Eagle II SL Broken...? Or maybe I am doing something wrong...:sadwalk:

[sofiap]

Hi all!

Well, I was really happy when my "new" Eagle II SL arrived in the mail last week. I ordered it all the way from the US, and I live in Japan. It is my third detector. The first was one that no one has ever heard of, a Famous Trails, the second I recently purchased, an Excalibur II and the third is this Eagle II SL, which I was hoping that my husband would enjoy using.

I had heard such good things about it, in the reviews and in the forums, it seemed simple and like a good machine, so I ordered it off of Ebay. It was pretty pricey for such an old machine, and at this point, I am kind of wishing that I had bought a newer machine like an M6 or AT Pro for the 250 extra it would have cost...

We have used it a few times. I read the manual. I am not sure what I am doing wrong. Here are some things that it does.

- After selecting the program and doing AIR/GND, it does not immediately give VDI numbers. I have to press buttons and change stuff for it to respond.
- I cannot seem to adjust the volume.
- When it does give a VDI signal, it is not something that happens over and over. Even if I go over the target several times, the number either does not appear or another number appears. Like 17 or 19, or 85 then something low like 30 something. It often seems really random, especially when things are still in the dirt. Sometimes it isn't random, though, like once we got a can out of the hole, it gave a solid 95 ever time, but when it was in the hole, it was 85 or 34 or 95 or other numbers or no number. The deeper the hole got, the more it gave a 95 or a 05 , which we assumed to be some iron at a deeper level. When we air tested it, it would come up with two signals for my gold wedding ring, and two signals for another piece of jewelry, three signals for a nail clipper. The platinum ring was a 17 or 19 every time.
- Often there is no VDI signal at all, but it still beeps loudly. I thought that this must be iron, but iron has a signal from 00 to 09, right?

We have air tested it, tested it in the mountains in a gravel parking lot, and in a trail area.

I was wondering if it is broken and I should try to send it back and get a different machine,
or
if it is broken but it is such a good machine that I should send it to White's so they can fix it.

Thanks a lot in advance, guys.

-Sofia

 

[Flintstone]

Hi Sofia,when you do the air/gnd, hold the detector in the air at wast hi, when it beeps, put it on the ground and press the Gnd. It should beep no more than 3 times, if it beeps more than that move and start over. I hope this helps, i have one and they do grate, Dean

 

[sofiap]

Thanks, Dean!
Yes, I read raving reviews about their depth and performance...that gives me some hope!

Anyway, it only beeps twice, I have been calibrating it to air and ground as in the directions, and if it gives some strange response, I do it again in another place.

Is this behaviour normal?

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Well, for starters, whether or not you have an accurate ground balance or not, would not seem to have any bearing on the particular questions you go on to detail about (TID repeatibility issues in air tests, etc...).

But as per ground balancing, if you have to walk out to the middle of an asphalt street (to make utterly sure there is no metal underground), do so, just for practice purposes to start. Because there are so many people who look at a given spot of ground, and assume "it's clean here" (because they don't happen to see any hubcaps or sprinkler heads there). And they simply have no idea how much junk there can be in the average front of back yard of a home (and have come down on a can or whatever, that was just barely under the turf, un-seen to the naked eye).

When I had my eagle, and when it would give the "all-clear" indication (that I had successfully balanced it to a clean stretch of ground), I would STILL take no chances, and would subsequently re-pass over the spot (where I'd balanced it to) in two tone mode (which gives both the all-metal sound and disc. sound at the same time) to utterly make sure there hadn't been any metal there. Because smaller rusty iron, IMHO, can be interpretted by the machine as a part of the ground mineral matrix makeup. If I suspected by the test there had been any metal close, I would keep repeating till the spot I was balancing too came up in the test of being totally free of signals (just takes a few seconds and becomes second-nature after a bit of practice).

But anyhow, on to your other questions, they are all TID related.

First thing you need to know, is that the Eagle is a fast swing/motion machine. So to illustrate this: if you swing a nickel (for example) at 6" away from the coil consistenly, try this: Swing very fast at 6" away, and make mental note of the boldness and repeatibility of the TID registering on your screen. Now try this: Still swinging that coin at 6", slow down the swing to a mere crawl, and you will see a de-grading of the signal TID strength, right? And likewise, if you weren't exactly centered, or waffled in and out with your distance to the coil, etc.... All those things affect how accurately the TID will be. Hence there is sometimes a "bounce" in TID's, depending on the user's swing speed, close-ness of the target to the coil, centering over the actual target 9in relation to the exact center of the coil), etc....

And it will depend on the settings you have chosen (or were pre-set by the machine, etc...). For example, there is a setting on there (I can't remember if it's a part of the pre-set programs you might have elected to go with) that makes the machine simply not display any TID #'s you do not specifically have edited in. Contrast to another menu option which allow all the TID #'s to appear on the screen, whether or not you have them edited in as "accept", or not. (but of course, if you have them edited "out", they would not give an audio signal, yet their #'s WOULD be on the screen). When I used the Eagle, I always chose the option of seeing all the #s, even if they were disc'd out, so that I could visually seen the bounces (rather than some bounces "in" the range of being on the screen, while other bounces were "out" of the range, of what you had in your edit program).

so go into your menu, and make sure you have the option to see all your #'s, whether or not you have edited them into your disc. program (yup, even iron #'s well below zero, etc....). Of course if you've opted to disc. them out, you will merely see them flicker on the screen, yet not come in to the audio, because, of course, you've disc'd them out. Unless, of course, you've ALSO chosen the two-tone mode, where you will hear rejected targets in a lower tone (like iron, or foil, or whatever your program disc's out) and your accepted targets in a higher pitch. And in all cases during this two tone mode, you see the corresponding #'s on the screen, if you've chosen the menu option to hear them.

All the things I'm telling you, btw, are only for disc. mode. Obviously pinpoint all-metal mode is a non-motion mode (assuming you've turned ratchet pinpoint off, which is VERY annoying pre-set of theirs)

As for the TID changing once you've broken open a plug, yes that was a tendency of those older machines (but could be used to glean info). If the signal jumped to the '90s after breaking open a plug, it was (to me) always a good sign of a potential deep coin, for turf hunting. I think the reason for this "skew" while scanning over an open hole, was of course because now you have the machine trying to read un-broken ground (based on the balance setting you had previously set it for), yet it's going over a cavity, thus throwing off the balance for that micro-second, thus skewing the TID of the target that is still deeper yet.

Hope all this helps.

If you choose these menu options, and play with swing speed more, I believe this will help some of your confusion, when you learn how to "bring them in" better. It's the same in the field during detecting: Sometimes a target waffles in and out of acceptance range. But you will learn to isolate the target's location (by criss-crossing and "x-marking the spot" to get the center of the target under your swing), and then momentarily playing with swing speed (which gives a lot of information with the eagle, as it's a very motion-oriented machine). For example: rusty bottle caps "break up" with a slightly higher swing speed, etc... And weaker deeper signals can momentarily be strengthend (so to speak) by giving it a momentary faster "whip" over the center. This characteristic was even more pronounced in earlier whites, like the earlier 6000d's, etc.... But continued all the way through the xlt. Some people like that, but all in all, today's machines are much slower sweep speed, than the Eagle.