Hello All

[Anonymous]

I think I just spent the worst week I can recall in years with the flu or "bug". I had my flu shots but this one hit then seemed to go away for a day then back with full force. (My 86 year old mother lives with us so tyring not to get her infected is always a major factor.) It took two days just to find a Dr. and then it took over an hour to get into the little room to be checked and then we waited another 30 min. The hospital and doctors are swamped with folks with the "bug" and complications from that.
Although we are still trying to find a way to get down to West Texas, Junction, it is not looking very good. I have been reading the post and swearing off of technical posts at least on the forums. It would be nice to have a way to really get into understanding the detector at an engineering level for those that care to do so but I have no solutions other than and email list.
The last test I was able to do with the Explorer was really interesting and is food for thought. I defaulted to the presents. Then decreased the Audio Gain to 1,2,3,4,5 in steps, Sensitivity to 16 semi-auto, and really like the way the machine responds. I still hit the test quater just fine and can do a much better job of telling co-located targets apart.
I had to stop and think back as to why I had Audio Gain so high and it was to improve the signal in pinpoint. I know a better solution is to locate the exact center of the target then go back to normal mode but get lazy. On deep coins the pinpoint does not give much of a signal.
My major conclusions were that Minelab really knows what they were doing with the presets. It was very easy to see why one engineer posted about a year ago that with the Explorer "more is less" or something like that about not setting the funciton real high. I am not sure where real high is anymore but enjoy the trip anyway.
I did not see any posts from Varmit and I hope he is still around as he is one fine engineer with some great explanations. We need guys like Varmit and Kirk and all the others to keep us on track.
I am still a little under the weather so when I get to feeling better I will call Minelab and see if they can/will answer a few question to help with some of our questions.
Have a good day,
Cody

 

[Anonymous]

Boy those tech's must really love your calls. In reallity have talked to many tech's from various companies and can usually set you straight tech wise or just plain old ground pounder wise. Do take care of yourself as some of these flu varieties can be deadly to older folks..and your health is your wealth...and techie or not are all learning a bit...

 

[Anonymous]

My wife had some flu bug 3 times,she lost her spleen several years ago so she's prone to sickness, I had the bug come around 2x and I never get sick, a week after I thought it was gone it hit again. Take it easy, get well, we need and enjoy your posts.
Dirtdog

 

[Anonymous]

Will be waiting for more posts.
HH,
Glenn

 

[Anonymous]

but I was hoping you were having too much fun out of town! Instead, I'm sad to hear you are in poor health and wish you the best for a speedy recovery.
I too look forward to your return to these pages, I hope my arguementative style didn't lead you to believe otherwise.
I've been playing around with my EXP II a bunch lately, and by playing, I mean just that. I set about to teach the machine all of the common US coins with the cursor at it's smallest. Basically just dots on a field of black to start with.
I used Edit mode to slightly stretch each "dot" to mimick the subtle variations I've seen on coins plucked from different depths, orientations, soil types. Right now I've got a pretty tight discrim pattern to play with, and it gives me a good opportunity to see the effects of the rest of the settings on the machine's response.
If I could wish for one addition to the EXP II, that would be a software upgrade to allow 4/8/16 user programs so I can utilize an entire "catalog" of discrim/reponse/etc settings for different purposes.
Even spent a few minutes in constant tone, zero discrim just to see how life used to be. I'm simply amazed to report I was pulling up pieces of "can-slaw" measuring less than a quarter inch on a side from as deep as 5-6 inches in North Georgia soil. Incredible.
Again, best wishes for a speedy recovery, and I hope to see you soon back on these pages.
DAS

 

[Anonymous]

[No message]

 

[Anonymous]

Varmint
Thank you and all for the well wishes. I hope the bug is dead but am guarded on this one.
After a lifetime of working with engineers and technical people you, Glenn, and the others make me feel right at home and I very much enjoy the post. The last thing I want is for someone to agree with me if I am wrong. I am a typical academic type that can watch a man dig a hole to see exactly how it is done. Ha ha
I am very interested in the areas you are playing with and have done a lot of the same with edit and learn. I guess counting 0 and then to 31 there are 1024 notches. They are represented by 32 tones that can be ferrous or conductivity. This is a question that has bounced around in my thinking and is if we are measuring conductivity or conductance. Since relative conductivity is the same for metal then is looks to me as if we are measuring conductance. That is what bugs me about using conductive tones. If we are measuring from the lowest to highest conductivity then iron to silver works great in my thinking. If not then ferrous content seems best since we go from iron to silver based on inductance. I am not attempting to beat a dead horse but will mess around with the two different tones when I can get out again.
It looks to me if we use conductive or ferrous tones (32) to find the approximate location of the dot out of the 1024 matrix then the Digital Display to define the exact dot then we are as close as we can get then use additional skills to further define the target. I also stretch and clip around on those dots and think with our own we have a better data set for the individual than the ones stored in the detector. I am not sure about the ones in the lookup tables but know that a quarter in my soil will cause a dot with a specific ferrous/conductivity reading to be indicated. When you use the learn function for thousands of targets it starts to become fairly obvious that goodies can hit just about anywhere on the display. Jewelry in particular is all over the place while most coins other than FE and some Indian Heads will fall in the right half of the display. I think it comes down to playing the odds since some trash is going to

 

[Anonymous]

I guess what I'm saying is I am prepared to experiment with accept/reject masks in order to take advantage of my machines capabilities. Of course I know that discrimination = lost good targets, but I either bought a machine BECAUSE of these capabilities, or I ought to just go back to a BFO style detector and dig it all.
As I said, I'm just playing around with the concept right now, but rest assured if I find myself in an area that starts showing some promise with regard to old deep silver (or GOLD!) I'll certainly be running in IM and digging more.
Again, this is the glory of the Explorer, it offers 100 machines in one, I'm not limited to any one configuration, I can run whatever seems right for a particular site and let the diggings themselves dictate what program will serve me best.
Have a great day, I'm off to do a bit of detecting.
DAS

 

[Anonymous]

You said <span style="background-color:#ffff00;">As I said, I'm just playing around with the concept right now, but rest assured if I find myself in an area that starts showing some promise with regard to old deep silver (or GOLD!) I'll certainly be running in IM and digging more. well you wont find anything showing any promise with regard to old deep silver or gold. if you cant get deep enough or because you have rejected them out come on think outside the Brain LOL Frank
</span>

 

[Anonymous]

I guess we should all get together and start a class-action law suit against Minelab. I mean, what good it having paid for all of those features, when it is "common knowledge" that the only proper way to run the machine is with IM set to -16 and watching the rythmic patterns created by the bouncing cursor.
Sorry, I have no need to get that extra 1/8th inch of detection depth, I paid HANDSOMELY for a full featured detector and I plan on using those features to make detecting enjoyable rather than some screach/groan fest that supposedly lets me snag those extra deep ones.
If all I was interested in was depth, I certainly would have saved the money, bought a PI machine, and had the lack of discrimination that seems to be the "common sense setting" anyway.
DAS

 

[Anonymous]

You know maybe you should have bought a PI unit but then you still wouldnt have the best machine on the market will that PI tell you how deep a coin is or what the ferris or nonferris content is NA and yes it is a known factor that to reach the deepest limits with any detector less discrimation and higher gain.So play, tinker or what ever you do with your full feather detector but the simple fact is we all would love to have a machine that reaches two feet in Bad grund but now realitey kicks in we who have to reach greater depths because most of the shallow coins are gone for the most part so we have to use the explorer to the best of our knowledge to get the deepest and learn what the machine is telling us IE if I have my EX useing alot of dis. it would be very easy to walk right over a coin that was a few inches deeper ( not 1/8 of an inch thats BS ) and you could be Dis. out iron that a very nice gold coin be laying right under it and you left it behind for a guy like me to find GOD I love you guys and dont get mad at the truth just go dig a hole .and try that thinking out side the BRAIN THING AGAIN I dont think it helped you last time Varmit and by the way dont you know us Southern boys eat Varmits LOL Frank

 

[Anonymous]

so I AM one of "us Southern boys" <img src="/metal/html/smile.gif" border=0 width=15 height=15 alt="">.
Seriously though, don't you feel a bit cheated knowing that the only way you can get any meaningful depth is to run your machine wide open?
Notice I said I intended to edit the pattern to open things up to some reasonable level, and if that doesn't work and the only way to get DEEP with the Explorer is to use it without the luxury of discrimination, I will certainly feel cheated. I used the figure 1/8 inch to make a point, but I'm sure you knew that but just wanted to pontificate a bit. I understand.
The Oh PUHLEEEZE part was my way of saying, you are talking to the wrong guy about not using his brain. Never once did I say I hoped to develop a catch all pattern that would be the only one I ever use, rather I'd like to have a pattern that makes sense for schoolyard hunting where clad, rings and other semi-predictable finds are the only likely finds. If I were to visit an unknown site that might offer more in the way of relics and such, certainly I'll be using the thing wide open to see what can be found. Such is the luxury of the Explorer, having the ability to configure it at the push of a button. Being digitally controlled, we have the luxury of returning to EXACT settings we've used to good effect before. Yes, a reasonable approximation can be made with all analog controls (Let's see sensitivity was set at about 11:37 oclock on the dial, GB was at 3 turns plus 3:15, and so on...) Notice it can only be approximate.
Using the S (discrim patterns) I can set up IM -15, IM -12, IM -8, Factory, Custom paterns A and B. All of them will get used at one time or another, perhaps all of them at any one given site. But if I feel like I need to run my $1200 detector at IM -15 everywhere I go in order to find anything, I'm afraid I spent money on the wrong unit.
Notice I DON'T feel that way, I still say there is room for patterns to take a bit of the load off of my processor (hearing) and place the load on the Explorer. Thats all I'm saying. We ought not be afraid to use the features, and if the concensus is those features are worthless, then, again, I feel like there are a number of fine detectors out there that go very deep if you turn the bells and whistles off.
I intend to put some time into developing these patterns for my own use, but I'm not the type to have the need to see anyone else use them. In other words, I'm happy you are happy with the wide open approach, and suspect you'll find more AND deeper finds than any pattern could, but I simply don't understand the concept of never using them. That leaves better than 50% of the Explorer design untapped, sort of a waste in my book.
So, I wish you the best of luck in your hunting, but I don't appreciate your inference that I'm an idiot for wanting to use the features I paid so dearly for.
DAS

 

[Anonymous]

[No message]

 

[Anonymous]

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