To notch or not???

[JWS1961]

I've been using my F44 in custom mode...nothing notched, but have FE on bass. Sens on 12. Vol on 11. Noticed when I searched parents place last Thursday and yesterday when searching an old homeplace (1930s) where there is a lot of nails and such...that FE was sounding all the time...bass sounds. My question is....when searching those types of places when you're mainly looking for coins or jewelry, is it best to run pre-programmed settings to keep FE from sounding or should I notch out FE entirely from custom mode since I already suspect lots of nails and other trash? With all the trash, makes it hard to find a spot to GG. Jewelry mode has FE notched out and coins mode has FE as well as 2 & 4 notched out.
The place i was at yesterday guessing was from the 1930s, but had been burned down and leveled out. When I was quite young (10-12) i remember visiting the older couple there often and one day the old gentleman have me a walking liberty half dollar for helping out around the place....maybe 5 minutes later after giving it to me, I dropped it and it rolled between 2 big rocks in the fireplace. Never saw it again. Was hoping I might find it there after all these yrs. but guess too much time and disturbance has lost it forever. The place is 150 yards from my front porch, so I'll keep looking , but gotta readjust my settings as the trash sounds were killing me. I remember when he gave it to me, thinking it was fake money as I'd never seen money with a lady in a long dress on it...haha. At the time I'd probably only seen perhaps less than a dozen clad quarters. I grew up very poor financially, but rich in family and values. Not much has changed over the yrs. Haha!
Sitting here looking at my paternal grandparents place, wanting to search it, built in 1937, but it's rented out and not sure if they'd appreciate me poking around in the yard. I'll have to ask them sometime. May be some old coins around there...my dad was born and raised there as was his siblings.

 

[still looking 52]

In a trashy area you definitely need to notch or the detector will drive you crazy. I can't stand a bunch of noise all the time but some guys like that, I'd go nuts in about five minutes with all that chatter.

 

[woody]

A lot of noise drives me batty so I do disc. some but the fields I detect go from much iron to very little in a few secs. To disc. or not is a constant problem.

 

[jmaclen]

Hi JWS1961,

You have two choices with the F44 for iron hunting. You can notch iron or you can put your volume on 10 which puts Iron response on silent or the lowest possible iron volume setting. From my experience some iron audio responses still get through at a very low level.

Jeff

 

[James/Washington]

I mainly hunt trashy parks and a very few schools since they have fenced and locked them up. I am a coin shooter and hunt mainly clad. I set up the 'Custom' program for my type hunting and to quieten down the F44. I am almost 70 and have been detecting since 1971 and my body will not allow me to 'dig it all' as I once did. I use the settings to my advantage and I like it that way. I find plenty of clad and the settings I use are for ME. However, if you are in a trashy area, you might try these settings on the F44. This will get you nickels, copper pennies, dimes, quarters, halves and dollar coins. Some jewelry will also come in. These settings will quieten the F44 very nicely and allow your brain to stay focused but you will pass up some gold and jewelry. I know and accept this and make up anything I might pass over in the numbers of clad I dig. Now, would I change up the settings if I was to hunt relics? You bet I would, but where I live there is not any relics or places to hunt them within 200 miles.
Volume 9
Sensitivity 12
notch every segment EXCEPT 3, 6, 7. 8. 9 (if you want to dig zinkers than allow notch segment 5)

 

[vlad]

at a certain depth targets will get bumped up to a higher category because enough signal is not returned for correct target analysis. (the worse the mineral the more exaggerated the effect)
If you accept nickels and reject tabs, at some point the nickels will go up into the tab notch (extreme depth can push into screwcaps); screw caps that are notched out
can be pushed up into an accepted higher notch too. And this is besides multiple targets causing targets to improperly i.d. If you accept most notches generally hearing more
audio can give you more clues too. A signal with an out of place audio should be checked, to include in pinpoint mode which is the easiest way--short of digging--to see if several targets are merged.
A DD loop might help because of the narrower scan, at the expense of overall depth--but can be a best bet in heavily trashed sites. But its not magic; it sees less mineral because it sees less ground.
It sees about the same mineral as a concentric that scans a comparable amount of area. And being asymmetric, discrimination of iron, especially bottlecaps can be a problem (among other problems.)
Minimize notching and check more targets-it takes more time but the chance of finding older or more valuable items increases at the expense of finding less overall new coins.

 

[MarkCZ]

This is something like the reasons for,
Little Coils,
Big Coils,
Concentric, Coils
Double D (DD) Coils,
Low discrimination,
High Discrimination,
Relic hunting,
Old Coin hunting,
Modern coin hunting (fairgrounds and parks, clad stabbing)
That is to say there is places and times where what your looking for makes the notch feature valuable or not!
So, if I'm out clad stabbing in a public place I will use several notches to help me work around trash and get as many nickels as possible.
I'm not a relic hunter so I always try to work around anything iron,
When I'm old coin hunting I will use as few notches as I can, but if there is a lot if trash in a certain area and I will select whatever notches I need to to help navigate the area.
So, I don't really see this as a Notch or not to Notch, but rather when and where.

Mark