scubasteve
New member
My wife and I picked up a Tracker IV last week and hit a couple of playgrounds... found a fair amount of clad. Last night, we decided today was going to be pretty quiet and we had time to drive out to the beach (2 hours each way) and try beach hunting. Impressed with the Tracker IV, we decided to pick up a Quick Draw II and see how the two compared (and return one).
The Quick Draw II was utterly worthless! On the beach, with nothing around, it would mysteriously start beeping... even while laying coil-up in the sand. It doesn't detect well at all, especially compared to the Tracker IV. I easily found 15 or 20 rusted nails and screws in the sand (the trip was a bust) with the Tracker IV and about 60% of the time the QD II wouldn't alert in the same spot!
I've tried every combination of settings on the QuickDraw II and can't believe this detector costs so much more than the Tracker IV and works so poorly.
Also, the Quick Draw II seems to have a very long delay between passing over an object and making the tone. I'm wondering if it's due to the extra signal analysis (depth and classification)?
So unimpressed with the performance of the QD II, I began to wonder if the (new) batteries were bad. I swapped batteries between the detectors with no difference in performance on either. Now that I think about it, I should have looked at the coils to see if they were interchangeable.
In wet sand (salt water, not rain) neither detector could detect a "test" penny 1" in the sand. Is saltwater sensitivity supposed to be this poor? It seems both detectors constantly alerted falses in wet sand, especially if the coil made contact.
We also noticed the Quick Draw II, when it does actually detect an item, doesn't do so repeatedly. I can put a test penny down into the soil at home and pass over it ten times, each time in exactly the same motion and speed. It might alert three out of those 10 passes. The Tracker IV alerts every time without fail.
Since we're still learning the detectors, we typically have them set in "all metal" mode with sensitivity between the mid-point and full.
Is this a bad detector, or is the Quick Draw II just a poor performer?
TIA!
Steve
The Quick Draw II was utterly worthless! On the beach, with nothing around, it would mysteriously start beeping... even while laying coil-up in the sand. It doesn't detect well at all, especially compared to the Tracker IV. I easily found 15 or 20 rusted nails and screws in the sand (the trip was a bust) with the Tracker IV and about 60% of the time the QD II wouldn't alert in the same spot!
I've tried every combination of settings on the QuickDraw II and can't believe this detector costs so much more than the Tracker IV and works so poorly.
Also, the Quick Draw II seems to have a very long delay between passing over an object and making the tone. I'm wondering if it's due to the extra signal analysis (depth and classification)?
So unimpressed with the performance of the QD II, I began to wonder if the (new) batteries were bad. I swapped batteries between the detectors with no difference in performance on either. Now that I think about it, I should have looked at the coils to see if they were interchangeable.
In wet sand (salt water, not rain) neither detector could detect a "test" penny 1" in the sand. Is saltwater sensitivity supposed to be this poor? It seems both detectors constantly alerted falses in wet sand, especially if the coil made contact.
We also noticed the Quick Draw II, when it does actually detect an item, doesn't do so repeatedly. I can put a test penny down into the soil at home and pass over it ten times, each time in exactly the same motion and speed. It might alert three out of those 10 passes. The Tracker IV alerts every time without fail.
Since we're still learning the detectors, we typically have them set in "all metal" mode with sensitivity between the mid-point and full.
Is this a bad detector, or is the Quick Draw II just a poor performer?
TIA!
Steve