Air tests and pinpointing

[Anonymous]

I've been air testing(compliments to Rich in WA) and watching where the coin is in relation to the coil at the moment of detection. I'm not sure how accurate this is(being an air test) but I found that a silver dime detects just under the front lip of the coil....(its back edge<you standing up, facing the coin, explorer in sweep position>is almost lined up with the very front of the coil....a silver quarter detects when its front edge just goes under the coils very front....a silver dollar gets detected about a quarter inch BEFORE the very front of the coil.
sounds like a good argument for a pinpointer....
test:
Exporer XS sitting off edge of bed
all lights(bathroom light on/TV/Computer/Ceiling fan off
sensitivity 5
noise cancle
smartfind screen w/COINS checked...foil X'ed
gain 7...noticed gain didnt matter in air no matter how far from coil
I set the sensitivity low to stop any interference...didnt matter(i think) cause i wasnt going for depth
I'm doing this to see if this may be having an impact on my pinpointing.

 

[Anonymous]

Steve -
The Explorer is the noisiest, in my opinion, when something new gets introduced to the field or passes under the center bar. This means that as a good target enters the field (passes under or near the edge of the coil) or passes under the most sensative portion of the coil (the center bar), you are going to have your best chance of hearing it.
Let's say that you have two nails under the coil and then pass over a dime. You will hear it because the XS sees change in conductivity as a spike and it sounds off with a chime or flute sound.
Anyhow, the point of all this is that you can use the edges of the coil to pinpoint a target. Let's say you are sweeping and get a good hit. Swing back the other way and slowly creep the coil until you get the hit again. Somewhere along the edge of the coil is your target. At this point, you should drop the coil to the ground and rotate yourself and the detector so that the tip of the coil is facing in the direction of the target. Back the coil up and edge it forward until you get the hit again. With practice, you can reduce the search area to a few square inches and can finalize/confirm the pinpointing with the pinpoint button.
Practice? An area clean of iron trash, a penny, and a piece of cardboard is all it takes. Toss a penny under the cardboard, then shift the cardboard around so that you aren't sure about the location of the coin. Now you can practice pinpointing with both the edging method and the pinpointer. I would also vary my sensativity which allows you to emulate a coin at depth (sorta).
Finally, you noticed that the XS can see targets before they get under the coil. Good observation! Knowing that will save you a lot of grief. I don't know what the technical term for it is, but I call it coil bleed. It only gets shallow targets, and it makes surface or near surface targets a lot more difficult to find. To further complicate matters, iron targets of this nature will also ghost. Anyhow, it often will save you a lot of time if you sweep around a suspected good target. If you have a huge iron target nearby, you any "good" target in the area is now suspect.
Tim

 

[Anonymous]

Steve,
I am a new XS user with about 20-30 hours of actual detecting in the field with it. Probably another 20 hours air testing. Like you, many frustrations in my field use. Probably the first realization I have had is that my expectations were too high. Even though I have no doubt the XS is at the top of current detectors out there, I don't believe it can live up to what I thought it would do. Seeing all the post, I felt every "beep" I got would give me a solid, defineable target. Not true. At least until I learn what beep is real and what beep isn't. Seeing all the great items everyone is finding adds to me wanting to dig every high pitched beep I get. The trickiest being those that come off of an obvious strong null. I keep thinking that it must be a silver half covered by a trash or iron object.
This is where the experience and learning curve must come in. Differentiating an actual repeatable target and that "if I try hard enough, I can get another high beep" signal.
On some targets, I have no problem pinpointing. I do the standard 90 degree pinpoint cross. Other times there is too much other targets and this method doesn't work. Dan(KC) showed me the method of taking the coil a couple of feet away and arcing it down to where I felt the target was and keeping the coil several inches off the ground. This worked quite well on those multiple target close together finds as long as you are fairly sure where it is too start.

 

[Anonymous]

Glad to see you gave it a try. You will get a little variation because of the size of the targets and there signal strength. Try it with a coke can it will read about three inches in front of the coil! For the most part I think this is still alot closer than the "pinpoint" function at least it is for me and its a lot faster than switching back and forth. Remember you can use either the front edge by backing up or the back edge by moving forward. Which ever works best to clear other targets in the sweep. You will also get a little different results with different size coils.