Alright Guys...we need some help!!

[Daniel Tn]

I have been undecided in what machine to get (you all probably recall my thread a ways down the page now). My uncle decided to take the plunge and picked up a brand new MXT last Thursday. He came up and hunted with my Saturday in a few of my spots...namely my bullet site. It's just an open field. Not really any trash, save for the occasional shotgun brass or a few nails. It packs a whallop in bad dirt though and has became my prime testing site over the last few years.

Anyway, between Thursday and Saturday, I scoured the forums and YouTube for any info I could find on setting the MXT up right, and I know you can't learn a machine in a day, but I thought we might be able to get a good idea of how to set it up.

So we started off early Saturday at the bullet place. We set the MXT up in relic mode, center trigger, Disc 0 and Gain at almost maxxed out. I backed it off a tad from the +3 setting and put it on +1, and set the threshold to just barely a hum. We GBed the machine and put it in LOCK. Now my idea was this...to hunt around with it on its own, while I stayed close with my machine, and if I found a bullet signal first, I'd holler and get him to come over and we'd set the MXT up the best way to hit the bullets. That was the plan.

Well it didn't take long and I had a bullet located. Got my uncle over there and I turned my machine off so we wouldn't get any interference. Well with the machine setup as described above....we were expecting an easy hit. And instead....got a choppy audio and HOT ROCK vdi reading. So we left it in relic, and pushed the trigger forward and tried it...no real change. Then I put it in COIN mode with trigger center, and got a better audio, but the VDI still said HOT ROCK. This never changed until we dug it up and had it laying in the dirt pile, in which it would read BULLET in relic mode and give a nice high tone.

We did this with 4 different bullets, and tried every way I could think of to get a good audio out of the machine. VDIs weren't really a concern as most ID machines will read the bullets as IRON here anyway. But we never got the MXT to really stray from HOT ROCK, and to never really give a "stop and make you dig" audio. The bullets weren't deep...say the deepest one about 6" and shallow one about 4.

Ummm what else. Uhhh, my uncle got the package deal and got the stock coil and the D2 coil. Since I have had the V3 down there before, with the D2 coil, and it done VERY well, I assumed it would be a good coil for here with the MXT.

Anyway that's all I know to say. I wish we would have videoed some to show you what it was doing but it wasn't the best of conditions for videoing. But I've done a decent job of explaining (I think) of what it was doing and how we had it set up. If you could provide ANY help, we'd sure appreciate it. I'm just trying to believe right now that we had something set wrong on it, but there really ain't a whole lot you can set wrong on it (JMO).

 

[JOE in MD]

Were you in hot soil? I run mine in Relic, gain about plus one and a half(depending), zero disc, slight hum and Trigger forward. Any little pop from the low tone to high tone I dig. The ground up here is good soil and I can dig bullets 8 to 12 inches deep with a nice low/high solid tone signal. I hunt places in VA where it reads hot rocks and Iron and you have to dig everything.( hot soil). I dug an solid iron signal and cut the plug and flipped it over and was looking at the bullet. Swung the coil over it and it still read IRON. It wasn't until I broke it loose fron the soil it rang in at bullet. JMO
P.S.
I use different coils=12.5 Excellerator, 12 X15 SEF, or 6X10 DD. I just got a 10"DD and haven't tried it in hot ground yet!

 

[BJ in Okla.]

Did you take a ground reading ?
I would do a air test to see how it does and if you have a test spot to check it.
You could have a bad coil or something not right with the MXT, they get tossed around in shipping.
Just something to check..
BJ

 

[ohio fred]

I would use 6 inch ex dd coil in prospecting mode and see what the iron content is reading and also lock ground balance or relic mode trigger forward disc set at around 8 or 9 o clock power at 8 9 or 10 .There is also away to do factory ground balance hi and low.Also rcasio44 on the forum wrote me how to take a ground reading in a different way but i lost the pm he sent in instruction it tells you how hot the ground is ,Hope this helps

 

[dirtdigginlady]

I'm wondering about the fact that you locked the ground in. If the ground is bad, perhaps you should let it track.

 

[Daniel Tn]

I have learned with other machines that the track feature is a bad thing. The ground is so bad that the detectors are already having trouble giving good signals on the targets, and if you have an auto tracking machine, its even worse because it tracks to the target itself and more the less nulls it out. The best thing to do at these places that I've found, is to manual GB or in the MXT's case, let it GB then put it in lock.

This MXT isn't mine...it's my uncles. So how do you take a ground reading with it? I did this with the V3 in its ground probe modes, but that may be different than the MXT's way of doing it. The V3 would only allow a gain setting of 3-5 here, and had quite a bit of signal loss from the ground via it's ground probe readings. His machine seemed to air test pretty good, and was doing really good on the bullets once they were laying on the ground. I've heard that the 6x10 DD coil is a really good soil for bad dirt on the MXT, but my uncle isn't really the accessory coil kind of guy. He's been talking about buying the MXT since they came out years ago, and just now got around to getting one.

 

[ohio fred]

n/t

 

[ColoradoGoldMan]

Hi Daniel
First things first. Ever thing needs to start off in the P set positions.
Preparing to search
1. Mode: to relic, Dual Control: to 2 Trac control: to ground.
2. Turn on MXT and Gain to P preset.
3. Set Threshold to a low but audible level. Verify Stable Discriminate mode threshold sound. There should be no high and low chirping of the Threshold.
If so reduce gain until stable.
4. Ground-Balance by pumping the coil up and down a few times over clean ground, Verify GB by raising coil to waist level, pull trigger back and lower coil to with in a few inches of the ground, You here a very slight to no change in sound, Make sure you are not over a target. Now if you are looking for bullets and buttons, I would use ground trac, the ground VDI is not near the target VDI #. If you lock it after GB use 0 DISC and dig every thing.

Taking a ground VDI number reading in Prospect mode will not tell you the strenght of minerlization the soil has, it only gives an indication of the relative concentration of magnetic(iron based) versus conductive material in the soil. When the iron based content rises above 1% by Volume, The small DD coils tend to do much better at target detection, In soil with more than 1.5% iron content the best thing to do is dig anything that beeps or changes the threshold tone, or use a PI machine with GB and do the same. In high iron content soil you see VDI#s jumping all over the place on a target, because of the magnetic properties of the soil.
HH
C

 

[rickf68]

Colorado has some good advice there. The coil might be to large for your conditions. I might be wrong but I thought I read that the 10"DD is a very hot coil. That being the case you'll have to reduce gain. The MXT runs at a higher signal than a lot of other machines which make it better at detecting smaller targets but in bad ground or trashy spots it will get real noisey with a large coil. The 6X10 DD is a better tool for those situations and is a favorite among White's users. It's my everyday coil here in the NE where we have moderate to high iron mineralization. I used to get quite a few HOT ROCKs myself until I switch to a smaller DD. A popular setting up here is Gain 10 and Disc at 2. I would use ground tracking as Colorado said because you won't have a huge increase in depth. Locking the track helps if there's a lot of iron targets close to each other but you should check it periodically. Target ID is usually pretty good down to about 5"- 6" beyond that, in my experience, is less accurate. I used to run C&J because I'm not a relic hunter but I now run relic because it's a little deeper unless it gets to noisey, in which case I flip trigger forward to disc out iron. I pretty much started digging all positive signals that have any kind of depth. It"s the only way you can be sure and also learn the machine.