Discrimination/Sensitivity ACE 250

[khouse]

You can also get falsing with bad coil technique. Keep the coil absolutely flat with the ground. Sweep 1/2 inch above the ground. DO NOT lift your coil at the end of your sweeps. Do NOT change sweep speeds mid sweep. I sweep pretty fast at 1 second per sweep. Overlapping by AT LEAST 50%. I feel that if your going to cover the ground then cover the ground. I may skip around some on a site until I find a good spot. Then cover that area real good. No need to walk a mile to get 20 targets when you can just go 20 feet! After all the more targets dug per hour the better you odds are for jewelry.

 

[Uncle Willy]

Practice makes perfect. It takes a minimum of 100 hours to familiarize yourself with a new machine - moreso if you've never used one. When I field test a new detector I'll spend a minimum of 60-80 hours with it in a multitude of locations and I've been at this gig for 46 years. Successful detecting is not as easy as it sounds or is portrayed to be.

Bill

 

[khouse]

Be thankful that after 100 hours you'll really get to know what it's telling you. Been with my wife since 1985 and still haven't figured her out! Sometime I wish I could just pull the batteries out!

 

[NM5K]

I dig most everything, but I like finding various relic type stuff in addition to coins.
But you are right about the bouncing ID's.. Usually trash, or rusty iron, nails, bottle
caps, etc.. Most all coins don't bounce much if any. I see quite a few coins that read
a higher conductivity vs the coin scale, but I just put that down to soil leaching.
Rust on iron is a very common cause of bouncing ID. The iron itself is fairly low
conductivity, but rust is pretty highly conductive. So most of those will bounce back
and forth. But another reason I often dig everything, even if it bounces like trash, is
once I pull it up, that's one less piece of trash to detect the next time around.
If I didn't dig bouncers, I would have missed a lot of stuff like old hot wheels cars,
weird relics, etc..

 

[Mick in Dubbo]

n/t

 

[Mick in Dubbo]

I'm glad to see that you are getting better results. The fact that the Ace has settled down because you knocked out tells me that your ground is mineralised. The new DD coil that is just coming out on the Ace 350 will make a big difference in helping the Ace cope with that. A DD coil reduces it's effect by about 70%. If you buy any other detectors in the future, then it would be a good idea to get one with a ground balancing feature. This will eliminate the problem you have had with the Ace. I had the same situation occur a few years back in a park by the beach. I was amazed at how mineralised it was and by knocking out those bottom 3 notches i had it operate fairly stably. If fact, even though it doesn't have a ground balance, it ran more smoothly than my XS Explorer in that park! I have no idea why, because the Explorers normally cope better than single frequency detectors in those situations. The good news is, that good targets will give you a solid repeatable signal, so they will always be able to be told apart from a false signal.
There is a bit of a trick I found that helps with pinpointing if the mineralisation ever overpowers the Ace. If you pinpoint over where the target is, guess where you think the target is, then release and reapply the pinpoint (called detuning) and whip the coil over the area, watching the ground closely for where you hear the signal It gives a fairly narrow signal. Not bad for a cheap detector!
Have fun with it.
Mick Evans.

 

[tony (Orlando FL)]

We all have been through it, thinking more sens is BETTER, right?

Anyways, Run the sens where you think you have to and when you find a good target that may be deep etc etc go ahead and reduce your sens one bump at a time and take note how far you can actually reduce the sens and STILL get the target. It may be a shocker to you. Usually, the lower the sens the MORE stability you gain which many times equals to more fun and a better day in the field.

Best of luck
Tony

 

[NM5K]

We all have been through it, thinking more sens is BETTER, right?

Sometimes it is... Sometimes it isn't..

Run the sens where you think you have to and when you find a good target that may be deep etc etc go ahead and reduce your sens one bump
at a time and take note how far you can actually reduce the sens and STILL get the target. It may be a shocker to you. Usually, the lower the
sens the MORE stability you gain which many times equals to more fun and a better day in the field.

I've done this test on many actual deep targets with the Ace 250. If it took high sensitivity to detect the deep
object, they almost always vanish to the machine if you lower the sensitivity. But I'm talking actual deep
targets that are near the limits of the machine. Of course the targets more in the middle depths will
be detected with the medium sensitivity settings.

Of course, running the sensitivity hot does cause more falsing, and I don't recommend it for beginners
first learning the machine. I'm just stating this as you most definitely will miss the deepest targets if
the sensitivity is set to mid range. I've proven it to myself over and over again on real actual targets.
But running that hot takes some experience to be able to tell what is a real hit, and what is a false hit.
Basically, real targets repeat, false targets don't. Also, the pinpoint mode can be used to verify if a hit
is real or not.
Some can handle the extra chirping, but others, it will drive them crazy..
It doesn't bother me much at all, but I'm pretty used to the 250..
I always recommend beginners start midway and then adjust it more to suit the ground conditions after
they are used to it. You don't really want to run 3-4 when the ground is good enough to run 6-7
fairly quietly. You will miss deeper targets. I let the ground tell how hot to run.
Myself, I always adjust to suit the particular ground I'm detecting. If the ground is good and quiet,
I'll crank it up.. If too much falsing, crank it down a bit. As an example, I can run nearly full blast
most of the time up at my property in Oklahoma. It's out in the sticks, no power lines, houses, etc close by,
and good ground. Even at nearly full blast , I get little falsing even with the big coils.
But here in Houston, I usually can't run quite that hot unless I want chirp city..
I usually average 5-6-7 here in town, except the sniper I can usually crank up to 7-8 range.

 

[murfar1]

You guys are right on with your latest comments. I was out today and experimenting with that very thing. I had notched out everything except nickels and silver coins using custom. Put the sensitivity way up to max just to see what it would give me. Started getting trash hits. Wheaties were still showing up though. I know the rest were trash though cuz I dug em. Started backing down sensitivity one notch at a time as you guys suggested while leaving the notches the same. I ended up on the 5th notch when it started settling down and picked up 3 quarters and 4 dimes without most of the trash hits. Think I could have taken it down another notch but didn't have time. Yeah I know I can lose a lot of good targets with all that notching out but for me right now, that's not the main issue. It was a lesson well learned. Now I can start experimenting with taking some of those notches out. Understand from your comments though, this is going to vary according to the ground. Have a new site picked for tomorrow which hopefully is still fairly undisturbed.

 

[slingshot]

5 bars sensitivity is 3 bars below the max,, not 1 bar. Could you still be pretty high?

 

[murfar1]

Yeah I could have taken it down another notch or so but ran outta time. It was getting interesting. Trying some new ground later today. Will run through the paces again see what happens.