Trashy yards with the F70?

[kt]

I'm new to metal detecting and just got an F70 that I'm trying to decipher. My background: been hunting with a Eurotek Pro this summer, until now. Looking for coins, not much interested in relics at this point. I'm mainly searching older residential yards that are saturated with old rusty iron and some tabs and bottlecaps over the iron. I've had decent luck with the Eurotek Pro, have dug up a good handful of clad out of a very limited number of sites. Nothing deeper than 5 or 6 inches or so, and nothing older than a couple of 1940's wheat pennies. No silver.

I picked up a used F70 with 11"dd coil off ebay in the hope, like every newbie I suppose, of getting into that elusive and mythical "deep silver." The sites I'm searching are plenty old enough to have silver, but I haven't had any luck. I can't help but think I'm missing some older coins with my Eurotek Pro.

So far, I've made a few finds with my F70, but just shallow clad. These yards are so trashy I can't really find a clean spot to ground balance in, but when I basically give up and ground balance, I get a 60-62 reading, and one or two dirt bars. So I think the soil is decent, as best I can tell.

To cut the chatter out, I'm running as follows: disc at 4, speed at de, sensitivity at 65, threshold at -1, tones at 4H, notch at 1. I think these are probably fairly conservative settings, but if I raise either the threshold or the sensitivity much at all, I get constant chatter. The chatter on higher settings, plus the big 11" coil, plus the huge amount of iron in the ground, is simply too much for me at this point.

A few questions:

1. Has anyone tried a 5" NEL coil on an F70? I slapped one on my Eurotek Pro and it made a big difference in getting between all the iron junk. I'm thinking if I keep looking in these trashy yards that I may need a small coil. That 11" coil seems like a monster in all of the trash, and pinpointing is basically impossible because of multiple targets under the coil.

2. When ground balancing, does everyone ground balance with wide-open settings in AT mode? I simply can't, where I'm hunting. I try to stay in AT mode, but turn the threshold and sensitivity way down. If i don't, the falsing and the huge amount of iron in the ground pretty much guarantee I'll never find a quiet spot to ground balance in.

3. At my settings, am I basically just throttling my F70 down too much to find deep stuff? I'm afraid I am subconsciously seeking my comfort level with this machine, and need to run hotter and with more chatter. At my settings the F70 is quiet unless I get close to a power line. Will my settings (disc 4, speed de, sense 65, thresh -1, notch 1) find anything deeper than 6 inches in low-60s soil?

Thanks in advance for any help anyone can give me.

 

[REVIER]

I'm new to metal detecting and just got an F70 that I'm trying to decipher. My background: been hunting with a Eurotek Pro this summer, until now. Looking for coins, not much interested in relics at this point. I'm mainly searching older residential yards that are saturated with old rusty iron and some tabs and bottlecaps over the iron. I've had decent luck with the Eurotek Pro, have dug up a good handful of clad out of a very limited number of sites. Nothing deeper than 5 or 6 inches or so, and nothing older than a couple of 1940's wheat pennies. No silver.

I picked up a used F70 with 11"dd coil off ebay in the hope, like every newbie I suppose, of getting into that elusive and mythical "deep silver." The sites I'm searching are plenty old enough to have silver, but I haven't had any luck. I can't help but think I'm missing some older coins with my Eurotek Pro.

So far, I've made a few finds with my F70, but just shallow clad. These yards are so trashy I can't really find a clean spot to ground balance in, but when I basically give up and ground balance, I get a 60-62 reading, and one or two dirt bars. So I think the soil is decent, as best I can tell.

To cut the chatter out, I'm running as follows: disc at 4, speed at de, sensitivity at 65, threshold at -1, tones at 4H, notch at 1. I think these are probably fairly conservative settings, but if I raise either the threshold or the sensitivity much at all, I get constant chatter. The chatter on higher settings, plus the big 11" coil, plus the huge amount of iron in the ground, is simply too much for me at this point.

A few questions:

1. Has anyone tried a 5" NEL coil on an F70? I slapped one on my Eurotek Pro and it made a big difference in getting between all the iron junk. I'm thinking if I keep looking in these trashy yards that I may need a small coil. That 11" coil seems like a monster in all of the trash, and pinpointing is basically impossible because of multiple targets under the coil.

2. When ground balancing, does everyone ground balance with wide-open settings in AT mode? I simply can't, where I'm hunting. I try to stay in AT mode, but turn the threshold and sensitivity way down. If i don't, the falsing and the huge amount of iron in the ground pretty much guarantee I'll never find a quiet spot to ground balance in.

3. At my settings, am I basically just throttling my F70 down too much to find deep stuff? I'm afraid I am subconsciously seeking my comfort level with this machine, and need to run hotter and with more chatter. At my settings the F70 is quiet unless I get close to a power line. Will my settings (disc 4, speed de, sense 65, thresh -1, notch 1) find anything deeper than 6 inches in low-60s soil?

Thanks in advance for any help anyone can give me.

kt, you have no idea of the kind of wild Appaloosa you have in your possession.
I got mine last December and it started finding me coins, gold and silver right away...soon enough I figured out how to get to the deeper stuff.
Most of my good finds, even the older ones, seem to be hovering around the 6" level, but I did come across an IH cent spill at more like 8-9", a few other targets at 10" and more, and one thing I dug, a thumb bell ringer off an old bicycle bell, for some reason was living down at the 15'' mark with solid repeatable tones in 4H and I even had some pretty accurate info on the screen.
I had to measure that one, I just couldn't believe it at the time, and keep in mind at major depth at the end of any coil's scanning field the the F70/F75 screen usually goes blank...an important thing to know when hunting deep and why learning the tones and behavior is so important on this rig.

Even though my soil is usually very calm at somewhere in the 50's, that 60-62 reading is something I have come across a lot in my dirt, the 1 or 2 bars on the dirt meter also.
I cant tell you how many great things I have found in dirt like yours, in trashy areas like you describe and using the same 11" DD coil, also.
My areas might even be trashier, you would not believe the dense trash I encounter at some 100 year old parks or special areas I aim for like basketball courts.
Again, not usually as deep as you are aiming but even though my targets are usually not much more than 6" I have seen way deeper depth numbers on targets with all my coils, 15" and more on the big DD, 10" and past with the standard elliptical and up to 13" so far with the 5" DD sniper.

If you can't find a place to GB in your sites, just do a little digging to get the garbage out of the way, a 12"X12" area is all you need and I have done that in the past is sites so trashy you might not believe it with the F70 and the big 12" DD coil when using my Vaquero.
Even not ground balanced I am sure the depth of your older coins can probably be reached easily, but if you are like me I just can't stand the thought of not hunting at optimum levels so dig a few things and go for it.

Turning down the sense to low levels, even with the big DD coil, will have the effect of shrinking that scanning field to laser-like precision and get through some pretty dense trash.
You have to figure out the actual depth vs the sense levels for your soil, but I did a ton of experimenting and at a site with about the same dirt readings as yours, I was able to hit a dime with your coil at a sense setting of 19 at a measured depth of 5".
for every 10 numbers up on the sense I gained 2" in depth.
When I got to 50 on the sense and the coil was hovering over the top of the soil at 6" and still getting a solid tone and accurate numbers, (11" total including the depth of the dime), that will give you an idea of the power of this thing.
True, this was not 11" buried in the dirt, but this proved a lot to me and that, plus some of the other things I have seen depth wise in the field, has made me very confident that lower power levels on the F70 is not a handicap to depth penetration in most of the ways that I need to use it.

I am not a huge fan of aftermarket coils, I know many are and get great results but I have found that the coils made by the manufacturers for their own machines perform up to and past any expectations I have for them.
My 5" DD coil is remarkably deep, I have been using this one at a total iron mine and I have found a way to pluck some great targets at this site which most others could not or at the very least never knew were there.
If you are a fan of those other coils I am sure they won't decrease the performance and could possibly help, but I will stick with the Fisher coils for all of my situations for now.

I hunt in many places in AT, SL, 99 Sense, 9 Thresh with tons of iron and still manage to GB fine...it might take a bit of looking for the right spot but I can always find one.

This question..."Will my settings, (disc 4, speed de, sense 65, thresh -1, notch 1) find anything deeper than 6 inches in low-60s soil?"
I have to say in my opinion a hearty and unequivocal yes...especially with that big coil but that all will shoot past that by a lot.
They set the sense at 60 on the factory settings for a reason.
That will keep it relatively quiet and still get deep.
I would think that at those settings 10" + targets are not out of your reach at all...but you will just need to find some deep targets and see.

As far as trash I can hunt in them using any coil, but the most efficient way to do that is still with the smaller snipers so that would be my first accessory to think about if you hang out in super trashy sites like I do.

Now this chatter thing...some can deal with it well, some put up with it and some can't stand it.
Then there is me, I embrace it, enjoy it, love it and have learned to use it to my advantage when I choose to hunt on my ultra high settings that make most others here suspect I am more than crazy.

The fact is you do not have to hunt on high power to get deep in most soils, set it to just below the chatter point and dig a few deep targets and see.
If you do want to venture into the noise zone where I usually dwell I can tell you that the noise and chatter is not just a crazy jumble of tones and jumping numbers like you might think at this early time in your journey.
There is an actual in between the lines language there, and those of us that have realized this have discovered ways of using that madness to actually get information from it.
Good information that has a bearing on our digging decisions and more ofter than not will lead to a good recovery when you get the feel for it.
Many owners on this forum have stated that no matter what is going on in the tones and the screen the F70 WILL find a way to tell you when it is swinging over a good target.
You just have to learn what these indicators are and that might take a little time but not as much as you might think if you want to amp it up from time to time.

Again, you have such a small idea of what this thing can really do.
The more you swing the more you learn and that should happen on every hunt.
It did for me, it amazed me and still does almost every time out in the field.

There is a bunch of technical stuff about how this thing really works I can point you too, but for now the best thing is to swing it and get comfortable with it.

Your settings are good, but the first thing I would do is play around with lowering the sense a bit to see how it will let you pick though the trash if that is the only coil you have right now.
Don't worry about depth, you will eventually find that what you have in your hands is one of the deepest detectors on the planet.
Learn a little more of the language and it will teach you all about that, I promise.

 

[kt]

Thanks for the reply, much good information in there! I'll work on cleaning out small ground-balancing pits at my sites, that is an excellent idea. There is so much iron in the ground I'm afraid I'll have to dig to China to get down to clean dirt, but I'll give it a shot and see if I can totally clean out a 12x12 space.

I've also got what the ebay seller told me was an 8" concentric F5 coil, that he threw in as a freebie - I'll eventually play with it some but right now I'll try your suggestion of lowering my sensitivity settings down on the 11" coil and see if that helps me pick through the trash.

I look forward to trying to learn this machine and get down past the clad, into the old dirt and the old targets. I know they're out there...

 

[ez4sure]

welcome to the forum kt congrats on getting a f70 its a very good machine, i dont think a coil of a f5 will work f70 and f75 take the same coils, and on ground balancing if you cant find a clean spot to gb your f70 just start detecting it dont make a big difference unless your in all metal mode. there has been alot of times where i forget to ground balance and it works fine gl and hh

 

[mudpuppy]

Welcome kt! Somebody ought to clip REVIER's reply and add it to the F70 owners manual! In fact, maybe he ought to just go ahead and rewrite the whole thing so somebody can understand it!
I will not even attempt to add or detract from what he wrote, so, since you are new to this sport, I will speak a bit about hunting/retrieval skills, and how by employing the 70's strengths, you can cram a few years of experience/finds into one....

Get a screwdriver to use as a prod, retrieval tool for shallow clad...and use it often, for what you learn from hunting vast amounts of shallow targets, you will gain the understanding REVIER speaks about regarding the language, especially the audio...soon you will know what the target is and how deep based upon the variating volume of the tone...theres no better instructor than time afield behind the coil, and the more targets you get per outing, the faster you can learn...

Ask yourself, "why is this target here?" Every place has a pattern of drop zones, and pretty soon you will see that Humans prefer certain types of terrain over others, and drops are there waiting...Even way out in the woods, if you happen across a big oak, you know you can go to the eastSoutheast side of it, step back about 20yrds, and start hitting shotgun shells fired by somebody hunting squirrels in the morning with the sun at their back...well, develop that eye for reading a place by doing investigative searches with the 70...patterns start to pop on all locations, from a beach to a sportsfield, totlot, doesnt matter...

All targets tell a tale, beavertabs, shotgun shells, clad, all give hints and clues as to what went on here and when...THEN, you start seeing OLD dirt in your daily travels, places you would have just driven on by in the past on account of you were not interested in anything like finding metal in the past..and since you are now good at reading locations, can wade in there and clean it out right quick with the 70 and all the experience you gained hunting clad...
Mud

 

[IBdiggin]

KT,,,I have ask you. Did you actually choose to select the first notch in the notch adjustment setting, or are you referring to the black icon that auto fills in the area where you have discrimination entered?
If you select a discrimination of 4, and then scroll to the notch bracket and select notch 1, any iron that falls within a VDI number of 4 or less will be notched back in and could be the reason for so much iron noise. I made that same error when I was new to the F70 to the point I thought my unit was defective. If you want to select and notch out the complete iron area which is a VDI of 0 to 15, then you need to use a discrimination of 0 then select the iron notch. By using a discrimination of 4 with a notch selected, your will be hearing all iron 4 and below. You could also just discriminate 15 for the total iron area and leave the notch unselected . This is a nice feature once you understand how it works since you can actually discriminate all the way up the scale and then notch preferred lower items back into the hunt if you are looking for something with a known VDI like an earring or something you have a mate to. F70 hits huge on coins and will leave no doubt as to weather you should dig or not, even through a mountain of noise which is why guys like Revier and myself at times can and prefers to run very chatty. I use the elliptical 10" coil myself and enjoy the target ID it provides so I can't help as far as coil comparisons but I know the F70 is a deep seeker with any coil you choose. EMI and mineralization will determine which is better for you. Hope this helps KT-----IB

 

[REVIER]

Yes, messing with the notch can sometimes confuse you and just turning it back down to one might not work.
I rarely touch that setting, but one time I did and I thought I got it back to my normal settings but on my next hunt I realized after awhile I wasn't hearing any iron.
When in doubt, hold the GB and the menu button down at the same time and then turn it on.
If you see 88 on the start up screen it will be back to factory settings.
Then take a second to set it up the way you want.

 

[kt]

Thanks to everyone for all the help and information. Just to be safe I'll do a reset to defaults and then plug my settings back in, but not touch the notch setting.

If I have any complaint about this machine at present, it is that the notch feature is counter-intuitive as all get-out. Why they didn't include a notch setting of "0" so that everyone could be certain that notch was turned off, I'll never figure out. Notching may work great once you get the hang of it, but I don't have enough diplomas on the wall to feel comfortable with it right now. Since I'm trying to pull coins out of heavy trash, I don't think I really need to be running a notch right now anyway. If I get into less cluttered ground that has only pulltabs or something, I might look into it. But where I'm hunting, coins have a tendency to be masked and my VDI numbers are floating around some.

One more question - why the heck can't you set up 4 tones or 3 tones in "AT" mode? I realize that autotune mode is mainly for relic prospecting or whatever, but it would sure have been nice to be able to run this thing wide open in AT and have some tone variation. I pay far more attention to tones than I do to VDI numbers when hunting, and the AT mode basically forces you to rely on the screen numbers because you only get a modulated monotone sound for everything. Maybe I'm missing something but this seems to hinder the utility of AT mode when coinshooting.

 

[mudpuppy]

No...you are experiencing what we've all been through...I ran in AT for nearly a year and watched the screen, sweating buckets, trying to find deep silver before I found this forum....then, after a while, a guy settles down into some comfortable parameters that work in their area..(thanks Zeekeys!) ...I settled on a mid/light sens, neg 3 thresh, and Delta Pitch tones, speed sweeping format and have not left them in what fellas? 4yrs now? Had a 10k coin year second year in with the 70 and a screwdriver...and I was a straight up noob! F70 was my very first rig, an impulse buy...so I'm just saying for encouragement purposes...it can be mastered by a committed noob if he listens to this Forum a bit, ..and if he dont, that noob needs to be committed for even attemptin' it!.

Everybodies environment/style is different...just dont try to run this rig too hot too fast!...get to know the tones (and a speedy retrieval method) is about the best advice I got...take a few of these basics and learn what works for YOU on your own, like we all had to do...reference REVIERS first sentence..."you got a hold of a wild Appaloosa!"..not many can tame it, or even want to try.....it takes some coil time...but once you figure it all out, you will be more than satisfied.....

I dont even look at the screen anymore, except to perhaps check battery status..there will be a few others that come along here and try to help you...dont worry about depth so much right off the bat..get to know the language and speed...where you from by the way? That may have some bearing on the feedback you might need to hear...you want old silver coins? Or gold? Or what?...Theres active posters here from all over that are waiting to help you get up to speed as fast as possible... Oh, you learn to work the junk with this rig? And you will have all sorts of places all to yourself! The F70 is killer in the trash! If set up right..easy as pie, just dont go too hot too fast...you will see... Ask all the questions you want...lots of help here!
Mud

 

[REVIER]

I love AT and the threshold tone.
Kinda modulated so if you roll over shallow targets you know.
I sometimes use 2F to get the same sort of sound in disc, and 2F has been said to be less trouble and less noisy around EMI.
I believe that in true all metal you will get the deepest, like on most detectors, but put it in low disc and I would say you can come pretty close.
I found there is a huge amount of signals info coming in when you lower the disc from 1 to 0...too much for even me so I never do that.
There is a tweak in the processors and programming that gives you sort of a little boost in the sense below 5 and past 20 on the disc setting.
I usually at 1-4 in hunting mode, 21 when the foil gets to be too much.

The notch is easy once you realize how it works.
With disc low, anything notched out higher will go away.
With disc high, anything in notch below will come in.

That said, I used it once to knock out tabs at a problem site but that was the only time I ever moved off of 1.

 

[kt]

I'm in south-central KY, near the TN line. Soil here runs from crumbly loam to red clay, with lots of limestone rock. I realize it requires special equipment but I envy the people who have nice sandy beaches to sift through, instead of digging in Play-Dough and rocks.

I'm hunting primarily at a few old residential sites (only have permission at a few spots, but I hope to expand out - KY laws on detecting public land suck so I'm sticking to private areas). My main practice site right now is of course my own yard, which according to the Sanborn insurance maps had a residence on it as early as 1908. So I have to believe there ought to be some silver out there in my own yard somewhere. Unless of course someone cleaned it out 40 years ago.

I've not tried out the 2F tone setting yet, but I will. I'm trying to avoid completely discing out all iron at 15, but I literally can't make a single swing in my yard without hitting iron - usually multiple hits of iron in every swing. So I may end up surrendering and running a true disc on all iron.

 

[REVIER]

Uh....I am not sure how many sites you have hunted, but I have been doing this over 4 years and everywhere I have ever been when I have iron in I am always shocked at the amount of signals I get.
People don't realize exactly how much of that is in the ground....everywhere.
Some sites even more than others, but I have never hunted a site without a ton of iron signals.

This country is relatively young, imagine what they have to fight through in Europe.

 

[kt]

I'm sure you are right - I was completely shocked at the amount of iron crap in the ground at the old sites I'm hunting. I really don't know how they do it in Europe.

Say what you will about the ETPro being a beginner machine or whatever, but that adjustable iron volume is a feature worth copying. Every metal detector should have independently adjustable iron tones.

 

[Gil]

send me your number I also have an F70 works great I can tell you how I set mine I see the way most say they set their f70 I don't set mine that way, great machine
.......I can run mine very quiet in almost all conditions........ Gil

 

[Hightone]

You make me even want to go out and buy a F70, Revier.

Good informative post.

 

[REVIER]

send me your number I also have an F70 works great I can tell you how I set mine I see the way most say they set their f70 I don't set mine that way, great machine
.......I can run mine very quiet in almost all conditions........ Gil

So, are these settings secret, or did the government warn you to keep a lid on it or what?
You can post them here and I promise I won't tell a soul....just between you and me, ok?

 

[REVIER]

You make me even want to go out and buy a F70, Revier.

Good informative post.

Thanks...just putting down what I know, see in the field and believe.
That F75 is a wonder, with all the settings possible on the F70 the thought of way more available on the flagship model blows my mind just to think about it.
Still, the basics I wanted are there, precision using the coils on shallow targets and in trash, target separation rapid recovery and all that, great depth when I need it and it, decent ID's at depth and the ability to tell me in some way that it might have found something good.
Check, check and check...I really can't come up with another one word description for this thing other than amazing.
I suspect I have barely scratched the surface of what this thing can do, too.

 

[Hightone]

Yet, I went and read the manual online at Fisher. While the manual says it can detect (in Autotune I guess) coins at 13-14", the next paragraph says it can ID them effectively to at "least" 6". Guess we get the "most" ID rating depth from users in the field.

 

[Coin Rescue Inc]

The tones and VID numbers are separate programs and work indepenantly. (Unless you use delta pitch) The tones are deeper sensing and more accurate.