Disc or ground balance

[saltwater jim]

Im finding i can ground balance in the water to run somewhat smooth but still need to retune, no mineralized beaches in florida, all white sand. So im guessing machine is iding salt as a target which is a low conductor like gold. I keep reading the depth you lose by ground balancing

Now im running disc at 3 without ground balancing , still get high falses when i swing coil at the end but can here targets thru the drift.

So anybody have a idea how much depth you lose by running in disc3 , i can run my sens at 11 with lower disc

Question is ground balance or lower disc which would lose the least depth

thanks all )

 

[Atlas]

I just re-read Steve H's blog on the ATX from Hawaii.

His set up is Disc at 3. Sens at 3 to 7 and he GB's over basalt hot rocks (which you don't have ).

Discrim at 3 seems to get rid of the falsing from the salt water.

I've never run mine in salt but would try lowering sens with Disc at 3 and see if you can get stabilization. I would also try this while using GB and with out to see if it makes a difference.

One other question. Are you hunting in the surf or fully submerged. Wave action around the coil and housing could create some falsing.

Best of luck and HH

 

[saltwater jim]

Hi atlas in knee deep up to neck deep in the salt water I went out today and had disc at 3 with sens at 12 i still get rising volume when coil is at end of swing or wave goes over it, still can hear targets though i think maybe this is better than ground balancing for losing less depth. Do you round the ground tracking im thinking may try it fast never used it before thanks jimmy

 

[stephenscool]

I'm having similar issues on wetsand. If the sensitivity/discrimination is running hot I get an almost constant signal (1 red led). Only way to shut it up is lower the settings, which eliminates deep depth. Ground balancing has no effect running hot. My other pi detectors run smooth on this beach without gb and running hot... Not the atx though

 

[Atlas]

I have only run mine in fresh water but in areas of high ground mineralization (tons of black sand). So a little different setting than FLA.

Anyway I would try lowering the sensitivity a bit and see if that helps on the falsing issue. Maybe it will smooth out at around 8-10 on the sens. I still think the disc at 3 is appropriate for the salt.

I have only (95%) run with fixed GB and have not hunted with the tracking much so really couldn't say.

The guys who were not doing a GB were hunting on dry and wet sand and were able to maintain very steady coil control which is key for not using the GB. Otherwise they would get a rise in threshold with the rise/fall of the coil. I do know that the ATX will pick up my scoop at 3' distance so any metal near the coil could also be setting it of if the threshold rise were say at the end of a swing to the right and your scoop was on the right side.

I would try again with Disc. at 3, Sens at 8, then manual GB and if that doesn't work try the auto GB. I remember from my last FLA trip that my CTX was giving lots of falses in the surf and I had to back the sens off to 50% or so to get it to smooth out. I kind of gave up on it in the surf and switched to my Excal. and that is generally run at 50% or less on the manual sens. for stable operation.

Good Luck

 

[saltwater jim]

I wonder what the pulse delay is at 3 any idea before i got atx i used dual field which ran real smooth in the water however the delay was preset at 20 us tm thinking the 3 on the atx must be still lower than the whites detector any ideas thanks jimmy

 

[stephenscool]

Sensitivity at 8 will lose a lot of depth from what I can see. Running hot is truly a deep detector

 

[saltwater jim]

Agreed thats why i think running delay at 3 with sens around 10-12 may be the best however not sure i will get those deep sounds thru the noise

 

[stephenscool]

Tried that too... Still get a red led 1 even with gb. Thinking I will stick with my tdi more often