semtav said:
Had about half an hr to kill before my barber apptment so I hit lot off a park that I'd found a few interesting items before, Mainly looking to see if it would produce older coins. I usually set the tone break at 60 so I can concentrate on coins and tokens etc.
Have you found older coins there before?
No, a baby spoon and an old 50s fussball pin
Did the park have a lot of early day activity that might have generated coin loss, and do you think this park is perhaps a little known or used place in recent years and might have been ignored by a majority of the metal detecting hobbyists in your area? It's difficult to find these days but every once-in-a-while I happen upon a now out-of-the-way park, or fin d a somewhat secluded or overgrown portion of one that hold keepers from long ago.
Not as a park. I see digging in the park but nothing here. it is unkept except for mowing
However, you say your Tone Break is set at '60' to concentrate on Coins and Tokens and that suggests you are using one of the 2-Tone modes and '60' might be ignoring a lot of good potential targets. By 'ignoring' I don't mean Discriminating, just shifting a lot of potentially good keepers into the lower Iron Audio range. It also makes more potentially good targets that could be ± just a bit close to the Tone Break-Point and that could be causing some of the audible responses you don't like.
Probably. was just looking for coins that day
semtav said:
Altho I found a wheat right off, the tone and vdi were way off. I never could get a good high tone on anything,
How far 'off?'
What was the depth of the wheat-cent?
about 4 "
What was the angle or orientation to the search coil?
don't know. was in a loose pile of gravel dirt when I finally spotted it
Was this with the stock 7X11 DD coil?
yes
Was the coin located in dry, bare dirt, in grass, in sand, in pea gravel or an area of small rocks or ??
damp small rocks with little dirt grass on top
Was this a somewhat remote location far from power sources or other causes of EMI?
didn't hear any emi. but here are lights for night bames nearby
A few reminders about out Wheat-Back/Lincoln Cents:
• During their life, from 1909 through 1958, there were several changes in the metal alloys used, and that can cause TID to vary.
• From 1909 to ± 1920, many of those early 'wheats' have a lower conductivity, very similar to most Indian Head Cents. Those coins can also fall into a conductivity level that is very close to the lower-conductive modern Zinc cent. Yes, the books say the alloy content had the same mix, but it has more to do with the source of the copper used [size=small]
(quality or purity)[/size] as well as the refining of the copper.
• Other considerations are the ground mineral make-up and intensity any coin or other target is lost in. If it is in a highly mineralized sand, pea gravel, or just under some smaller rocks [size=small]
(such as used in many parking areas)[/size] you will often see the favorable target's VDI numeric read-out be degraded, possibly even to the point that a non-ferrous target response is similar to an Iron/Ferrous target with a lower Audio Tone and visual TID report.
semtav said:
yesterday I hit a park in a different town and everything was high tone. ( lots of buried aluminum cans )
even going back to factory settings and 3 tones they sucked. am I setting something up wrong for the type of soil/ trash. ? today was more gravelly, yesterday was more dirt.
The gravelly conditions can cause target signal degradement. Also, you need to be aware of all the settings that are in use.
Thats what I was wondering
Oh, another thing to consider is the sweep speed used. Yes, the Makro Racer series and Nokta FORS series and Impact devices do have a very fast response and recovery speed, and in very mellow conditions they can be operated with a moderate to faster sweep speed. However, they are at their best when you use a slow and methodical sweep. With any detector you can impair performance if you sweep too fast and force more ground signal to be processed.
And I noted where you have been using the DEEP mode. The DEEP mode, by design, should be used with a slower sweep speed than 2-Tone or 3-Tone conventional modes. For peak performance DEEP is at it's best with a slower and methodical sweep that might even be just a little broader than you might use with the other search modes.
I try to go slow, but probably faster than I should. used to an mxt
semtav said:
I was using the RC29V coil. i tried a bunch of different settings including factory settings
Unless you know the Racer, or ANY detector model for that matter, really well, understanding all the control functions and how they might interact, it can be confusing to change up with a lot of different settings.
semtav said:
I may have a problem. I tried it at a lot today that I hunted a week ago and found silver coins and wheats.
Well, that's good, and it could be just a simple matter that you happened to put the coil over a good target but didn't sweep over good targets in the past.
It is also sounding like you might be in an urban environment where you have a lot of EMI issues.
Went out a couple days ago in same are with a smaler coil and was getting same noise jsut not as bad. So I think it is emi. maybe worse when wet as first day I hunted it it was quiet. put the big col on yesterday and hit a remote location and it worked perfect.
semtav said:
today it just kept falsing and was unbearable. When I lifted the coil in the air it would just go up and down the line on the vdi. not sure whats doing on. switched to the 5" coil and it was ok so I ran home and got the RC26 and hunted with it.
gonna take it out of town and see if it still has issues.
Any mode I tried was that way.
I tried lowering the gain but that never helped. Not sure what else I could have adjusted if it is emi .
I'll take it out again and make a note of the different settings I try.
Sometimes EMI just can't be dealt with. I have had maybe four or five locations several years ago where I was unable to use three of the detectors in my arsenal at the time. I tried those sites at different times of the day and on different days of the week. EMI was just terrible.
However, I did have an option to switch to a different make/model that operated at a different frequency and I had little or no interference! At one site of town-up sidewalks and streets in inner downtown of a major NW city, even using the same operating frequency of 6.59/6.6 kHz one model [size=small]
(a White's XLT)[/size] performed very well w/o chatter, and after a quick 15 minute lunch break I started to rework the same section [size=small]
(using a modified, same-frequency White's IDX Pro)[/size] but was unable to due to severe, uncontrollable EMI. I had to get back to my vehicle and switch back to the other detector
So it wasn't a frequency related issue, but how the EMI source effected the detector's circuitry design. I did also find that after 7 PM on week night or on a weekend day, there was no EMI with any detector I used. I never learned what the source was that generated the EMI issues, but sometimes they can be just terrible. One of several reasons I enjoy getting far away from urbanization to bury myself in Relic Hunting old-use places.
semtav said:
What I like to run is
Mode deep
ID filter at 60
Gain at 80 or 90
Iron Audio at 0
but that didn't work at all so I tried a lot of different modes and settings.
I was in a trashier area, but once it started running the VDI up and down, I could raise the coil above my head and it would still be going off.
Raising a search coil in the air is inviting more problems because the coil will usually be more EMI prone, especially when a ground signal isn't being fed into the circuitry during a search with the coil properly positioned ±2" off the ground.
With an ID Filter [size=small]
(Discrimination)[/size] setting of '60' there's no real purpose in setting the Iron Audio Volume at '0' because you have rejected virtually all typical iron targets.
As for using DEEP mode, I use it on occasion and have the Gain/Sensitivity level Saved at '95.' I will then reduce it should I need to in order to gain stability,
IF the device is unstable at the site I choose to hunt. Personally, I never run the Disc. level higher than Iron Nail rejection, and usually work with a lower Disc. level to just barely be accepting iron nails.
semtav said:
I switched to the RC26 and the above settings and went back to hunting.
and found quite a bit of stuff.
including a wheat, mercury dime, bunch of clad etc.
So I need to take it out where there is no chance of interference and see if it works again with that coil. it has been raining here and the grass is wet, so that may be it. It acted funny yesterday at the park I stopped at too, but not near as bad as today.
Congrats on finding good stuff. I don't think the wetted grass is the issue here. You are working the search coil about 2" off the dirt level, correct? You don't want to be too close to the ground, and make sure you don't 'scrub' the coil as that can also cause erratic behavior, to include inconsistent VDI numeric read-outs.
semtav said:
Did a little testing tonight.
One thing I noticed, is when I set the ID filter to 60, I would get a lot of falsing and brief 80ish vdi's whil;e swinging in the deep mode.
By changing the ID filter back to 20 and changing the tone break to 60 and the audio tone to 60 for non ferrus I get a lot smoother hunting signal and I like the high tone for coins.
Interesting results, but I'll agree that I like the higher pitched audio tone setting for coins and other non-ferrous targets.
semtav said:
Going to go back and try this in the morning
Mode-Deep
Gain 70-90
ID Filter 20
Tone break 60
Audio tone 20/60
I like an Audio Tone of '10' for my ferrous-range targets [size=small]
(everything below the Tone Break in a 2-Tone search mode)[/size] and I hardly ever run the ID Filter above '3' on a Racer 2. Also, in a 2-Tone mode, such as DEEP, my Tone Break is set right at the Ferrous/Non-Ferrous break-point.
semtav said:
I started out not liking the deep mode, but I've found some deep items in this lot using it .And once you change the tones and breaks it hits nicely.
In the wide-open/sparse-target sites where I can get the benefits DEEP mode offers, I have had very good success, by patiently working popular old-use sites.
Best of success to you working the Racer 2 and assortment of coils. I might encourage you to concentrate on one single coil and take notes just to determine if you might be having an issue with a coil and not just from EMI.
Monte
