Beachcomber
New member
Spend the afternoon at the beach with the E-Trac and learned some new things about this new detector. First if you are looking for small targets don't use "FAST" When FAST is turned on it gave more broken signals and when you got to the edge of the detection range for a small target the signal was so bad you would most likely not dig it. But with FAST turned off the small targets give a smoother signal. This is opposite if the Explorer....with fast on it was harder to miss a small target. Also small targets can be detected deep with "Deep" turned on than with it off. Also learned more about Auto Sensitivity in regards to Neutral and Difficult ground. Two of the beaches I hunted today had low mineralization and all of the beaches I hunted were pretty low on trash. On those two beaches Auto Sensitivity worked it's way all the way up to 28 with little to no nulling or falsing. On that same beach to hunt in Manual I had to lower the sensitivity all the way down to 20 and even at 20 there was a fair amount of nulling and falsing but it was a bearable amount. I did check two deep targets that read at the bottom of the depth meter. I had located them while hunting in Auto 28. I then checked them in Manual at 20. I could not detect them. They did start to come in at 22 but not nearly as clear as in Auto.Plus at 22 Manual the machine was nulling quite a bit. When I got to 24 Manual the targets were getting to be much clearer signals but the machine was pretty much unusable at that level of Manual Sensitivity in this location. Both targets were over a foot deep and one was a quarter and one was a dime. I also found a dime over a piece of iron so I didn't get to check see through but see over abilities 
I got a nice high tone reading but when I looked at the display it was reading 17-42 and no matter what I did I could not get the FE number to go higher than 17 and the depth meter was only showing the target about 2/3 of the way down. Usually coins at that depth give a solid 12-? reading but this one would not go below 17. I dug the target to see what it was. Just as the conductive number indicated it was a dime at about 8" but when I rechecked the hole the detector nulled indicating there was a piece of iron still there. So it would seem that if a good target is around iron the iron may pull the FE number down a bit but the Conductive number may stay close to it's proper value. This might not hold true of iron over top of a coin but it was the case with a piece of iron under a coin.
Well that 's it for today I will see what new and interesting things I learn tomorrow
Oh one last thing...when I was testing the Auto 28 against the Manual settings I was in the wet salt sand which looks like one large piece of metal to most single frequency machines. I don't think there would have been such a difference in the settings if I had been in the dry sand. I will try and check that tomorrow. I still believe that whichever one of the Sensitivity Channels is the one that sees the salt is the one that is being lowered while the other channels are being increased by the E-Trac when in Auto. Which is why Auto is working so well on the beach. If I can hunt with Manual and Auto at the same levels in the dry sand I guess we will know for sure.
HH
Beachcomber
I got a nice high tone reading but when I looked at the display it was reading 17-42 and no matter what I did I could not get the FE number to go higher than 17 and the depth meter was only showing the target about 2/3 of the way down. Usually coins at that depth give a solid 12-? reading but this one would not go below 17. I dug the target to see what it was. Just as the conductive number indicated it was a dime at about 8" but when I rechecked the hole the detector nulled indicating there was a piece of iron still there. So it would seem that if a good target is around iron the iron may pull the FE number down a bit but the Conductive number may stay close to it's proper value. This might not hold true of iron over top of a coin but it was the case with a piece of iron under a coin.Well that 's it for today I will see what new and interesting things I learn tomorrow
Oh one last thing...when I was testing the Auto 28 against the Manual settings I was in the wet salt sand which looks like one large piece of metal to most single frequency machines. I don't think there would have been such a difference in the settings if I had been in the dry sand. I will try and check that tomorrow. I still believe that whichever one of the Sensitivity Channels is the one that sees the salt is the one that is being lowered while the other channels are being increased by the E-Trac when in Auto. Which is why Auto is working so well on the beach. If I can hunt with Manual and Auto at the same levels in the dry sand I guess we will know for sure.
HH
Beachcomber
