Well I have read the messages on increasing depth and thought a little about it.
1. One method is to set deep on and increase sensitivity making sure to leave fast off.
2. Another is to use iron mask only setting it to -10 or further and again set deep on and sensitivity up using the iron mask smart screen to look at targets.
3. The last is to use a custom discrimination pattern, set deep on, and increase sensitivity up, set gain at 7, and use the advanced smart screen to examine targets.
I sort of like no 3 the best as far as suggestions go. I have yet to try it out enough to get good with it.
I would think I want to examine most if not all targets with high conductivity except perhaps those with high iron. But of course some c.w. relics are high iron so I may want those too. So perhaps low conductivity low iron is what I want to ignore. Allowing most signals through and then deciding to dig or not has appeal for finding the deep stuff. But it can easily become way to noisy to keep my sanity. So I can take out a strip where the junk targets usually fall and pick individual targets to eliminate. This has a good bit of appeal to me.
The idea of increasing gain to 7 also will pull up those weak targets faster so I can hear them. It did seem to increase the number of high tones I was getting. More junk sounded like quarters than before. Using default settings I was getting good at figuring out exactly when I had a coin. I could ignore everything and just listen for those tones. Increasing gain produced too many high tones but perhaps I can live with it, if it works.
Digging deep targets if even sounds or looks like it might be a coin is a good idea provided I don't dig too much junk.
And lastly using iron mask -16 to id difficult to determine targets seems to work very well. In fact it seems to have no draw backs.
I have found the depth estimates to be unreliable in trashy areas. Sometimes it is correct but more often not. It did well with dime size targets but quarters it seemed to be off. Pennies were okay. Sometimes it said 6 inches when I could see it on top and other times it said two when it was 5 inches down. None of my targets went below 6 inches so I really don't know about deep targets yet.
One thing I did notice that is a positive is that setting fast on in trashy areas brought in a lot of dimes. It may be those smaller dimes were just hiding and the fast response brought them out. I went from something like 4 quarters and one dime to 7 dimes and one quarter. Of course pennies went off the map too. That would be a disadvantage.
I also found the digital readings to be difficult to use when there were several targets around. I got multiple values right on top of a target and it seemed hard to explain. Sometimes I knew by the sound it was a quarter and sitting about 2 inches down but the reading still said it was something else. Eventually it changed but it often gave several other readings first.
Joe.
1. One method is to set deep on and increase sensitivity making sure to leave fast off.
2. Another is to use iron mask only setting it to -10 or further and again set deep on and sensitivity up using the iron mask smart screen to look at targets.
3. The last is to use a custom discrimination pattern, set deep on, and increase sensitivity up, set gain at 7, and use the advanced smart screen to examine targets.
I sort of like no 3 the best as far as suggestions go. I have yet to try it out enough to get good with it.
I would think I want to examine most if not all targets with high conductivity except perhaps those with high iron. But of course some c.w. relics are high iron so I may want those too. So perhaps low conductivity low iron is what I want to ignore. Allowing most signals through and then deciding to dig or not has appeal for finding the deep stuff. But it can easily become way to noisy to keep my sanity. So I can take out a strip where the junk targets usually fall and pick individual targets to eliminate. This has a good bit of appeal to me.
The idea of increasing gain to 7 also will pull up those weak targets faster so I can hear them. It did seem to increase the number of high tones I was getting. More junk sounded like quarters than before. Using default settings I was getting good at figuring out exactly when I had a coin. I could ignore everything and just listen for those tones. Increasing gain produced too many high tones but perhaps I can live with it, if it works.
Digging deep targets if even sounds or looks like it might be a coin is a good idea provided I don't dig too much junk.
And lastly using iron mask -16 to id difficult to determine targets seems to work very well. In fact it seems to have no draw backs.
I have found the depth estimates to be unreliable in trashy areas. Sometimes it is correct but more often not. It did well with dime size targets but quarters it seemed to be off. Pennies were okay. Sometimes it said 6 inches when I could see it on top and other times it said two when it was 5 inches down. None of my targets went below 6 inches so I really don't know about deep targets yet.
One thing I did notice that is a positive is that setting fast on in trashy areas brought in a lot of dimes. It may be those smaller dimes were just hiding and the fast response brought them out. I went from something like 4 quarters and one dime to 7 dimes and one quarter. Of course pennies went off the map too. That would be a disadvantage.
I also found the digital readings to be difficult to use when there were several targets around. I got multiple values right on top of a target and it seemed hard to explain. Sometimes I knew by the sound it was a quarter and sitting about 2 inches down but the reading still said it was something else. Eventually it changed but it often gave several other readings first.
Joe.