What do you think?

[goldman55]

Everyone doing air test on a Machine is fine. gives you a ideal of what to except from it somewhat. But i think when doing one people would be more interested in the Numbers that show up on the screen. Different size Gold rings so on. What do you think? They show the item app size then tell you I'm at 5" 8" so on but showing on camera what the read out is. I think that would help more than anything. If their testing stuff on a detector you have. Just my thought

Bill

 

[hunter_46356]

I've thought the same thing but in respect to posted video's of actual hunts. Air Test are air test and you can do your own and look at the numbers. But real life, real conditions, real screen info of a possible target in a video gives me a lot more info then just watching someone else dig up a nice target. There are some who have very great educational vids on youtube with onscreen info. A few that come to mind are Cutaplug, Dirtfishing and coinrelicdownunder. These guys are using Etrac's but I'm sure there are more video's out there for different detectors.

 

[ironsight]

Garrett makes a detector that does give the approximate target size using its special coil.
Forget the model name but its been around for a while.

 

[GeorgeinSC]

As one who used tone only machines numbers do not mean a thing to me. I read posts where guys say that a machine gave them certain numbers but they do not stipulate what machine they are using so again the numbers are worthless to me. Different strokes for different folks.

 

[BillF]

Forget air tests. They don't mean squat. You can use it to tell if your machine is working, or maybe to get an idea where the sweet spot is, but minerals, emi, a million different things will affect how deep your detector will pick something up.
Air tests are a tool dealers use to convince you to buy a certain brand. In the field is the only way to know how deep you can detect.

 

[Mega]

Airtests are a total waste of time,tones all the way for me as they are far more accurate than what a screen wil ever tell you,yes i do use machines that have screen but very rarely use them,a decent set of headphones and tones will give you far more reliable indication of deep targets as these are usually very feint tones that wont even show up on the screen.

If i am working say a roman or saxon site the coins and artifacts could be deeper so only audio will pick them up,a waste of time using screens on sites like this,hence this is why Tesoro beep and dig machines excel and also the fantastic discrimination that they offer in a junky enviroment.

 

[Canewrap]

+1, there are just too many variables, from site-to-site, for an airtest to tell you much.

 

[BarberBill]

I"ve posted several times on this - in my opinion air test ARE useful in that you can use them to compare how a detector and coil are responding compared to the same air tests at an earlier time in order to determine if the detecctor is still performing as it did when tested before. Also helpful when comparing different coils. I'm not disputing real, in ground, with mineralization etc. results as that's another matter entirely and of course, more pertinent to real hunting results.
BB

 

[dirt doctor]

Good point Barber Bill .