Yesterday I got into a clean outfield, swinging merrily along with sens 70, disc 1, thresh -3, DP tones, 11"dd, now this seems to keep the F70 very stable and a monster on anything 4" on up, handles the trashy bleacher areas and is a good all around setting for my typical locations. Now this was a clean outfield, with deep soft loam, and I got a faint hit, so I ran the sens up to 89 and the signal got louder, then I ran the thresh up towards 0 and tried to take it positive, but the signal got very unmanageable, so I reset the GB and tried sens 89, disc 1, thresh -1 and noticed a slight increase in depth/signals on the targets beyond 5". I'll play around a little more today to see exactly what kind of depth and manageability this can achieve. There is old siver here, but I'm thinking this could be more of a coil and soil moisture content issue instead of a settings one. Seems the thresh settings act like a filter, and the more neg you go the less depth you get? But I concur with the question you ask, we all could use a good idea of "ballpark" programs for shallow targets in the trash/totlots etc, and another for deep targets in the clear. The reason I run a shallow program most of the time is that I hunt in areas where digging a hole of any sort would not be a good idea, so I have to stab and grab targets with the screwdriver. As I understand it now, AT mode gives this machine the best depth, and thresh, disc and sens settings are there to help us balance the unit to the conditions? I do know this, too high a sens or unstable settings seeking depth in certain locations can absolutely ruin your day, and even if you managed to get your coil over a deep silver coin, you probably would not hear it from all the chatter numbness. So I set up to run manageable, and modify for deep little 'pips'. Some of the other fellows should go ahead and chime in to enlighten us furthur, but I will say it sure would be nice to spend a half a day with somebody that really understands the settings and what effect they have on either depth, or what exactly to they do?. If you have a test garden, I guess thats what a fellow needs to learn on his own.
Mud