Coinstrike and Nickles

[RLOH]

I hunt a large, old park about twice a week and my C$ acts strange here. Several years back I had a Tejon that I absolutely could not ground balance in this same park. Here goes what is happening. I ground balance just like normal and I always get a beep confirming that the detector is balanced. As I hunt along, I get repeatable high tones with numbers in the mid twenties, similar to a copper penny. I seem to dig to about 5 or 6 inches and find a nickle. This happens many times in this park. When I lay the nickle on the ground and scan it, the tones go to mid and the numbers match nickles(9 to 11). Until today, I didn't pay much attention to this quirk. Today, I got one of these signals and it was about 7 inches deep. Out pops a dateless buffalo nickle. I layed it on the ground it mid tones and shows 11 vdi. I put it back in the bottom of the hole and it high tones and vdi goes to 26. I never use tracking so today I checked this first buffalo with tracking on. No change. I dropped the sensitivity one icrement at a time until I got to 3. No change. I went through the entire adjustments of the threshold. No change. Here are my settings that I always use at this park. Iron disc 99, sens 7, threshold -5, volume 10, nothing notched, no averaging, and no tracking. I kept hunting and found 4 more nickles all with the same exact scenario. I did find another buffalo(1936) and it was identical to the first signal. This nickle thing has me extremely puzzled because if I hunt my other spots this hardly ever happens. I get a normal midtone with a 9 to 12 vdi. Being that I don't notch anything out, do you think that could be whats happening? There is a large coal fired power plant within 300 yards where I hunted today and this is the same section that the Tejon would not ground balance. Before you suggest that I don't know how to ground balance, that is not the case. I also have a CZ 70 that will ground balance and it will lock onto a nickle in a normal fashion here. I'm hoping that someone can explain this weirdness. Thanks R.L.

 

[HotTexas]

I can't explain it, but what about the speed of the swing, Some times when I swing fast it will go from mid tone to a high tone, If I slow the swing down it will go back to the mid tone and id right. some times if I'm not centered over the target it will do the same thing.

Just a thought!

Johnny

 

[RLOH]

Johnny, a point well taken. The C$ is very sensitive. I have noticed what you pointed out. The 8 inch coil seems to have a very narrow, defined center and I have seen the tones and numbers change dramatically as you get the coil centered. I just had a thought that maybe it is only the deeper nickles that cause this to happen. I have had every detector made and I have never had this happen. I am getting use to it though. I am no engineer, but maybe this thing is setup for round objects moreso than what type of metal it is passing over. It is a crazy thought, but this is a crazy thing happening. R.L.

 

[Jackpine Savage]

I think you got it RL. The better centered the sweep the better the "read" especially on the tough ones. I did however see the same thing on those older nickels reading high. I always attributed it to a quirk in the software under certain ground conditions but, I could be wrong on that for sure. The MXT did it also on rare occasion here.
Tom

 

[HotTexas]

To me a good target for a detector would be something round and flat, and is in the ground flat, it could have been that the coin was turn up on the edge. so the detector thinks its a nickel but turned up on the edge it changes the thickness so it might hit a high tone.

Just another thought!
Johnny

 

[BuckeyeBrad]

The very first old deep coin I dug when I first started with the C$ was a 10" buffalo and it read like a copper coin. Loamy original dirt that had a fair but not excessive amount of iron mineralization. Don't know why but it obviously DOES happen. Nature of the beast and it definitely beats a bunch of "down averaging".

 

[Dan-Pa.]

I have gotten deep nickles with several brands and all read high. Matter of fact was hunting silver and nickles were notched out and when brought to surface would not read as they were notched out so there is just something that causes this on deep nickles with many detectors and have no ryhme or reason..Reading your post I feel the Coinstrike may need a tuneup or operator error may be the problem as your problems sounds different...

 

[jackintexas]

I have had it happen several times. I was using a non metered detector and had pull tabs discriminated out and still sometimes I get nickels. I think the the nickel and the matrix in some areas combine to give the nickel a higher conductive sound.