Depth Questions on CXIII

[Neil in West Jersey]

I have owned the CXIII without the PowerMaster since March. I RARELY get readings more than 3 inches, and have never had a find at more than 5 with the 8.5 inch coil. I keep the sensitivity as high as possible in the ALL METAL mode most of the time.

I did a test in my own garden with a clad quarter and I got a shaky signal at 7 inches. and a solid at 5. A Clad dime was not found at 4.5 Will a tune-up help?

Am I just being impatient and too picky?
Am I just searching in the wrong places?
Can the depth meter be calibrated wrong? I keep forgeting to bring a ruler.
Can the unit be in need of a tune up?
Is the unit not up to par with the newer technology??

 

[jeff@middlesex]

Well a little tune up may not hurt. Maybe your coil is on it's way out. If I was running in all metal I would not crank the sensitivty. That may be actually limiting the amount the performance you are getting out of your detector.

 

[ernied]

a tune up might help.you could have a bad coil as jeff said.the ground also makes a difference on how deep it will read.i had a cx and it would read a quater a 8 inches my garrett freedoms would also read it so would my silver saber but the ground is good here.yours may have more iron or other minerals.also remember you detector will sound off on a target deeper than it can id it.

 

[Skillet]

Hello Camman,

Have you tried an airtest yet? I'm guessing that you should be able to hit a quarter about 9" out and a dime at around 8".

The ground you're hunting/testing in can make a huge difference also. The ground around my home is tough, a dime buried 4.5" deep barely makes a squeak... even my Tejon doesn't hit hard there. I can dig a hole 6" deep, drop in a quarter, run my coil over the hole and get nothing there... this is even before the hole gets back-filled!

Yet I can drive 6 miles west and hunt a park where I've planted some coins and a 6" dime hits loud and clear on every machine(six) that I've got! Newly buried coins can be tougher to hit too as they aren't "haloed" like the older stuff.

The older Garretts can produce very well, I've got a 1000PM from the mid-nineties, but what I've found is that they don't seem to hit as well on the lower conductivity targets (nickel range) as well as some of the newer machines, particularly when higher levels of discrimination are used.

Example: just 'notching-in' nickels on my 1000 will mean a weaker signal on them. If I just notch out small iron instead, leaving all the other notches up, the machine will hit them (nickels) deeper and stronger. My 250 will hit small gold and nickels a little harder than the older 1000 will. I would guess that your CX is about the same. Now the 1000 will hit dimes etc. about as well as any, it just seems to suffer some on small gold and such.

Sorry to be so long-winded. Hope this helps some. You might try borrowing another Crossfire coil if you can and see if your performance is the same. As last resort, you can send it in and have Garrett give it a check up.

Good Luck!
Skillet

 

[Uncle Willy]

Yeah freshly buried coins are often difficult to impossible to detect due to an effect known as Metallurgical Phenomenon.

Bill

 

[Uncle Willy]

Have you air tested your detector. Although this isn't conclusive it will give you a general idea how your detector would perform under ideal conditions. I would also drop your sensitivity and expeeriment with different levels. To high can often work against you. When you crank it high you're not only makinmg the coil more sensitive to the target you hope you will find but to everything else in the ground also. Sensitivity is not selective.

Bill

 

[Neil in West Jersey]

Did the air test...Quarter: Just under nine inches. Dime: about 8 inches.

I have concluded the following:


A) I probably did not account for the fact that most finds are going to be in the first few inches due to the fact that that is where most coins, especially newer ones, are.

B) I shoud carry a tape measure to see how accurate my depth readings are. I get the feeling that what my detector may say is "two plus inches" is actually about four inches down. Does anybody ever feel that the readings are off on the unit?

 

[Skillet]

I used to get discouraged about not finding deep coins until I realized that in many of the areas I was hunting, the layers of junk were so thick that it was hard to even get a signal down past 3" without hitting a pulltab or chunk of foil.

Take for instance: a coin buried in your yard; your machine hits it easily from all directions. Now lay a piece of foil or a pulltab just an inch or three away from that spot. Chances are the coin is now effectively invisible to your machine, or may just hit from one direction.

Try running in all metal on some of your sites, if you're getting multiple signals with every swing, then junk may be masking some good finds. I know from using test plots that my machines will find deeper coins... but when hunting, we often just find the shallow stuff because it's above the blanket of trash.

That's why I'm a huge fan of smaller coils and have them for nearly all of my machines. In parks, etc. that have seen continual use over the long years, there are likely more good silver coins masked by trash than there are coins "just too deep" for your machine to find. Your airtests sound about right.

Again, long-winded response, but depth questions aren't always simple to answer. Too many variables!

Good Luck, HH
Skillet

 

[Neil in West Jersey]

Thanks for some great advice!!!

 

[Uncle Willy]

No detector is 100% accurate on anything and many things effect readings, including depth. But if you got nine inches with an air test then you should do close to that in the ground.

Bill

 

[John-Edmonton]

n/t