F5 Ground Balancing - Help, I'm Confused!

[Gerry M]

I have a Fisher F5 coming, it's in the mail right now.

I have downloaded the manual from Fisher Labs and I don't quite understand the Ground Balancing procedure on page 12.

It says to select All Metal mode - that is turn the discriminator off.

Then select some ground with no metal present using All Metal or Pinpoint mode (Pinpoint preferred).

If using Pinpoint, that means pressing down on the pinpoint button.

Then it says to pump the ground while pressing and holding down the Phase Lock button until phase value settles down.

This means holding down both the Pinpoint and Phase Lock buttons at the same time?

That doesn't sound right.

Can anyone straighten out a confused, soon to be, F5 owner??

 

[SteveP(NH)]

Its actually pretty easy - the first part of what the manual is telling (serarch in all metal or pinpoint) is to just get you to find a piece of ground that doesn't have any targets in it. So the first step is to find a spot with no targets. Then you press and hold down the GB or Phaselock button while you are moving the coil up and down from about 1 foot off of the ground to just above touching the ground. While you are doing this the detector is sampling the soil and calibrating itself to the local ground mineralization. Once the numbers on the display stop changing as you are moving the coil up and down then the machine has calibrated and you can start detecting,. Should take about 30 seconds tops.

 

[WV62]

As you pump the coil while hold the phase lock button you will notice the phase number on the right, when the setting number on the left somewhat match let go of the phase lock button and you will be ground balanced.

You can also just look at the phase number while pumping the coil and lets say you are in my park and the phase number its 56, you can just use the ground balance knob and crank it up or down to 56 and again you are ground balanced.

Also I tried what you were talking about and it takes 3 or 4 hands. I have tied ground balancing in all metal and didn't have any luck, so I am going to say it worked for me in disc mode.

You will like the F5 it is a powerful machine.

Ron in WV

 

[Gerry M]

Thanks for the responses, I'm not confused any more!

I see now how I was reading the manual wrong.

The ground balancing on the F5 now looks pretty straight forward.

I'm expecting it to arrive next week and it will be a jump forward from my present Fisher 1220-X...

 

[WV62]

Here is some pretty good settings depending on which coil you have coming with the detector.

Ron

 

[Gerry M]

OK Ron, thanks for the tips...