dirt.
I never swung over your test bed and I don't know exactly what you were looking at on the screen or hearing but I wish I had the chance to do just that.
There might have been some behavior I know about that I learned that you don't know as yet that might have been able to help me suspect there was something good down there even with that iron.
Or, they might have still been completely hidden from me despite everything I learned or think I know.

All I can say is after hunting in my area for awhile now and using and experimenting with more combinations of settings than I can count there is a reason that if you come up to me and look at my settings you will more often then not find me using two....all metal or in disc monotone, 1 tone.
For me hunting around all this iron I have to deal with I have found, for me, these have distinct advantages for getting the deepest and noticing at least a hint of a clue about non ferrous targets living in the same neighborhoods as iron.

 

[shadowulf]

Another thing your chart tells you, lets say your going to go clad stabbing and your not planing on really digging much of anything, which settings are you going to run to reduce the deeper buired trash from interfering with your detector,
These charts tells a lot of different things about your detector, but when you get out in the field your still going to have to manage the controls,

I was thinking the same thing, sorta.

With our recent drought, groundskeepers weren't too friendly to detectorist. Sometimes, they could even be a little rude.
But using this chart, and some careful experimentation, you could tune into that shallow clad and jewelry without giving a fussy groundskeeper much to fuss about.
As well as possibly scope out some likely places to return too , when the environment is "friendlier"