Share The Patterns

[herbajones]

To most of you guys that do so well because of the years of practice and the hit and miss patterns you have used, maybe you could take a picture of your E Trac screen and share some of the patterns for different situations and places you search. I would love to load my modes and patterns that have proven results from the seasoned E Trac users. At the age of some of us we need not waste good detecting days in the basic Minelab coin mode, digging 4 and 5" holes most of the time. I hope I'm not asking too much but it sure would be helpful. The only other pattern I have is Troy's (Neb-Trac) and I know there are lots more proven ones from you guys that are doing so well with finding the good stuff....Herb

 

[LabradorBob]

Mine is pretty simple,everything from 28 down is masked out.
That's it

 

[joedirt]

I'm not an expert but I'll share what I did to find that 1869 Shielded Nickel.

E-Trac Settings

Modified Coin pattern - block CO 1-4 all the way down and Ferrous 31 down and Ferrous 1 to 7 over to about 35 Pretty open screen
Mask wide open

Sensitivity Auto +3
Threshold just loud enough to hear
Pitch 18
Deep On
Fast On
Trash High
Ground Normal
Tone Multi Conductive
Response Long
Limits 30
Gain 10
Variability 30

I got many iron signals in the FE 30 plus range. Swapped between discrimination and mask frequently to check out the signal without the discrimination. I dug several square headed nails at various depths. Some shotgun and pistol brass and a few lead shot.

Once I saw that most of the targets were hitting in the high FE range 20 plus on down I decided to skip all iron targets and look for something higher up the FE scale that would indicate a more precious metal.

When I got a week signal bouncing around the 12 FE line I thought "OK, now here is something different" So I decided to dig.

That is when I pulled up the 50 cal Civil war bullet.

After that, I scrubbed the ground some more very slowly and passed over several more iron targets. I got another signal bouncing around the FE 12 line with good conductivity too.

I dug that signal and found the 1869 Shielded Nickel in my other post.

All in all, I probably did not hunt more than a 50 x 50 square foot patch out of several acres.

My dad, who has a Gold Bug somebody willed to him said "Boy, I would have covered most of the yard by now. Why are you going so slow?"

After I pulled up the bullet and the coin I told him "This is why I am going so slow. I am looking for very specific targets"

Right there I convinced him that my equipment and methods had a purpose. He was used to just digging anything that beeped.

Not to slight my Dad at all. He has found Parot shot, cannon balls, musket shot, buttons, emblems, etc. on the same ground. The big difference is that he had to dig a lot of holes to do it.

Had I taken the same approach, I probably would have been worn out long before I found the treasure.

For what it's worth to you, there you have it.

 

[joedirt]

When I say "bouncing around" I mean 10 something, 11 something, 12 something, 13 something, 14 something with good conductivity too.

I am not 100% used to multi tone and long response. My observation so far is that it is hard to get the exact same tone with every sweep over the same target. You have to kind of "guestimate" that yes, this is something in a very good range and go for it.

It's not hard to do when your choices are between targets of 35-45 34-46 or 12-14, 10-13, 13-20, etc.

In this scenario, anybody would have thought "I'll dig anything that isn't solid iron" That's what it came down to and it proved to be a winner each time.

In a park, I'm sure it would have been totally different as there are many conductive targets that are junk.