Stabalizing on wet beach sand

[c4teeter]

[size=medium][/size]Hello to all,
Just recently sold a XLT and a Explorer XS to finance my E-trac. We live here near the Florida Panhandle beaches where the water is clear and the beach sand is white. Having moved from the Gulfport Mississppi area, my XS amazed me how well it handled the wet salt sand over there (not to mention, the thing was a silver magnet on homesites). Didn't have any problems with stability. So I bought a used Etrac. It handles the dry sand well even with the sensitivity jacked up. When I get down to about a couple of feet down from the high tide line, I start getting the falsing. The suggested sensitivity level says I should be at 17. I can drop the sensitivty down to 10-11 and eliminate almost all the falsing all the way to the water, but of course I feel like I'll be losing ALOT of depth with it that low. Here is a list of my current settings:

1.Preset- Minelab Beach Setting
2.Sensitivity- Manual-17
3.Threshold Level-22
4.Volume Limit-30
5.Volume Gain-26
6.Response-Normal
7.Tone ID-multi/conduct/Varibility-25/Limits-30
8.Threshold Pitch-15
9.Recovery Deep-On
10.Recovery Fast-Off
11.Trash Density-Low
12.Ground-Neutral
13.Noise Cancel-10

Tried switching the ground to difficult and i think it made the stability worse. Also tried with automatic ground balance, didn't work. Any suggestions would be a Life Saver. Should I try a new coil? Should I send it to Minelab for a check up? I did buy it used! The guy I bought it from had expoxied the coil cover on the coil. Said it was to prvent falsing from sand getting between the coil and the cover. Just guess I never had that problem with the old XS.

 

[jackkell1963]

I live in the Destin, Fort Walton Beach area. What I have found that works the best in the wet sand is running Auto Sensitivty at 0 or maybe +1. Running in manual sensitivity on the wet sand almost always results in a bit of chatter. I have also found that when running in auto sens on wet sand if i do get a bit of falsing that shutting down the machine and restarting it with the coil over the wet sand resolves this problem. Hope this helps you.

Jackie

 

[Sailorman]

I've hunted the east FL beaches and done alright from dry sand to (gasp!) wading in six inches to a foot. I know I'm nuts but I had to try!

At any rate I agree that auto gain 0 helped keep it quiet. Other than that pretty much your settings except I like tones long. Once I'm set up I just run in pinpoint mode until I get a hit then switch back to normal in an open quick mask screen to see if I get an ID. In pinpoint mode you will find deeper targets that sometimes won't even register a peep or an ID in normal search mode. Listen for those faint fluctuations. Dig those for sure, you never know. Wish I'd got a picture of my wife down past her elbow after we couldn't scoop any more. It was a Hot Wheels truck! Sixteen measured inches. In really good shape too. Coins at 10 to 12 are also possible this way as are fish hooks, sinkers, hair pins....

But I have scored a few rings in pinpoint mode hunting as well that were deep enough to barely give a signal in normal hunting. I might have passed them by.