storms: interfering with e-trac?

[moonshine]

Has anyone here ever experienced nearby storm fronts causing EMI which affected the performance of the E-Trac? If so, what did you notice? I have only had mine for about 2 weeks so Im really new at it....just curious. Yesterday it was behaving oddly and Im not sure what to think. Getting very strange readings on things and loss of depth. Seemed like the detector just didnt want to find things. would only pick things up maybe 4-5" away. I know for a fact it was sensing things twice as deep before. Sensitivity reduced. Seemed like it was the ground that was causing interference like the detector was being overloaded by the ground conditions. Just unusual from what ive seen so far. Also the detector held a tone, not threshhold, just a tone like it was in the "hold pitch" mode. I had to press the pinpoint button to make it stop, and then it seemed ok after that. I never changed anything yesterday from my previous trips, in which the detector seemed to perform flawlessly. (plenty of depth and sensitivity, nice and stable)

Any thoughts?

 

[treasure sstate]

I have only about 30 hours on my new E-Trac so I am no expert. Mine started acting up and I took the coil cover off and cleaned washed the cover and cleaned the coil with a damp cloth, let dry and put back together and it took care of the problem. My E-Trac has held a tone when I swtched to pinpoint mode too close to the target. Startles me every time I do that.

 

[AL KS]

moonshine.... Mine did the same thing when i first got it. Asked about it on this forum, nobody seemed to know what i was talking about. Called minelab and they said do a master reset, so i did and that seemed to cure it. I still have a few thing's that come up from time to time ..like a double curser on the screen, but just switch screen's an it clear's up. I think i will send mine in for a check up this fall before the warranty expires. P.S. When it locked on that tone it sounded to me like two tone's were trying to sound at the same time, AL

 

[moonshine]

thanks you guys for the input. i am now thinking that i have a lot to learn, i shouldn't think something is wrong right away. im going to have to learn the quirks i guess. i suppose i just want to get nice clear 12-46 for 8" deep silver dimes and i can see that isnt reality. (right?) i finally buried a test coin, a merc at exactly 5" below the top of the dirt, so the coil is maybe 6" away, counting the grass, and i may or may not have dug it out in the "field". very jumpy readings, but my ground seems "dirty"...there is another iron target within 8" or so. the thing i dont get is why does the detector seem so much more powerful when you use quickmask? but then almost all of the readings over the dime were FE in the 30's. weird. i just have a lot to learn i guess. one thing, my old whites 6000 would not hit on this dime at all. i took a two cent peice out and the detector seemed to easily hit on it at at least 10" or so, maybe more. (through the air) so there isnt anything wrong with it. i did that in the field once, that misled me a bit. i think i thought it would always go that deep for everything and that doesnt seem to be the case. especially when there is dirty or junky or mineralized ground and the readings start bouncing all over the place. i did take the cover off and i was suprised how much grit there was in there. rechecked my connection, did a master reset. but like i said i think its me, not the machine.

well its a learning process i guess, i am determined to learn this machine. thanks again for the comments. i would like to learn as much as i can from you guys.

 

[EtracTom-AdirondacksNY]

I think if you remove that coin and check you'll see there is something else down there that is skewing your FE signal lower on you. That is why I mainly only pay attention to the CO no. not the FE no. at all when I hunt. Now in quick mask your perception of a better signal is because you don't have any blanking (the blacked out area discriminated out) on your screen so the detector is giving you a better readout. That is why I hunt in coins mode and on iffy signals I switch to Quickmask wide open for a better reading of those signals. If the cursor goes to the bottom right corner it's iron. Do you have it set for TRASH HIGH and GROUND DIFFICULT if not set it there for all North American soil. On a beach use GROUND NORMAL. It's in Andys book on the Explorer/Etrac series.

 

[1goldsniper]

I took mine to test garden today to see how it was responding. I was running Andie's pattern and was I glad I had marked everything down on a post card last year when I put it in the ground. The only # that was right was a nickle at 3 1/2" the silver dime, clad dime, and 7" penny were #'s you would not pay attention to. 30-35 ferrous #'s on all. The quarter at 8" it couldn't even find.This is with damp ground. In all metal manual sensitivity20 numbers started crossing dig-able ferrous #'s that would catch your interest. I am presently hunting a ghost town with TTF, sensitivity is run at 10 to get a little depth and it sounds all day like someone it shooting at you with an uzzi till you get a high tone break through the low mass of noise. Any other discriminating patterns are not even a thought. Unless you like silence.

 

[Flambeaux]

My E Trac goes deep as hell. I pulled a silver quarter on edge, between nails at over 10 inches....pulled a Merc today over 8 inches. Im running Auto Sens + 3. Maybe you have something set wrong?.I also run in TTF. It should be easy to get a strong signal from a Quarter at 8 inches.. Good Hunting.

 

[moonshine]

yes, trash high and ground difficult. auto +3. i dont think i will ever switch to manual. the detector cranks the sensitivity up so fast, i can watch it rise with eash sweep. ive noticed it as high as 30 in "clean" sandy soil. no trouble at all with sensitivity and i can see a difference between say 19 or so and 26 or so. it usually ends up running at 24-27, i cant complain about that. yes you are right that there is probably something else down there skewing the numbers. my coin garden will grow for sure. im going to leave that merc where it is, i am still learning the machine so i have no complaints, its just that the etrac is so "chatty" that there is a lot of info to process in MY mind.... not chatty like interference....just info it tells you about what it is seeing. hmmmm...well thanks everyone again for the comments and i like reading your folk's thoughts on the etrac, and everything youve seen and been through. this detector gives you 25 times as much information as my old detector (whites 6000) and it will take some getting used to. im enjoying it very much though.

 

[moonshine]

well i "planted" 7 more coins in my test garden and messed around for a while this afternoon. (Man the E-Trac really makes me DISLIKE two things SO much...WORK and RAIN). Id probably be swingin all day if i could. Anyhow, i planted a variety of coins from 3"-6.5" deep. (I didnt try to push my luck with anything deeper for now...until i learn more.) An honest measurement using a tape measure, to the top of the dirt, not the grass. I figure the grass adds about 1" or so, maybe a little less. I had no trouble finding anything. That merc must have some iron on it. I noticed some other rusty iron when i was digging but the detector did not give me any grief on any of the newly buried coins. The test garden seems to show me to rely more on the detector's sounds than the TID numbers. I got nice smooth tones on the coins. Even when the numbers might jump around. I am definitely not accustomed to a sound machine. I wasnt really expecting that either but i have no complaints. Now if only work and rain could go away id be a happy camper!

Good luck everyone!

 

[sugar]

yes, trash high and ground difficult. auto +3. i dont think i will ever switch to manual. the detector cranks the sensitivity up so fast, i can watch it rise with eash sweep. ive noticed it as high as 30 in "clean" sandy soil. no trouble at all with sensitivity and i can see a difference between say 19 or so and 26 or so. it usually ends up running at 24-27, i cant complain about that. yes you are right that there is probably something else down there skewing the numbers. my coin garden will grow for sure. im going to leave that merc where it is, i am still learning the machine so i have no complaints, its just that the etrac is so "chatty" that there is a lot of info to process in MY mind.... not chatty like interference....just info it tells you about what it is seeing. hmmmm...well thanks everyone again for the comments and i like reading your folk's thoughts on the etrac, and everything youve seen and been through. this detector gives you 25 times as much information as my old detecto
r (whites 6000) and it will take some getting used to. im enjoying it very much though.

ok you can switch to manual by mistake as the four cursors on the left hand side bottom will switch you in and out of manual auto sensitivity to make sure you are working in auto look at sensitivity scale and check there is a circle at the top that means you are in auto hit right or left cursor will put you into manual top and bottom cursors will increase decrease the levels in which ever sensitivity you are in at the time and makes it so quick when you are out and about if you have a iffy signal in auto you can switch to manual for a moment and try and get a better signal and then switch back to auto are you hitting the noise cancel button before you start to get quietest channel for etrac to work in if you change soil conditions during hunt hit button again happy hunting

 

[moonshine]

yes, i did notice one time that i was in manual mode somehow.....probably hit the button there, i didnt know you could do that. must have missed it in the manual. thank you for the advice. cant wait to get back out there!

 

[firefighter254]

i have the same problem with the double cursors in the small thumbnail pattern with big numbers displayed called minelab and they said this is NOT normal at my machine needs to be fixed hard to believe my etracs only 8 days old