40 Hours Hunting Still Confused

[Buried Crap NJ]

I am at 40 hrs Beach hunting and not jumping for joy yet. I have dug about 25 dollars in clad a few pieces of junk jewelry. No gold one silver mercury. Maybe I just haven't passed the coil over the gold yet??? I can safely say I have NOT dug anything I would not have dug with the GT or Excalibur. But I can't help the feeling that I might just have missed something that the other two could have found? I won't say its the machine yet but the lack of my knowledge of the CTX 3030 use. Not sure. I am surprised each time I dig a target and see what it is. Never sure whats coming up. I have worked it slow and tried to bring up high tones that were iffy, after 4 or 5 scoops and the signal goes away and the 5 or 6 more ( big wide hole and deep) and never finding a target I am confused. Have had this happen more than 100 times, lots of good tones and the meter reading 12 in or more., never found anything. I would say the deepest target dug was 12 inches I am use to quarters at 18 inches with a the Ecalibur or GT when you work really slow. Now I will admit the the conditions have really slacked off and target aren't as plentiful as the first week I hunted with it. The only think I can say about the headphone is they suck! I can not hear the threshold with out raising way too high for hunting.(22 or more) Every wave is heard over the threshold even when in the dry sand not near the waves, rarely can I hear iron from a null. You can hear every conversation on the beach, people not even near you can be heard and they are not shouting either.Waves here where I hunt are not washing up and rolling in the crash down and only go 25 feet. I have gotten better at Pin Pointing but at this point feel I am wasting valuable time chasing targets on the beach after they come out of the hole. It really pisses you off to try and get the damn thing in the scoop and miss 5 times. I am sure hoping that changes as my recover time with the Excalibur or GT is about 30 seconds. Not 2 minutes! Yikes! By the end of the month I should have more than 100 hrs and see what improves.

I like I can hunt and not feel tired from swinging.
I like that I don't dig much trash. (humm let me rethink about that one)
I don't like the headphone (Koss)
I don't like the PP buttons location.
I don't like I can't use any other headphones( I think this may just be my machine) I have tried many and none work! But I have seen that others can use other brands????
I don't like the machine turns off any time it wants (three times) while detecting???
I don't like it froze and I had to take the battery out to reboot (once)
I don't like I had to print my own manual after paying so much money for it!
One last thing I am in my 39th year metal detecting so I am not a newbie, I can have an opinion at this point.

 

[scubadetector]

Ok 5 reasons why a target dissapears

1. it was actually a piece of junk and after you broke the halo effect on it it turned into a discriminated out target

2. A very small piece of aluminum or foil that danced away in the surf while you were chasing it.

3. While you dug you just missed it and it went deeper than your macnine could reach Like a small split shot.

4. The target is so small it kept slipping through your scoop.

5. A fish saw what you were digging and grabbed it before it went into your scoop.


I do know if you use a machine long enough, in the water the pinpoint button is worthless. I had mine disabled. I can tell exactly where I get a beep. Hope that helps some.

 

[Buried Crap NJ]

Thanks most of my hunting has been wet sand and dry sand. I don't dare go in the water with my current pin ponting abilities.
BCNJ

 

[hershey1]

Sorry you are having problems with your machine. Hopefully Minelab will remedy the problems. I have'nt spent much time with mine but will take it to Florida next week along with my Excall. Sounds like you are doing good except for the gold. I don't think you have got your coil over any (gold) yet is the reason. It will be hard to use the CTX on the beach and not finding any gold with an Excall setting in a corner slobbering like a mad dog. Thought about leaving the Excall at home but did'nt take long to rethink that option. Hopefully we will bond with the CTX 3030 like our other machines. I sure hope so. Keep posting and HH

 

[Electro]

I am at 40 hrs Beach hunting and not jumping for joy yet. I have dug about 25 dollars in clad a few pieces of junk jewelry. No gold one silver mercury. Maybe I just haven't passed the coil over the gold yet??? I can safely say I have NOT dug anything I would not have dug with the GT or Excalibur. But I can't help the feeling that I might just have missed something that the other two could have found? I won't say its the machine yet but the lack of my knowledge of the CTX 3030 use. Not sure. I am surprised each time I dig a target and see what it is. Never sure whats coming up. I have worked it slow and tried to bring up high tones that were iffy, after 4 or 5 scoops and the signal goes away and the 5 or 6 more ( big wide hole and deep) and never finding a target I am confused. Have had this happen more than 100 times, lots of good tones and the meter reading 12 in or more., never found anything. I would say the deepest target dug was 12 inches I am use to quarters at 18 inches with a the Ecalibur or GT when you work really slow. Now I will admit the the conditions have really slacked off and target aren't as plentiful as the first week I hunted with it. The only think I can say about the headphone is they suck! I can not hear the threshold with out raising way too high for hunting.(22 or more) Every wave is heard over the threshold even when in the dry sand not near the waves, rarely can I hear iron from a null. You can hear every conversation on the beach, people not even near you can be heard and they are not shouting either.Waves here where I hunt are not washing up and rolling in the crash down and only go 25 feet. I have gotten better at Pin Pointing but at this point feel I am wasting valuable time chasing targets on the beach after they come out of the hole. It really pisses you off to try and get the damn thing in the scoop and miss 5 times. I am sure hoping that changes as my recover time with the Excalibur or GT is about 30 seconds. Not 2 minutes! Yikes! By the end of the month I should have more than 100 hrs and see what improves.

I like I can hunt and not feel tired from swinging.
I like that I don't dig much trash. (humm let me rethink about that one)
I don't like the headphone (Koss)
I don't like the PP buttons location.
I don't like I can't use any other headphones( I think this may just be my machine) I have tried many and none work! But I have seen that others can use other brands????
I don't like the machine turns off any time it wants (three times) while detecting???
I don't like it froze and I had to take the battery out to reboot (once)
I don't like I had to print my own manual after paying so much money for it!
One last thing I am in my 39th year metal detecting so I am not a newbie, I can have an opinion at this point.

A few things that might help:
-The default threshold pitch is easily masked by the waves. But the threshold is still there and you are still hunting with benefit of having a threshold (even though you cannot hear it due to the waves) However if you like hearing a threshold you can change the threshold pitch and make it higher to suit your hearing. Then it will easily stand out from the low rumble of the waves.
-You can get a stereo to mono headphone adapter and your headphones should work fine. They are very inexpensive at radio shack (the stereo plugs have two black bands while the mono ones have one band)
-If it is freezing log onto the CTX (Coin Treasure Xchange) and make sure your machine software is updated

Best Regards and hope this helps.

PS I had the same experience that you did with the wave rumble masking sounds. I am now working on tweaking the beaching hunting program by playing with the bins and signals. Boosting them up higher so they stand out more against the white noise the waves generate.

 

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

You need to come hunt with me BC NJ I have this CTX mother going deeper than my Explorer SE Pro let alone a GT or Excal. I'm popping deep nickels so gold rings won't be a problem. I was deep down to the crusted greenies in Wildwood this evening. I have also dug some tiny targets so I know its close to the SE Pro on those as well. So far only silver targets, have not got my coil over any gold yet.

Now here's how I'm running the CTX on the beach. First, the auto sensitivity what a joke Minelab please. Manual sensitivity setting depends on the beach, but 25 to 30 generally. 30 up in the dry sand say OC around 44th street. You can run full blast 30 sens and 30 gain. Down on the wet sand there throttle back the sens to about 26 and gain to about the same 26. In north Wildwood today I was running sens 26 gain 28 no problem on the wet sand to the waters edge, sweeping any direction. That's all replenished sand down there. Where the machine gets a bit false happy is on beaches with heavier concentrations of black sand. I have tried a number of modes, what's working best so far is the Combination mode, edited the bottom half of the screen pitch to 90hz e.g. lowest tone. Top left block 200, then 300, 400, and 1200hz coming across the top of the screen from low conduct to high conduct. Running the machine in all metal zero descrimination, all iron and ground falsing gives that super low growl which is pretty easy to just ignore. Running the machine hot like this will produce some falsing but here's how I'm dealing with that, I'm running Long tones. The falses are short and abrubt even with long tones so its quite easy to ignore them and keep moving until you get a much wider signal. Also its easier to cover more ground this way, the long tones make your coil about twice its normal size, even bigger on near surface targets. Now when I go to pin point and dig I switch back to Normal tones. You can just press the menu button and it will take you to the last menu you accessed which making switching back and forth between Long and Normal pretty easy. So that's been my approach, run it hot, long tones, its going freaking deep I tell you. The other thing I noticed is on targets closer to the surface man you have to lift the coil way off the ground to detune the machine so you can pin point which is to say this thing gives a solid tone even on deep targets with the gain up. Even worse once you get the coin out of the hole and you are trying to locate it in the kicked pile, just lift the coil higher.

The other approach I have used is 50 conduct tones, bottom half of the screen rejected, high trash. Yes I know high trash but compare low trash mode to high trash mode in the manual, there's a reason I'm running high trash mode and thats because it will ignore rejected targets in the presense of nearby good targets even if the rejected target is much stronger. This program has produce silver including some pretty deep silver and some tiny targets.

Things to watch out for, the CTX will fasle a bit on iron. The trick is it should hit reliable on the high tone beep beep beep as you sweep it if its a good target and the numbers should be pretty stable. If its a high tone/null/high tone/null short and choppy even in Long tones keep walking. I have dug a couple good targets right on top of iron but with a wiggle swing it was pretty repeatable on the good tone. So far my nemesis has been freaking bottle caps, I dug more the past couple weeks than I have in 4 years. Still trying to figure those out they often sound good but do bounce around quite a bit often hitting up in the 1 range. To be fair they would fake out my SE Pro from time to time as well.

Now all that said this machine is never going to be as stable as a GT or Excaliber on a wet saltwater beach imo. With the sens adjusted properly the GT and Excaliber are extremely stable, that's just not what a CTX (or Etrac or SE Pro) is about. The GT and Excaliber won't go nearly as deep but that's the trade off.

That's my 2 cents worth.

PS: After multiple hunts without any issues I had the random machine shut down issue tonight. Had been running about 2.5 hours, everything was fine, I was just swinging the machine, no targets under the coil and got the DO Do do do shut off tones. I had a fully charged battery, it started right back up no problem and then hit the patch of deep greenies so it was performing just fine.

 

[Buried Crap NJ]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Just to be clear I have the stero mono plus and it didn't work. I also could not use the wireless with after market headphones.
Since my machine froze up It was sugjested I do a reset of the machine. I did and I now can use the GG and Black Widows with the wireless. I think I have to re do my programs because of the reset?
All this hads been very helpful. This is my first computer based detector.
BCNJ

 

[Digga03]

send it back man get it fixed.

 

[Crusty]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Just to be clear I have the stero mono plus and it didn't work. I also could not use the wireless with after market headphones.
Since my machine froze up It was sugjested I do a reset of the machine. I did and I now can use the GG and Black Widows with the wireless. I think I have to re do my programs because of the reset?
All this hads been very helpful. This is my first computer based detector.
BCNJ

Defiantly do up your programs in the Exchange II software first then transfer to you CTX. Then if you have to do a factory reset of your CTX then it only takes a minute to re-program your machine.

Dave

 

[Joe of South Jersey]

Think may not be a good idea, If the settings are the issue........

Now if you did it post issue that would be fine.

JHMO

 

[bigboar]

PS: After multiple hunts without any issues I had the random machine shut down issue tonight. Had been running about 2.5 hours, everything was fine, I was just swinging the machine, no targets under the coil and got the DO Do do do shut off tones. I had a fully charged battery, it started right back up no problem and then hit the patch of deep greenies so it was performing just fine.

Every time mine shuts down on me it has been after I have been using it around two hours non stop also..

 

[Charles (Upstate NY)]

PS: After multiple hunts without any issues I had the random machine shut down issue tonight. Had been running about 2.5 hours, everything was fine, I was just swinging the machine, no targets under the coil and got the DO Do do do shut off tones. I had a fully charged battery, it started right back up no problem and then hit the patch of deep greenies so it was performing just fine.

Every time mine shuts down on me it has been after I have been using it around two hours non stop also..

I guess it forces you to take a break from digging deep targets every couple hours less you have a heat stroke or something.

 

[aussiedigger]

You need to come hunt with me BC NJ I have this CTX mother going deeper than my Explorer SE Pro let alone a GT or Excal. I'm popping deep nickels so gold rings won't be a problem. I was deep down to the crusted greenies in Wildwood this evening. I have also dug some tiny targets so I know its close to the SE Pro on those as well. So far only silver targets, have not got my coil over any gold yet.

Now here's how I'm running the CTX on the beach. First, the auto sensitivity what a joke Minelab please. Manual sensitivity setting depends on the beach, but 25 to 30 generally. 30 up in the dry sand say OC around 44th street. You can run full blast 30 sens and 30 gain. Down on the wet sand there throttle back the sens to about 26 and gain to about the same 26. In north Wildwood today I was running sens 26 gain 28 no problem on the wet sand to the waters edge, sweeping any direction. That's all replenished sand down there. Where the machine gets a bit false happy is on beaches with heavier concentrations of black sand. I have tried a number of modes, what's working best so far is the Combination mode, edited the bottom half of the screen pitch to 90hz e.g. lowest tone. Top left block 200, then 300, 400, and 1200hz coming across the top of the screen from low conduct to high conduct. Running the machine in all metal zero descrimination, all iron and ground falsing gives that super low growl which is pretty easy to just ignore. Running the machine hot like this will produce some falsing but here's how I'm dealing with that, I'm running Long tones. The falses are short and abrubt even with long tones so its quite easy to ignore them and keep moving until you get a much wider signal. Also its easier to cover more ground this way, the long tones make your coil about twice its normal size, even bigger on near surface targets. Now when I go to pin point and dig I switch back to Normal tones. You can just press the menu button and it will take you to the last menu you accessed which making switching back and forth between Long and Normal pretty easy. So that's been my approach, run it hot, long tones, its going freaking deep I tell you. The other thing I noticed is on targets closer to the surface man you have to lift the coil way off the ground to detune the machine so you can pin point which is to say this thing gives a solid tone even on deep targets with the gain up. Even worse once you get the coin out of the hole and you are trying to locate it in the kicked pile, just lift the coil higher.

The other approach I have used is 50 conduct tones, bottom half of the screen rejected, high trash. Yes I know high trash but compare low trash mode to high trash mode in the manual, there's a reason I'm running high trash mode and thats because it will ignore rejected targets in the presense of nearby good targets even if the rejected target is much stronger. This program has produce silver including some pretty deep silver and some tiny targets.

Things to watch out for, the CTX will fasle a bit on iron. The trick is it should hit reliable on the high tone beep beep beep as you sweep it if its a good target and the numbers should be pretty stable. If its a high tone/null/high tone/null short and choppy even in Long tones keep walking. I have dug a couple good targets right on top of iron but with a wiggle swing it was pretty repeatable on the good tone. So far my nemesis has been freaking bottle caps, I dug more the past couple weeks than I have in 4 years. Still trying to figure those out they often sound good but do bounce around quite a bit often hitting up in the 1 range. To be fair they would fake out my SE Pro from time to time as well.

Now all that said this machine is never going to be as stable as a GT or Excaliber on a wet saltwater beach imo. With the sens adjusted properly the GT and Excaliber are extremely stable, that's just not what a CTX (or Etrac or SE Pro) is about. The GT and Excaliber won't go nearly as deep but that's the trade off.

That's my 2 cents worth.

PS: After multiple hunts without any issues I had the random machine shut down issue tonight. Had been running about 2.5 hours, everything was fine, I was just swinging the machine, no targets under the coil and got the DO Do do do shut off tones. I had a fully charged battery, it started right back up no problem and then hit the patch of deep greenies so it was performing just fine.

Thank you these hot beach settings are going straight into favorites untill i get my CTX 3030.

 

[John(Tx)]

regarding the Excal....Don't leave home without it.....It will find gold...HH

 

[jimzilla]

Nj message me and I will try helping you. Gold is out there and it will be a low tone like a 10-3 or 12-6 or even 12-20. Forget chains cause very hard to pick up deep