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F70 gets nuttin

D

dahut

Active member
Took the F70 to a section of the city where there is some urban renewal work scheduled. We found the old houses all torn up and ready to move to thier new location, but no scraping has been done.
Where we live, the good stuff is normally below a foot or so of trashy soil, so you must wait for the bulldozers to remove the surface layer. This "scraping" leaves only a small window of opportunity, between the scrap down and the new building. Some people call it "following the bulldozers". Timing is everything.

Sadly, we were too soon, by a long shot. All there was today were the usual trash items you'd find in any city scape:

DSCF0127.jpg


A couple of Wheat Ear cents, that's it. We'll be waiting on the dozers, I reckon....
 
have you ever taken your F-70 in an open field? That detector is unbelievable in that environment. Sometimes I get tired of all the tones banging in my head and go to a more quiet environment. You can tune that thing wide open. I really have fun with it in the woods or open field. I than go back to the old houses and seem to be more patient and find more. Not, that is what you need. I think it really reveals is potential there. Sorta like driving a muscles car in town. You need to take it out on the open road now and then.

Bad thing is, it not the detector as much as it is me. It is faster than my brain.
 
No, John I haven't had the F70 in a plowed field yet. I hadn't gotten it before the one field we were pounding dried up. That spot is now badly overgrown, so it is out of the question.
I have taken it to the deep woods, though, where I can wind it out. I do get your meaning about its potential.

When I first got it, it had a "microphonic coil," according to Mike Scott, Fishers service manager. It was very unstable, and in truth, was hardly usable. Apparently it was feeding back into the amplifiers, which was made worse by the high gain. This, in turn, created more feedback and so on....
Mike, who is a super guy, sent a new coil to replace the original. You may remember the incident earlier in the year.
Now it purrs like a kitten.

But, to be honest, I am not as concerned with it's super-powered, hyper-blastorific gain as I am on it's abilities to cope in the trash.
In these trashy lots of ours, I find it is best to hunt in factory preset, with maybe a slight boost to the sensitivity - just to sharpen things up. It does little good to wank on the preamp gain (THRESH) in this environment, so I just leave it at default.

I do set my DISC at 20, but spend about 10% of my time hunting in "0" DISC. This is so I can get a handle on the iron content of the trash. When I move to a new section, I also shift to this zero mode.
As with all processor based detectors, there is some lag time involved with signal analysis. I find the F70 to be very fast, as you say, but iron can really make things appear jumpy and erratic with any of these detectors - if it is masking you and you don't know it. Those of you who use or have used an ACE 250 will know what I mean... :thumbup:

I consider soil iron it to be one of the main problems urban detectorists face in the field. Most other trash is pretty easy, but iron is the "silent killer" of detecting success.

This is why I prefer a detector with tones, or at least some sort of iron ID. This way, I can be alerted over iron, so I know it is present.
I got many responses to good targets yesterday, for example, that were mixed audio, lo-hi, etc.. Often, there was a piece of iron trash or some other junk that was present, compromising the signal. Many users would have written it off as trash and kept moving. Once I knew this was normal behavior, thanks to the tones and mode switching available on the F70, I had no troubles.

Next step is to get one of the small sniper coils.
 
really slow or I will miss something. I mean slow. I love the smaller coil. I do most of my MD'ing with it. Most of the time I am in one tone. It helps my mind process better in trashy areas. I set my disc. at 5 most of the time. Your idea with the tones has some good merit. I know my Ace jumps from iron to cent means there is copper there. I got an iron to low silver repeatedly and it was a ring with a rusty pop cap stuck to it. That bell tone won't let copper or silver get by you.

[attachment 139847 3-26-08Bcapring.jpg]
 
Awesome that you were able to pull that. Alot of folks would have discounted that bouncing iron to nonferrous as trash. Its all about knowing your machine! (I even blogged about it)


w
 
That is awesome, John!
I have really become a fan of tones, myself. I rely on the audio a lot and tones adds to this reliance. I took stock of my detectors recently, and I found I have sort of morphed - only one has no tone ID at present. I am getting a Whites Classic ID soon, which is a monotone instrument - BUT it has a good iron ID response suite, between the audio and the display.
4 tones is my max, anyway. I usually use 4-tone with the F70. Too many, and I get overloaded too.

Yeah, I need to get one of those small coils. Probably do that for Xmas.
 
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