Mick in Dubbo
New member
I have found that I've been barking up the wrong tree as far as using the Explorer goes, which has lead to a disappointing outcome so far with it. After rereading a post of advice from Hard nosed Dave (thanks Dave) I dusted of the XS at the end of last week and spent a couple of afternoon's waiving coins and other junk items over the coil and train my ears to properly distinguish the the difference in the tones of each item.After a couple of hours of this, my ears found it a lot easier to work out what the XS was telling me. I find that the screen to be fairly poor at giving information, so used it only as a confirmation as to what the tones tell me. I have now abandoned that smart find screen as a complete waste of time and only use the digital as a secondary source of information. Our modern coins read as $2 and $1=26, 50 cents=20, 20 cents=12, 10 cents=7 and 5 cents=3 on the digital screen.
After a bit of fine tuning, I finally arrived at the following set up. Sens@24, Iron mask off, sounds on conduct,tones set up as, th tone @4,variabiliy@8, limits@9.selected coins mode,response, normal,fast and deep off and gain@4 (I vary it a bit for better depth perception). For me, this set up seems to work best for getting the most out of the tone system. Over time, I may mix it up a bit more and see what happens.
Now for the Exploring bit.
I managed to get out for a few hunts over the week end. Saturday was the longest, with a 2 hour hunt at a local school (managed to bribe my way in there about 18 months back
). This was a fairly clean site , and hunting with a different premise, certainly made me stand up and tack notice. Going after the smooth flatter sounding tones and only looking at the screen after I decided to dig, gave me quite a shock as to what the screen was saying. it was often off, sometime by a lot of numbers! the most extreme case, was a target that was giving a steady reading of 14! I used the depth meter to help centre the coil and the pocket probe to help with recoveries. After recovering this target, which must have been picked up under the outer ring, even after turning through 90 degrees, it was a 10 cent piece. All I can think of, is that because it wasn't centred, must have caused such an erroneous reading. $1 and $2 coins were coming in at anywhere from 24 to 28! One coin in particular jumped over all those numbers and wouldn't lock on to any. It gave a smooth flat tone, so I went for it. It was a $2 coin. It is the second coin from the left on the top row in the photo. this coin showed some minor corrosion (copper content) and I'm pretty sure that this was the cause of the bad reading. (The tones didn't get fooled.) I tested this coin at home with my Ace 250 and X-Terra 30. The Ace gave a solid reading and pinpoint, the X-Terra though, gave fluctuating numbers of 24 to 36, after many waives over the top, it finally locked onto 32, which is it's normal reading. it couldn't give a good pinpoint though and if I was in the field, I would have moved on and left it in the ground.
On Sunday, I got to hunt at the Show ground for about 45 mins. I had another $2 coin that bounced badly, but gave a smooth tone. It also showed some minor corrosion. On Monday ( had an RDO) I hunted the show ground and another park. I went after some junky sounding tones just to confirm what the XS was telling me. About 80% of the time, using the tones mostly hunting style, I was able to figure out, what was what.
Hopefully things will only improve from here.
Total for the week end, $21.35.
Mick Evans.
[attachment 80638 RIMG1286.JPG]
After a bit of fine tuning, I finally arrived at the following set up. Sens@24, Iron mask off, sounds on conduct,tones set up as, th tone @4,variabiliy@8, limits@9.selected coins mode,response, normal,fast and deep off and gain@4 (I vary it a bit for better depth perception). For me, this set up seems to work best for getting the most out of the tone system. Over time, I may mix it up a bit more and see what happens.
Now for the Exploring bit.
I managed to get out for a few hunts over the week end. Saturday was the longest, with a 2 hour hunt at a local school (managed to bribe my way in there about 18 months back
). This was a fairly clean site , and hunting with a different premise, certainly made me stand up and tack notice. Going after the smooth flatter sounding tones and only looking at the screen after I decided to dig, gave me quite a shock as to what the screen was saying. it was often off, sometime by a lot of numbers! the most extreme case, was a target that was giving a steady reading of 14! I used the depth meter to help centre the coil and the pocket probe to help with recoveries. After recovering this target, which must have been picked up under the outer ring, even after turning through 90 degrees, it was a 10 cent piece. All I can think of, is that because it wasn't centred, must have caused such an erroneous reading. $1 and $2 coins were coming in at anywhere from 24 to 28! One coin in particular jumped over all those numbers and wouldn't lock on to any. It gave a smooth flat tone, so I went for it. It was a $2 coin. It is the second coin from the left on the top row in the photo. this coin showed some minor corrosion (copper content) and I'm pretty sure that this was the cause of the bad reading. (The tones didn't get fooled.) I tested this coin at home with my Ace 250 and X-Terra 30. The Ace gave a solid reading and pinpoint, the X-Terra though, gave fluctuating numbers of 24 to 36, after many waives over the top, it finally locked onto 32, which is it's normal reading. it couldn't give a good pinpoint though and if I was in the field, I would have moved on and left it in the ground.On Sunday, I got to hunt at the Show ground for about 45 mins. I had another $2 coin that bounced badly, but gave a smooth tone. It also showed some minor corrosion. On Monday ( had an RDO) I hunted the show ground and another park. I went after some junky sounding tones just to confirm what the XS was telling me. About 80% of the time, using the tones mostly hunting style, I was able to figure out, what was what.
Hopefully things will only improve from here.
Total for the week end, $21.35.
Mick Evans.
[attachment 80638 RIMG1286.JPG]
