Visited Ray (MO) over the weekend...

[Guvner]

We hunted two half days in spots Ray assured me were beaten to death. The bad news is they were. It looks like there's been too many Explorers in southwest Missouri. Ray managed a silver coin both days and I managed a wheatie along with the obligatory clad. But not much of that either. These places were hit and hard. Soil was perfect but there were former filled holes everywhere so both spots were on someone's detecting route.

Ray had the new E-Trac and I didn't. It was a very interesting machine and quite a bit different then the Explorer. He was using the coin pattern that Minelab had on their website and he had 3 weeks worth of finds from just the E-Trac that would knock your socks off. He told me that he had just decided it wasn't an Explorer and there was no point in running it wide open like many of us do on the Explorer. One thing that I've noticed on here was the complaints about depth. I saw no evidence of depth problems. In fact the Explorer LE couldn't get a peep running over a target that the E-Trac said was there. It wasn't a coin but a rivet off of a pair of jeans. The E-Trac kept going off saying it was deeper then it turned out to be but the LE with the factory coil on it couldn't get as much as a bump in the threshold. Very impressive. We tested a lot of things and called each other over for different finds and got a pretty good idea where the similiarities are and the differences were. On one of his silver finds the E-Trac was much more sure it was silver then the LE. Mine got the signal just fine but seemed to think there was a pretty good chance it was a penny. Interesting.

Ray let me use the E-Trac for the last hour or so yesterday. Since I had Ray's word on it, (along with the huge box of finds) I didn't experiment with it much other then to occasionally run it to wide open and then back to the coin program when checking possible targets. It doesn't seem to false as much as my machine did and Ray definitely didn't look very comfortable using his old Explorer while I had his new machine. Imagine that...

I really didn't have any trouble moving to the new machine. I was worried about that. Soon enough I dug a deep copper piece of junk it said was a penny. I guess I have to think about getting one now. It didn't seem like a remix of the Explorer like I expected. I genuinely now felt I had brought a knife to a gunfight.

As an afterthought this machine seems like it has taken a lot of the guesswork out of detecting.

Just my take at this point... Thanks again Ray... Good seeing you again...

Guvner..

 

[Jason in TN]

n/t

 

[jimpugh]

I thought you where a Minelab dealer.....I know you where a whites dealer at one time!

Any way it is Good that you got out with Ole crazy Ray! did yall hunt that ole courthouse?

Nice Story felt like I was there!

Happy Trails

Jim

 

[Ray-Mo.]

It was nice to get out and hunt with Guvner again even if it was slim pickins.We went to some close spots I have done well with the Etrac,to well it seems.I was able to find 2 Barber dimes at about 7" each and they were loud and clear as the Guvner can testify to and one was on edge.I also called them both correctly as silver dimes.Also a few early wheaties and one Indian.In all fairness I must say I believe we could have done better but we were trying some new coils for the first time and trying to get used to them,especially the Guvner as he spent quite a bit of time with equipment that was new to him.As you can see the 1911 was in iron and is rust stained.Guess I am going to have to find some new places to take the Etrac ,Ray.

 

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

Ditto Guv

 

[digitrich]

I think you are right on with that Guv. With a stable ETrac, getting it's correct and normal depth, I honestly believe a rather new user might see results only "expert" Explorer users were able to achieve with a long time of hard effort and learning. The ETrac machine does take allot of the previous guess work and fine tuning to a back seat
Even with my machine not working at its peak, I can already see that. This machine gets separation in trash that one honestly would have to be an expert with an Explorer to achieve, so again it is a tremendous advantage to a newbie just starting out or someone who didn't want to put that much time into learning a more user, needy version, such as the Explorers. I bought a DFX and got the book "Digging Deeper With The DFX". I read the book and thought, I will never do this, there are easier machines to master that get better depth and better separation than this machine and this DFX is complicated to just get OK results, never mind trying to get "like" (not quite), Explorer results. Maybe ML was thinking that with the ETrac..."Shorten the learning curve and they will buy"

 

[Jim upstate NY]

with no way to sort it out, other than ignoring low conductive targets... I dont think its possible to dig everything in most spots, the tabs will have to be ignored... I keep digging those 12-23-24 but only one cu/ni cent and a bunch of tabs.. if there is an audio difference between the two I can no make it out, where I could on the explorer.. but maybe its just a matter of time.. sure I dug pull tabs, but nothing like this.. I am digging it all for a while just to see if the difference is there.. The audio reponse is so small now, I cant get the warble on tabs like I could with the explorer.. I guess that is what makes it faster or a result of being faster... gotta take good with bad.. now if I could only get a few deep signals to see how deep it can get. dug a few big pieces of junk deep but no coin sized targets over 6 inches yet, but seem to have plenty enough audio to get deeper

 

[digitrich]

You mentioned having dug a coin at six inches and felt as though it came in loud enough to have heard it if it were deeper. That actually may be incorrect Jim. Allot of that would depend on where your gain was set at, at the time.

If your gain is at 24 or above, your very deepest signal will sound as loud as a surface signal does, so when guys say I heard the target with what sounded like the machine could hit something deeper with volume to spare, that is not taken into account the gain amplification.

If you air test a quarter with your gain at 24 or above, it sounds amazingly loud just before it gets to the chirping distance and then completely disappears. If you set your gain at 26, there is no more amplification above the 26 setting. I have really good hearing and I cannot hear a volume increase after 26. My volume max limit is set on 30 which may also play into that.

So with the gain set high, one doesn't know if a target were a half of an inch deeper; whether or not the machine would get it or if you could hear it because the signal's volume that you just heard is not accurate because it is being amplified by the gain setting. Hopefully this reads better for you than it does for me

 

[Erik in NJ]

n/t

 

[Ray-Mo.]

When the signal on a silver dime is loud and clear at 7" in the soil plus an inch or so of grass and I raise the coil 3" and it is still a solid repeatible signal it proves a lot to me,Ray.
PS. I have also noticed that a silver dime at 6" is a stronger signal than a copper penny at 4" in the ground undisturbed before recovery at the same site and under similar conditions.

 

[digitrich]

I should have put that in that in my post. I just noticed with my gain up (24 or above), my signals are artificially loud and therefore volume of sound alone is kind of a poor judge of depth. They are outright scream just before they drop off the edge of the abyss.

 

[Jim upstate NY]

so you may be right.. I also lift the coil and they disappear after a couple inches no matter how deep they are, unless on surface or just below.. so I guess until I ever get a coin at more than 6 I will never know.. I was using the X8 coil by the way.. in a spot I went over pretty good a few times with the pro coil, so I still think the smaller coils are working better in trash.. but maybe thats as deep as they go