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Explorer frustrations

A

Anonymous

Guest
Today I went w/ two Fisher detector users to a "hunted out" and very trashy Civil War Camp. Lots of iron in the ground, and I figured a good test for the minelab.
My settings were: Iron Mask:10; sens: 27auto; FAST and DEEP, gain: 5.
I kept getting high pitched peeps out of all of the iron in the ground, and when I tried to concentrate on getting just a good,repeatable signal, I noticed that when I could "wobble" one, the crosshair would jump all over the screen, which can either mean trash, or a good target in close proximity to a bad one. It was always trash.
I found one piece of melted lead, while my buddies with the Fisher 1200 series detector (which is supposed to be LOUSY in iron) pulled out several three ring minies and two eagle buttons--good day for them, especially as hard as this place has been hit.
Also, the sounds I was getting out of the targets didn't conform to what I expected: iron was giving high pitched coin sounds, shotgun shell brass was giving a low tone and x-hairs in the pull tab range, and the melted lead also gave a low tone and crosshairs in the same range as the shells.
Any ideas on what I am doing wrong would be a big help, and I might sleep good tonight.
Thanks;
Greg
 
I know what you mean Greg - here's something I'm gonna try the next time I go out - try using ferrous instead of conductive audio - it's supposed to make all iron give off low tones. Like I said I haven't tried it yet, but it might help. Good luck out there! Jerry
 
Greg, It sounds like you just did not have good luck today. Your friends did not do that well to draw any conclusions. If they pulled 15 to 20 items each and you got nothing, you should start to worry. Make sure you are in NORMAL audio mode. Large metal items will usually sound somewhat like a coin on any detector. Since you were looking for artifacts, you have to dig every signal above the iron mask anyway. I would run the GAIN higher because it will boost the deep targets. Check your coil connection for tightness and try the noise cancel on top of the junk. If you run FAST and DEEP at the same time you will loose target seperation if the stuff is close together. If targets are few and deep, run DEEP. If targets are many and close, run FAST. Go try it again, Good Luck.
 
Lower your iron mask to at least -12 and use ferrous audio in the high iron.. might want to switch to manual sens and lower it to around 20-22
 
Jim is on the money... Reducing sensativity will allow the Explorer to run in a much more stable mode. You can also drop your gain a little bit and it might prevent some of those audio spikes.
Something that you might want to do is to experiment with your sweep speed. I have discovered that really slowing down helps a lot with iron falsing.
Finally, your worst iron falsing will happen when you have a piece of iron directly under the coil and another piece under or near the outer ring of the coil. Isolating targets (and digging trash if necessary) will let you systematically pull an area apart. As you get comfortable with it, you will eventually get to the point where you don't feel the need to dig the trash and can get in and pull the good target out of a pile of bad targets.
Anyhow, if you dig a small piece of iron and no longer get a good signal, it is almost a sure money bet that another piece of iron is nearby. You will stop getting fooled as frequently by detecting and isolating all of the targets within a few inches of the edge of your coil.
Tim
 
Useing Ferrous is the XS in iron.Try it and you will see the differance from the get go.I found a good program useing DISC and turning the iron mask off so you might want to try it.volume-max,gain 10.tont 4,varaiability 8,linits 10,sounds conduct,options advanced,responce normal/recovery fast and deep,sens 25 to 32 depending on the ground.I use this in civil war camps and its getting through the trash.Im sure it can be improved so let me know if you find something new.
 
Here's my two barbers worth...
Iron mask -16
Ferrous Tones
Manual Sens 24 or better
Gain 7
Boo hiss on Auto sens. I was passing over a tough spot of ground tonight that typically causes my Explorer to be unstable so I turned on Auto sens just for kicks. Worked great, perfectly stable. I soon got a nice high pitched target from two directions...but it stunk of iron to me, it was not a classic silver signal. I switched to manual sens, this boosted the sens back up to a decent level and big surprise the target now gave off a low iron tone. Auto sens is okay if you are hunting shallow stuff but you lose way too much depth, the deeper you go the more accurate the ID. My Joey falses on iron the stock coil will ID as iron, the stock coil falses on iron the WOT will ID as iron. The WOT falses on really deep iron but those are few and far between.
Why iron mask -16??? Well given that a single iron target can give off both a low and high iron signal as you sweep across it...if you are masking the low tone all you will hear is the high tone. Try this, setup a smart find screen with the left side blacked out like iron mask -10 and the iron mask set at -16. Hunt using the smartfind screen with the -10 pattern until you find a target, then switch to iron mask -16 and check the area again, notice how you can tell where all the targets are in relation to your target. I hunted like this for quite a while but got to like -16 so much that I hunt with no iron mask most all the time now.
I found a near perfect 1901 barber dime tonight. I'm sure it was on edge because it wasn't that deep, about 8 inches and those usually blast out loud with a gain of 7. It gave off a fair signal from one direction and a real crud of a signal from another, lots of low iron tones and the cursor was jumping over there. I don't know why because after I dug it there were no more iron tones. My guess is some iron rusted completely away and when I disturbed the dirt it vanished. I was running iron mask -16, sens 28 manual with a 15 inch coil and still this signal was not good. If I was running a lower sens with an iron mask of -10 I bet I would have walked right past this one.
 
You get a short choppy signal with that filter on, if you just sweep slow, creep if you have to you won't need that filter and you will get a MUCH better signal, robust. The Explorer is more accurate with just the deep filter on which results in digging less trash.
I was sure I hunted out a hot spot recently, then I slowed my swing speed to a creep and out popped another dozen silver coins so far.
 
I strongly second what Charles(NY)said below. Thats exactly what I'm running and I'm hunting in a ton of iron and pulling out lots of balls, lead bits, copper, brass, and a few Bust silver coins. I use digital, but you don't need to pay any attention to the screen if your are using iron mask -16 and ferrous sounds. Just dig all repeatable high tones. And one more thing, slow way down so the detector has a chance to sing out the high tone between all the low iron tones. Good luck! Ed
 
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