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E-Trac Depth Question

M

millejn3

Member
Hello everyone,

I have been detecting for a little over a year now. I started with a F4 and ended up with an E-trac about 6 months ago. I pretty much coin hunt only. I'm up to 3 seated dimes for this year with the oldest being 1842 and the usual Rossie's and mercs here and there. All of the silver I have found has been 5.5 to 6 inches max. When I first started with the F4 I took some good advice from another detectorist and created a test garden with pennies, nickles, dimes and quarters at 4, 6, and 8 inches. The F4 wouldn't hit anything at 6 inches except a quarter. Many have talked about the hallo affect and say this is why. Well my coins have been in the ground for over a year now so I headed out to the coin garden with the E-Trac tonight. I was able to hit every coin that I had planted at 6 inches. BUT. nothing at 8 inches. I tried every program in my arsenal. Andy S. pattern, Roman coin pattern, and even completely open, Manual and auto sensitivity, +3, +2, +1, fast on and off, ground difficult, ever channel from 1 to 11, moving at a snails pace. I tried everyone elses setting that they told me to use but still nothing deeper then 6 inches.
I do want to make one thing clear, I love my E-Trac!!!! I very happy with it and I have found some GREAT stuff! But never deeper than 6 inches.
So heres my question; I see all of these you tube videos and all of these posts with people claiming to find dimes at 9 to 10 inches....How? Are they using something different than the stock coil? I cant even get a chirp out of mine more than 6 inches. I would love to figure this out and was hoping you all could get me headed in the right direction.

Thanks,
Jeff
 
Hi Jeff,

I've personally had coins hit strong in that 9-10" range with an IH at the 11"+ mark. The machine should hit an 8" coin really well and my experience is (in my test garden) that the 8" is harder to hit [it's an Indian].

You've tried manual, so I don't know why it won't sound off for you at a snail's pace. I will tell you my experience. In my test garden, with my detector set in Auto +3 (which is where I hunt 90% of the time) The Coil has to be moving a faster. I know people say to go slow, slow, but what is that??? Slow to me might be fast for others. Whose version of slow do we go by? As RayMo once stated, if you go too slow you'll fall asleep.

My swing in Auto +3 is about 2 seconds one way, then when I get a hit I zone in with the "wiggle" method. This seems to work well for me here. Now in manual I can move a lot slower and pick up the coins in the garden. My coins are 6", with the exception of the 8" indian.

I'm wondering if this isn't simply a case of soil type or something to that effect. I don't know your moisture there, here we are extremely dry and I mean extremely. Most of the old coins I've been finding lately have been around 4 inches....and I'm glad. Its like chipping through frozen ground.

Your right though, you should'nt have any problem hitting your 8" targets. I hope your able to get it worked out. Let us know what you find out. Is there any possiblity of another E-Trac'er in your area you could compare too?

NebTrac
 
Thank you very much for the reply NebTrac,

It was extremely dry here in central IL until about 3 weeks ago when we finally got some rain. It is starting to get that way again but not nearly as dry as it was this summer. I have hunted with some of my fellow club members that have a lot more E-trac exsperience then me and they also claim to hit much deeper coins than I have ever hit. I have used their settings but still no luck. I have even started taking a little more time on working out some of those little chirps that may be deep coins or iron falsing thinking that I was just not paying attention to what my detector is telling me. I have been thinking about giving a different coil a try. Maybe an SEF? Not to sure what to do right now but not giving up. I have a group hunt this weekend and I plan on giving the roman coin pattern a go to see how it works out for me. I usally use the Andy S. pattern in manual at 27 to 28 sensitivity 95 % of the time. I have found some great coins with it. Should I be using a choosen channel or just use noise cancel?

Thanks agian for your help
 
It's very strange that you don't even get a chirp. The deep ones I find sound nothing like a shallow coin, but they do make a noise. Try a test garden somewhere else, see what happens.
 
Something doesn't sound right for sure. If you're able to get one or two of those club members over to your coin garden, then maybe you can compare and get a real answer. The only other thing that comes to mind - and I need to do it too - is taking the coil cover off the bottom and making sure its cleaned out. Others have commented that it makes a difference.

About the channels, I don't really know. I generally hit noise cancel first time and then if I'm switching areas or its been a couple of hours I hit it again. One thing I do seem to notice is that I like Channel 11. Seems like I've made some good finds when the detector selects that channel. Funny isn't it.

NebTrac
 
Would it be a possible machine or coil problem? I just did some air tests with different parttens and sensitivities with a silver rossie. Best I got was 6.5 inches
 
See if you can borrow someone's coil to narrow down your problem. 6.5" sounds like somethings definately wrong. I can hit an 11" silver roosy in my test garden with my explorer. the vid bounces around a bit, but still gives a good digable signal.
 
Try upping your Volume Gain to 30 or 29 like in Andy's book. Leave Fast off and maybe try Deep on. Gain makes deep targets about as loud as shallow ones so as not to miss a deepie. Try a more open discrimination screen.
 
i planted coins in my test garden and didnt include the grass in my recorded depths. I measured 3" of grass - after I cut it! So figured the coil was at least another 2" above the coins than what I recorded.
 
stasys said:
make simple air test.
Click to expand...

I think he did stasys. Look up about 5 posts from yours.

NebTrac
 
Yes I did do an air test last night with a silver rossie. 6.5 inches is the best I could get. Just got home from work so I'm going to go play with it a little more and see what I can get. (My E-Trac that is...:laugh:) I will report back later with my findings but I'm not really sure what else I can try. One thing I will do is unplug the coil from the head and reseat it. At this point I'm just taking stabs in the dark at it.

Thanks agian everyone.
 
OK everyone, Here is what I have now and what I have done!

I unplugged the coil from the head - It did nothing
So - I hit master reset, then put Andy S. pattern back in the machine. went back to what I have been running which is gain 30 - deep on - ground difficult - trash high. Went out to do an air test and WOW!! I now I have a good SOLID tone at 8 inches and enough tone at 10 inches to make me stop and investigate!! I now feel much better about this whole ordeal!!! :wiggle: I also went back to the test garden and I have no problem picking up my 8 inch coins!!! :clapping:
Not sure why master rest helped but at this point I don't really care. I had 4 patterns in the machine that I was using and now I only have two. Andy S. and an Andy S. that I opened up a little. I'm looking forward to hunting tomorrow to see how things turn out.

Again, THANKS for and the suggestions and help everyone!!! Its very much appreciated!!! :cheers: :jump:

I will report back after the weekend to let you all know how things turn out.

Jeff
 
I bet your E-Trac is working just fine. Have a couple of your buddies with E-Trac experience test in your garden or on a target you can both sweep over. See how you compare.

The stock coil is a good compromise for average trash ect. A bigger coil in dirt/grass that has average trash will see more trash. In cleaner areas I have found that a bigger coil even one as big as the SEF 18 incher gained me about another inch or so. It was an improvement and it seemed the mid sized SEF coil 15x12 got just as deep as the 18x15 and had better target separation in light to moderate trash. The 18 inch coil was great for clean open ground where your want to cover a large area in a hurry. I hunted a side walk strip with the bigger coils after hunting with the stock coil and did find more older coins a little deeper that the stock coil had missed.

Another surprise was that the small coils like the Sunray x-5 coil seems so tiny, however I find good targets in that 6 inch range with it. That small coil has some great depth. Go figure. Maybe because it is able to see one target at a time.

I think soil conditions affect your depth for sure, larger coils get a little more depth depending on trash load, and then program adjustments.

Good Luck
 
Yeah. We ALL knew you needed to hit Master Reset....we just wanted you to figure it out for yourself - :nerd::lmfao:


Honestly! Way to think things through and get it working properly! I hope you get some deep ones tomorrow. We all learned from that one. Strange to say the least. Makes me want to Reset my machine now...

NebTrac
 
I wish we could know - what exactly changed.

Congrats with your fix regardless, Im glad you got it where you want it.
 
Ok everyone, Heres my report back after todays hunt and all the trouble I had with my E-Trac. 2 - Mercs....1 at 6" and 1 at a VERY strong 8" to 8.5" and 1 Rossie at 7" I do beleive my problem is solved. I talked with a few of my fellow club memebers about my problem and here is what we came up with; About 4 weeks ago we had a club silver hunt with lots of planted silver. Of course for this all day hunt, I turned my sensitivity way down. 8 if I remember right. 'MAYBE" the E-Tracs sensitivity stuck some how. It was reading fine on the out side scale but inturnally it wasnt. A STRETCH?!?!??? Maybe...not quite sure but all I know is before I hit master rest 6" was the max I could get out of it. Any way.....It worked and all is good now except I'm going to have to go back over everything I have hunted in the last 4 weeks!

O ya!, I forgot to mention the six wheats....oldest was 1918

Thanks everyone!!!!

Jeff
 
Well I, for one, am relieved. I've been sitting here at my computer ALL day just wondering.....:poke::clap: Now we just love to see pictures of your finds. Glad everything seems to be on up Jeff. Congratulations. Now if you'll excuse me....I've got to go Potty!:look:

NebTrac
 
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