Silverman,
I'm a new user of the E-trac myself, having bought mine back in November, and I know your frustration. There ought to be a sticky at the top of this forum for new E-trac users because essentially the same questions come up routinely. As you've done, when I got my E-trac I started reading any available information on whatever sites I could find. I'm sure you also found that there's a ton of information out there, almost too much. But, if you weed through it all, you'll find some golden rules that most new users should adhere to and follow religiously. Of course, there's always exceptions to any rule, and some people will be able to use an E-trac without problems and be successful fairly quickly. For the rest of us, though, these rules which I've gleaned from reading and applied to my own learning process, seem appropriate. Others will eventually chime in here and offer additional input, but if you dare deviate from these basic tools, you will feel frustration and want to leave the E-trac behind and find another machine. Patience, grasshopper!
1. Get your machine. Play with it. Push all the buttons and tinker with it to your heart's desire. Then set it aside for a bit. Get out the owner's manual and read it, cover to cover. Don't skip pages or chapters. Cover to cover, page one to the last. Digest that for a day or two, then go get your machine and put it next to you on the sofa. Start reading the manual again and as you read it, apply what you've read by pushing buttons on the E-trac and seeing what happens. This will give you a great foundation for how to set-up the machine when you do take it outdoors.
2. Second, and you could skip this one, but I found it highly beneficial. Buy the Andy Sabisch book, "The Minelab Explorer & E-Trac Handbook". It gives a deeper understanding of what the machine is capable of and how to use the menus to set it up for your specific requirements. As I said, you can skip this one, but after buying a $1500 machine, what's another 25 bucks, right? You will learn from the book and it's a good reference for when you have problems later on.....and you will have problems.
3. Build yourself a test garden in your yard. Andy's book tells you how to do it, but if you don't want the book the basic process is to bury a variety of coins in a patch of ground that you've cleared of all metallic objects. As you bury the coins keep a record of what's in each hole and how deep it is, for example, Hole 1 is a Standing Liberty quarter at 5 inches. Sabisch's book recommends using golf tees to ID the center of each buried target, but you could sketch a diagram in a notebook as well. I wouldn't recommend relying strictly on memory though. Mix in a little trash with the coins in some of your holes because you'll run across those targets when you start hunting for real. A rusty nail alongside a nickel, a pull tab two inches over a silver dime in the same hole, etc. Start with some basics and you can always add to your garden as you become better with the machine. What is the advantage of this? Although the E-trac has two-tone and four-tone modes, it truly shines in the multi-tone mode. But the multi-tone mode is a hard one to learn if you've never been exposed to it. That's where a lot of new users become quickly confused and frustrated. In the multi-tone mode, even with some levels of discrimination, every piece of metal that you swing over (that hasn't been discriminated out) is going to give you a tone of different pitch and volume. The majority of those tones are trash targets, but some are the good ones that you want to hear. It takes many hours of practice to be able to tell the difference. You'll get some of that practice in your test garden. You have a pristine spot that has only good targets and tones (other than any trash you might also have buried along with your good targets) to swing the coil over. Go out every day for a couple of weeks and spend an hour or two learning the good tones. It's time well spent.
4. The next level is to venture out looking for some real targets. You likely won't be ready for that old RR depot yet though. There's probably a good bit of trash at that place and, as you found out, the myriad of signals will be confusing. Stick to sites that will mainly have shallower, more modern (clad) coins and lesser amounts of trash. What I did at this stage was go out to my test garden a few minutes before I was driving out to detect a real site. I'd hit all my test targets so the tones were fresh in my mind, then I'd go to a park or school grounds close by and start working a grid. There will be some trash and you will miss some signals for good targets, but you'll also be surprised that you pick up a good amount of good signals to dig. Your practice and reading will be combining to bring you success. Did I mention during this period that you're running the Minelab stock coin program with the sensitivity set at Auto +2 or 3? I hadn't even downloaded any custom patterns when I was beginning this level. Many people had written suggestions that you should spend a bunch of hours at this level....50 to 100 hours! I'm still in this phase myself, although being retired I go out almost every day the weather lets me. I feel like I'm learning more each time I go out and have a solid foundation for success.
5. After you've built some experience with the machine using the BASIC methods and means, then it'll be time to try some advanced menu settings or sites with higher densities of trash. That'll be the time to try Two Tone Ferrous, Manual Sensitivity, etc. If you didn't frustrate yourself along the way, you'll have the machine for many, many years, right? Take your time and learn it slowly and advance only when you feel you're truly ready to advance. There'll always be some targets to find, we'll never get them all.
Hopefully, this lengthy reply will assist and not rile you. As I said, others with much more experience than me will probably add on some suggestions, but I thought you might benefit from the experiences of someone who is new to the E-trac, also. Good luck. Be patient. Practice and read. Don't give up on it.!
