BarnacleBill
New member
A few days ago I decided to spend some "quality" time with one of the offspring. So I set her up with a BH QDII, knife, & digger. No not that "Digger", but a metal trowel digger.
She not being the most experienced, I opted for neither of us to use headphones, because my sign language is a little rusty.
The temperature was 37F/3C with a light but constant breeze, quite temperate for this time of year. On starting up the X70 I noted that the battery tank showed half full. So for for a couple of hours I was spotting shallow targets for the Padawan to dig, besides the ones she was able to locate on her own, and trying to scare up a few deepies for myself. At a particular point I was about 70ft away from her when she asked for help in digging a target.
Arriving at her target location I swung my coil to center the target, and voila' no sound from the X70. I looked at the screen and battery tank was empty, but no low battery tone had sounded. The display was working fine and showing target ID etc. Now between Point A & B I had not banged or dropped the X70 so this was a bit of a mystery. I turned the detector on & off a couple times and tapped on the side gently, thinking that maybe a loose connection had developed. Disconnecting headphone jacks can be a point of failure because they are basically switch contacts that can get dirty, corrode, or wear out.
So back to the vehicle I went to retrieve my headphones for testing the jack. I connected the headphones and there was sound, disconnected the headphones and no sound. Oh well, bad headphone jack I thought, must be from lack of use(dirty, corrosion) as I almost never use the speaker.
So off I went with headphones on to keep up the good fight. About 5 minutes later the low battery tone sounded and the X70 went nighty-nite. All-righty then, back to the vehicle for fresh batteries.
With new batteries installed I fired her up and sound came from the speaker loud & clear! OK I think, what's going on here? I then took the spent batteries and put them in one of my target buckets to be examined later. By the way I ended up with a rotten 1910? wheatie & a decent 1919 wheatie. The Padawan's best was a 1961 nickel that she located on her own.
After arriving home I checked the spent batteries with a battery checker. Three were in a weakened state, but pretty much even as far as their remaining charge, the fourth one had severely collapsed. So apparently one cell had gone to a high resistance, which current starved the audio amplifier to the point of not being able to drive the loudspeaker.
The moral of the story, if the battery tank says empty, with no sound from the loudspeaker, then change the batteries before looking to other causes.
HH
BarnacleBill
She not being the most experienced, I opted for neither of us to use headphones, because my sign language is a little rusty.The temperature was 37F/3C with a light but constant breeze, quite temperate for this time of year. On starting up the X70 I noted that the battery tank showed half full. So for for a couple of hours I was spotting shallow targets for the Padawan to dig, besides the ones she was able to locate on her own, and trying to scare up a few deepies for myself. At a particular point I was about 70ft away from her when she asked for help in digging a target.
Arriving at her target location I swung my coil to center the target, and voila' no sound from the X70. I looked at the screen and battery tank was empty, but no low battery tone had sounded. The display was working fine and showing target ID etc. Now between Point A & B I had not banged or dropped the X70 so this was a bit of a mystery. I turned the detector on & off a couple times and tapped on the side gently, thinking that maybe a loose connection had developed. Disconnecting headphone jacks can be a point of failure because they are basically switch contacts that can get dirty, corrode, or wear out.
So back to the vehicle I went to retrieve my headphones for testing the jack. I connected the headphones and there was sound, disconnected the headphones and no sound. Oh well, bad headphone jack I thought, must be from lack of use(dirty, corrosion) as I almost never use the speaker.
So off I went with headphones on to keep up the good fight. About 5 minutes later the low battery tone sounded and the X70 went nighty-nite. All-righty then, back to the vehicle for fresh batteries.
With new batteries installed I fired her up and sound came from the speaker loud & clear! OK I think, what's going on here? I then took the spent batteries and put them in one of my target buckets to be examined later. By the way I ended up with a rotten 1910? wheatie & a decent 1919 wheatie. The Padawan's best was a 1961 nickel that she located on her own.
After arriving home I checked the spent batteries with a battery checker. Three were in a weakened state, but pretty much even as far as their remaining charge, the fourth one had severely collapsed. So apparently one cell had gone to a high resistance, which current starved the audio amplifier to the point of not being able to drive the loudspeaker.
The moral of the story, if the battery tank says empty, with no sound from the loudspeaker, then change the batteries before looking to other causes.
HH
BarnacleBill
