Cibola With Ground Balance

[Reddog777]

I am planning on puttting a Bourns Potentiometer on my Cibola later this week for ground balance control. Will someone with wet salt sand experience tell me which setting is best, in the positive or in the negative on the GB control.

 

[tvr]

Wet salt is way to the negative side. Putting the potentiometer in the Cibola will not get you ground balanced to the wet salt. The circuit design just doesn't get there. The potentiometer helps you adjust for best depth in mineralized ground, frequently at the very positive end of the ground balance settings.

There are some single frequency detectors that do ground balance to the wet salt, but not most of them, and not any of the Tesoro detectors that I am aware of.
tvr

Edit addition ... The potentiometer in the Cibola gets it a little closer to ground balancing to the wet salt than a Tejon gets; but not close enough to get depth equivalent to what you see in dirt. You still loose a lot of depth due to mis-matched ground balance when set full negative on a Cibola over the wet salt.

 

[Reddog777]

I COMPLETED MY CIBOLA WITH GROUND BALANCE CONTROL AND ALL METAL AND DISC. SWITCH. BELIEVE ME IT'S PERFORMANCE IS VERY IMPRESSIVE. IT HITS TARGETS IN MY TEST PATCH VERY HARD WITH THE COIL ABOUT 2'' FROM THE GROUND. TARGETS ARE ABOUT 8'' TO 10'' DEEP. I WILL POST PICTURES WHENEVER I GET A KNOB FOR THE GROUND BALANCE CONTROL. CAN'T WAIT TO TRY IT AT THE BEACH. THANKS TO SVEN STAU FOR POSTING THE INSTRUCTIONS!

 

[DiGGER27]

Now that you have the GB, you might want to try power balancing in disc if you decide to hunt in dirt.
Ground balancing in all metal and then switching from all metal to disc throws my Vaquero slightly out of balance.
Power balancing seems to gain some depth and brings those deeper fainter signals back.

http://metaldetectingforum.com/showthread.php?t=61531

HH

 

[Reddog777]

Thank you DIGGER27 for the valuable information. I don't know a lot about ground balancing. I took it to the beach this week-end down to where the water washes up on the shore. I buried some coins about 5'' deep and it detected them loud and clear. The Cibola chattered until I turned he control up one tic mark above the iron setting. After then, it was very quite with no more chattering. So quite that I went back to the buried coins twice to see if it was sill working and it was. It didn't false until I when up to the damp dry sand line. This seemed odd. Guess I need to learn more about GB.

 

[DiGGER27]

Thank you DIGGER27 for the valuable information. I don't know a lot about ground balancing. I took it to the beach this week-end down to where the water washes up on the shore. I buried some coins about 5'' deep and it detected them loud and clear. The Cibola chattered until I turned he control up one tic mark above the iron setting. After then, it was very quite with no more chattering. So quite that I went back to the buried coins twice to see if it was sill working and it was. It didn't false until I when up to the damp dry sand line. This seemed odd. Guess I need to learn more about GB.

If the unit chattered when the coil was scanning the ground/sand, I believe the reason was because you had minerals in that area.
If my Vaq chatters I usually turn the sensitivity down a little till it stops.
The discrimination knob will usually not affect chatter.
If your Cibola chattered with your coil in the air and it stopped when you moved the disc, I have no idea what would cause that.

The power balancing referred to by Monte is a good technique to use when you are in a real trashy area, you hunt in all metal, and you get tired of hearing every fricken signal in the ground till you are overwhelmed, or get tired of digging too much iron or pull tabs or whatever else.
If you GB in all metal like most people do to get the best depth, and then hunt in all metal, don't assume when you switch to disc that depth will be the same.
Power Balancing in disc will enable you to hunt with some discrimination and still get the best depth possible.

As you saw in air testing, the Cibola can go pretty deep.
If you get Ground balancing or Power balancing down pat, you should get pretty close to those same results in soil, but not at the beach

GBing is actually pretty easy once you get the hang of it, and it soon will become second nature and easy to do with practice.
If you put in a 10 turn pot with your mod, I'm jealous...you can get that "razor's edge" setting that is even better than I can achieve with my 3 1/2 turn pot from the factory.
Here is a video that explains the ground balancing and supertuning process on a Vaquero, which essentially is what you now own.
Keep in mind, he did not power balance before he started to show the process of supertuning...he probably doesn't know about that...but we do!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBLEntJrkjE&feature=related

 

[Reddog777]

Great video. Using a Bourns 10 turn pot. very sensitive.

 

[tvr]

The Cibola chattered until I turned he control up one tic mark above the iron setting.

I've experienced having the ground balance set just a little negative of where it is happy and getting some chatter when the coil is sweeping. Adding a little discrimination quiets it. A slight increase in ground balance setting or decrease in sensitivity usually gives similar quieting. If the ground balance setting is too much negative, sensitivity and discrimination settings don't get it real quiet. If the chatter is some slightly damp small pockets of sand, then a little discrimination helps.

It didn't false until I whet up to the damp dry sand line. This seemed odd. Guess I need to learn more about GB.

You probably set it up OK for what it can do. When the salts get wet they become conductive and move the phase shift way negative when compared to ground balancing to ferrous mineralization. The issue with the Cibola (Vaquero, Tejon and many others) is that they can not ground balance all the way to the needed setting for wet salt. At the most negative setting, they are still very positive compared to the wet salt.

For wet salt sand hunting, the best compromise I've found so far, for a detector that does not ground balance all the way to the wet salt, is as follows:
-Ground balance it over the dry sand and leave it at that setting.
-Set discriminator a little closer to foil than where a small nail is discriminated out (a little above the iron mark but not to the foil).
-Walk to the wet sand and start sweeping. If there is too much chatter, turn up the discrimination a little and turn down the sensitivity until it is functional for you. No need to turn discrimination any higher than the low end of foil. Higher does not help and only looses more targets for you.

About the highest I could run the sensitivity with the ground balance modified Cibola over the wet sand was about 7. Depth is not real good over the wet salt sand when compared to the very good depth over the dry sand.

Cibola is a very good dirt and dry sand hunter. Does very well on fresh water beaches in the wet, just don't dunk the box.

If you are drawn to the wet salt sand areas and even into the water, start looking for a detector that is designed for those conditions. The decision point is a trade off: How much you are going to hunt those conditions, how much do you want to hunt these conditions, how much do you have available to spend on detectors, scoops, waders, dry or wet suits and other equipment?

Take a look at what people are using on the Beach and Water / Scuba forum for more information if you are going to hunt the wet salt areas more than just infrequently.
Cheers,
tvr

 

[Reddog777]

Okay, Here it is!
The small toogle switch in the upper right is the All-metal / Disc. switch.
The lower left control is the ground balance.
The red button in front of the grip is the pinpoint.
(My camera don't take the best quality pictures.)

 

[DiGGER27]

So where did you install the cup holder?

 

[Reddog777]

I am working on that but the kitchen sink is next.

 

[tvr]

Nice looking mod. Interesting that you kept the pinpoint push button.

 

[Reddog777]

Thanks. The pinpoint button is wired to AM/DISC. toggle switch. It is a momentary button . That way, I don't
need to keep switching from Disc. to Am. to pinpoint my targets.

 

[tvr]

What I did with mine is picked a switch that I could push forward and lock in all-metal or pull for a momentary contact in all-metal for pinpointing. The pot for ground balancing doesn't have a knob. Pot sets without much effort even without a knob and I haven't put one on so it doesn't get bumped out of the setting.

Looks like this:

 

[RAYMOND INGRAHAM]

this pot works extremly well
3590S-2-503L 50K Ohm Rotary Wirewound Precision Potentiometer Pot 10 Turn $ 3.89

http://www.ebay.com/itm/3590S-2-503L-50K-Ohm-Rotary-Wirewound-Precision-Potentiometer-Pot-10-Turn- OT8G/371459315116?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D34002%26meid%3Dc9ff84fe22274aa7880d407efbe99947%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D4%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D261966615292

 

[RAYMOND INGRAHAM]

3590S-2-503L 50K Ohm Rotary Wirewound Precision Potentiometer Pot 10 Turn $ 3.89

http://www.ebay.com/itm/3590S-2-503L-50K-Ohm-Rotary-Wirewound-Precision-Potentiometer-Pot-10-Turn- OT8G/371459315116?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D34002%26meid%3Dc9ff84fe22274aa7880d407efbe99947%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D4%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D261966615292

 

[Kapok]

You guys are too smart for me...

 

[amberjack]

I am sure you know stuff they don't

AJ

 

[Pardoe]

I would be concerned that with the button and the toggle you are running the risk of higher resistance in the circuit and losing depth.

 

[Sven]

They are good, priced right and work. Knock off's of the genuine Bourns 10 turn pots that cost $15 or so.
These also have end stops so they don't just keep on turning after 10 turns.
They are stamped "Bourns--Made in Mexico", courtesy of China.