Critterhunter
New member
A few friends and I have access to a large unbiased test pool of gold rings. These rings were found over roughly 5 or so years using an Excaliber water hunting, digging every signal of course above iron. For that reason the test pool is not biased in any way. For instance, by a land hunter just digging certain zones or certain targets that sound dig worthy. That sort of collection of rings is biased in several ways and would alter the results. This test pool of rings was digging all signals that sounded off above iron water hunting, regardless of how good or bad the signal sounded. For that reason it should provide a more realistic and useful tool in exploring things like tab to trash percentages and such.
This test pool has thus far been used on a M6 and a Sovereign GT and respected VDI range charts/numbers/and percentages derived there of. The link to this thread can be found here, and should provide further insight into the potential possibilities in such data...
http://www.findmall.com/read.php?21,1096415
Yesterday three of us scanned in 121 of these rings on an Etrac using the learn/accept function. We also graphed each ring by weight/carat/type(white or yellow gold) on a spread sheet and listed the VDI numbers for each. Within the next few days I'll be posting that spreadsheet in this thread. Right now I'm posting the discrimination pattern for people to download, although it would be rather easy to manualy edit the exact same discrimination pattern into the Etrac by using the resulting VDI range listed in the spreadsheet.
We used the medium cursor when doing the learn/accept function to scan in all these rings. However, it might be more useful to manualy edit a discrimination pattern and enter the resulting VDI range of rings (from the spreadsheet) using the smallest cursor to rely help eliminate as much trash as possible while still allowing all (more than likely) gold rings to sound off. At the very least (see below), when altering the the pattern to reject tabs at a specific site, I would probably use the smallest cursor while learn/rejecting those tabs so as to insure that only those precisely were blocked and not a wider discrimination pattern which would reject more rings. In other words, if you make the ring pattern using a medium cursor (as it uploaded at the bottom of this thread) and not the smallest cursor to reject more trash, at the very least I'd probably use the smallest cursor to learn/accept tabs for a given area. More detail below revolving around the concept behind it...
The rings were far more consistent and less variable in numbers then I would have expected on the Etrac, but the real test will come when we scan in the random tab sample as well to see just how diverse that gets. I suspect it won't be as consistent or easy to see a distinct pattern with on the Etrac as it was on the GT or the M6, mainly due to the microscopic fashion in which Explorers/Etracs look at targets. I could be wrong about this. We'll see...
One thing that I can say for sure is that, like the Explorer, the Etrac's audio response to targets is not as pronounced and contains less target quality content than I find on the Sovereign. The amount of information one can obtain from the target's response via the audio seems much more sterilized or processed and thus less helpful at discriminating trash (and in particular oddly shaped trash) from treasure. That might be a concern for those gold ring hunters who have developed an ear for what's worth digging on the Sovereign. I don't feel the Etrac will pass along as much target detail in that respect to tip you off as to what is junk and what might be dig worthy. Just MO. I know this is the Etrac forum so don't eat me alive for saying that. I may purchase one soon enough.
All that being said, the data obtained from scanning in the gold rings on the Etrac looks very interesting and might surprise a few people as to what number ranges they would normaly consider worth bothering with in searching for gold rings. I'm sure it will be a useful tool to some who understand the implications from it and put it into practice properly.
For instance, I would keep this gold ring discrimination pattern in "virgin" condition and load it into your Etrac at a severly trashy park. Once done, start digging each and every signal you come across that sounds through. If it's a tab, lay it back on the ground *in a clean spot* and learn/reject it using the SMALLEST cursor size. After roughly 10 to 20 tabs are dug and discriminated out in this fashion the results should be that you will dig far less trash (namely, tabs) and still recover the vast majority of rings in the area. Roughly 75% if the Etrac's tab results end up being anything similar to that of the Sovereign, which remains to be seen and I will have further information on that once we scan in the same random tab sample pool that we used for the M6 and GT.
Once you've developed a discrimination pattern using the gold ring pattern that has been modified by your learn/reject process for that specific site, save that pattern for that site. Load the virgin ring program for your next favorite site and once again modify it to the specific trash content for that area. This probably would prove much more useful then the tab pattern (still to come) that we'll be posting, as tabs can be very specific for one area and completely different for another. The main reason for posting our random tab test pool is to illuminate overall percentages in how many rings can still be found while avoiding all known tab types.
You can read more about the tab data that was scanned into the GT and M6 in the thread linked to above, along with the theories and strategies to play the odds (lower trash to ring ratios) and improve your chances for success while digging WAY less trash. IMPORTANT NOTE: I am in no way arguing that digging it all isn't the best solution at most locations in order to find each and every ring. I am, though, arguing that when the idea of digging each and every tab out of a large trashy park would take nothing short of a life time...That that is when playing the odds makes the most sense in being able to dig less trash and still recover most of those rings.
This test pool has thus far been used on a M6 and a Sovereign GT and respected VDI range charts/numbers/and percentages derived there of. The link to this thread can be found here, and should provide further insight into the potential possibilities in such data...
http://www.findmall.com/read.php?21,1096415
Yesterday three of us scanned in 121 of these rings on an Etrac using the learn/accept function. We also graphed each ring by weight/carat/type(white or yellow gold) on a spread sheet and listed the VDI numbers for each. Within the next few days I'll be posting that spreadsheet in this thread. Right now I'm posting the discrimination pattern for people to download, although it would be rather easy to manualy edit the exact same discrimination pattern into the Etrac by using the resulting VDI range listed in the spreadsheet.
We used the medium cursor when doing the learn/accept function to scan in all these rings. However, it might be more useful to manualy edit a discrimination pattern and enter the resulting VDI range of rings (from the spreadsheet) using the smallest cursor to rely help eliminate as much trash as possible while still allowing all (more than likely) gold rings to sound off. At the very least (see below), when altering the the pattern to reject tabs at a specific site, I would probably use the smallest cursor while learn/rejecting those tabs so as to insure that only those precisely were blocked and not a wider discrimination pattern which would reject more rings. In other words, if you make the ring pattern using a medium cursor (as it uploaded at the bottom of this thread) and not the smallest cursor to reject more trash, at the very least I'd probably use the smallest cursor to learn/accept tabs for a given area. More detail below revolving around the concept behind it...
The rings were far more consistent and less variable in numbers then I would have expected on the Etrac, but the real test will come when we scan in the random tab sample as well to see just how diverse that gets. I suspect it won't be as consistent or easy to see a distinct pattern with on the Etrac as it was on the GT or the M6, mainly due to the microscopic fashion in which Explorers/Etracs look at targets. I could be wrong about this. We'll see...
One thing that I can say for sure is that, like the Explorer, the Etrac's audio response to targets is not as pronounced and contains less target quality content than I find on the Sovereign. The amount of information one can obtain from the target's response via the audio seems much more sterilized or processed and thus less helpful at discriminating trash (and in particular oddly shaped trash) from treasure. That might be a concern for those gold ring hunters who have developed an ear for what's worth digging on the Sovereign. I don't feel the Etrac will pass along as much target detail in that respect to tip you off as to what is junk and what might be dig worthy. Just MO. I know this is the Etrac forum so don't eat me alive for saying that. I may purchase one soon enough.
All that being said, the data obtained from scanning in the gold rings on the Etrac looks very interesting and might surprise a few people as to what number ranges they would normaly consider worth bothering with in searching for gold rings. I'm sure it will be a useful tool to some who understand the implications from it and put it into practice properly.
For instance, I would keep this gold ring discrimination pattern in "virgin" condition and load it into your Etrac at a severly trashy park. Once done, start digging each and every signal you come across that sounds through. If it's a tab, lay it back on the ground *in a clean spot* and learn/reject it using the SMALLEST cursor size. After roughly 10 to 20 tabs are dug and discriminated out in this fashion the results should be that you will dig far less trash (namely, tabs) and still recover the vast majority of rings in the area. Roughly 75% if the Etrac's tab results end up being anything similar to that of the Sovereign, which remains to be seen and I will have further information on that once we scan in the same random tab sample pool that we used for the M6 and GT.
Once you've developed a discrimination pattern using the gold ring pattern that has been modified by your learn/reject process for that specific site, save that pattern for that site. Load the virgin ring program for your next favorite site and once again modify it to the specific trash content for that area. This probably would prove much more useful then the tab pattern (still to come) that we'll be posting, as tabs can be very specific for one area and completely different for another. The main reason for posting our random tab test pool is to illuminate overall percentages in how many rings can still be found while avoiding all known tab types.
You can read more about the tab data that was scanned into the GT and M6 in the thread linked to above, along with the theories and strategies to play the odds (lower trash to ring ratios) and improve your chances for success while digging WAY less trash. IMPORTANT NOTE: I am in no way arguing that digging it all isn't the best solution at most locations in order to find each and every ring. I am, though, arguing that when the idea of digging each and every tab out of a large trashy park would take nothing short of a life time...That that is when playing the odds makes the most sense in being able to dig less trash and still recover most of those rings.
