TID questions?

[nja82]

So I have had the 705 for a couple of weeks now. I got a digger coil and have been doing pretty well with it. Now, I get a lot of solid 46 id's and so far everyone of them has been a bottle cap. Is there any good targets that id at 46. I dig every one I get for fear I might miss something good. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
HH! Nick

 

[Old Longhair]

Listen to the qualities in the tone. Yes, there are good targets that ID 46, like silver dollars. The difference between the two in terms of audio nuances is most often very distinct. More time spent in the field will reveal those differences.
Another thing that is key.....SLOW DOWN. Sweeping too fast is the biggest problem that most people have when using small coils. As a matter of fact, you can often run higher sensitivity successfully if you just slow down.

 

[nja82]

Thanks for the tips OL. You have been soooo helpful to me and many others. I will keep digging those 46's. I've got pretty good at guessing if they are going to be a bottle cap. Only been wrong a couple times. Can't wait to here that 46 tone sound a little different now.

 

[nja82]

Another question OL? I have read your advice many times on other posts about really slowing down the sweep speed when using a small coil. I think I am going slow enough but not sure. Can you give me an idea of how slow my sweep should be. If the width of my sweep is roughly four feet how long should it take to sweep from start to finish.

 

[Old Longhair]

It depends on several things, but the other thing that I try to encourage people to do is to learn how slow you can go and still get a good target response. It's different for everyone, each in their own set of circumstances. I've got places where trash is heavy and mineralization is high, and I go snail slow, probably not much faster than 1ft/sec, but other places where depth isn't an issue or where soil conditions are lighter where I can about triple that.

I'm convinced that a lot of the successes that Minelab owners enjoy is due to how slow they can go and still get a good lock on a target. A machine that requires a faster sweep speed is more likely to skip over a good target due to masking or depth. You often hear owners of other brands talking about stability issues because they don't want to sacrifice depth by lowering sensitivity, but you won't hear much of that here because it isn't a problem with Minelabs due to their NC capability and the fact that they can go slow. So sorting through trash is far less mentally taxing, and much more rewarding.

 

[nja82]

Great! It sounds like I am on the right track. Most of the time I have to go about 1ft/sec, I am guessing due to high mineralization. Even going that slow I still occasionally run into problems getting the coil to stabilize. But I can usually run a sensitivity of 20-24. I ran into a few spots that I have to take it all the way down to 14-16. Maybe on those areas I will try to slow down even more. Thanks for the tips.