Help with settings for mineralized ground

[Choc-Minelab]

Hunted a 1892 home yesterday that had some bad ground, I assume. When I would dig a target and set my Garrett pinpointer on the ground, it would start beeping and vibrating. I would move it, but same results any place I laid it. The ground was so bad I had a difficult time finding any target even with the pinpointer. I found a 1901 Indian, but nothing else. I assume extreme mineralization. What machine settings should I try?

 

[Sir Digs A Lot]

Are you sure it was the ground and not the pin pointer? Mine will starting beeping at anything when the batteries are dying.

The manual states ground coin for highly meneralized soil.

 

[JamesM]

Yup...Tone profile of your choice, Ground Coin target separation, and you are probably going to have to lower the sens, if the machine is chatty. Start in auto sens, and go up or down until you find the setting that makes the CTX behave.

 

[Choc-Minelab]

Hopefully the battery is not bad, only got 5-6 hrs on it. If the battery checks OK, would this be a sign that the pin pointer is bad, unstable?

How can you determine if the ground is mineralized, or full of Iron. I did read in the instruction manual about setting in "Ground Coin" for mineralized ground and "FE Coin" for a lot of Iron. Just need to know the indicator of how to tell what more prevalent in the ground I am hunting, mineralization or Iron. Also, does any one of the Tone profiles do better for different ground conditions?

 

[JamesM]

Hopefully the battery is not bad, only got 5-6 hrs on it. If the battery checks OK, would this be a sign that the pin pointer is bad, unstable?

How can you determine if the ground is mineralized, or full of Iron. I did read in the instruction manual about setting in "Ground Coin" for mineralized ground and "FE Coin" for a lot of Iron. Just need to know the indicator of how to tell what more prevalent in the ground I am hunting, mineralization or Iron. Also, does any one of the Tone profiles do better for different ground conditions?

I don't know whether you mean 5-6 hours of on time or a 5-6 hour hunt. I hunt nearly every day, and my Propointer battery will last 2-3 weeks. Some of the Propointers have been known to false.

As far a telling the difference between iron and highly mineralized soil, you ought to be able to hear the iron (provided it isn't disced out) and or check the TID. If you are using auto sens, a good indication of mineralized soil would be a sens reading below 19 after giving the machine a few minutes to stabilize. In the area I hunt in (moderate to mild), my sens will run from 22-28, using auto +2.

 

[aurumpro]

Gday
I hunt mineralized ground hear in Australia all of the time, and our ground is so old, oxidised and iron rich that you can pick it up with a magnet.

Settings:
Sensitivity
Auto

Target seperation
-Ground Coin target seperation, ground coin is best used in mineralised ground.
-High Trash target seperation, can also be used in mineralised ground with allot of trash to good effect.
Avoid using the other target seperation options as you will get alot of falsing and loose depth.

Recovery Fast
-ON, I use Recovery Fast as it aids in target separation in a clutterd environment.

Recovery Deep
-OFF, I do NOT use recovery deep in noisy mineralised ground conditions as you will get allot of falsing.

Discrimination
-I use both open screen and discrimination in mineralised ground.
When using discrimination I lower the Iron level to about 3-4 lines lower than normal as you can still get some blending with the ground that can pull the T.I.D. down a bit.
In the same mode I also set up a full open sreen pattern and use combined audio, I sett the Fe line at 32Fe as this low setting helps the audio Id of the good targets from the ground particularly in an area with some falsing I set the Iron tone at 75htz and all of the other bins much higher with the first one at 500htz so as there is a big difference in tone to aid in audio Id of good targets in the clutter.

Finaly I always ground balance the detector in mineralised ground

 

[aurumpro]

Forgot to say:
You can also use the volume gain to help eliminate falsing in mineralised ground by lowering the volume gain you can get away with a higher sensitivity and still get rid of the falsing.
But its a double edged sword so experiment and play the v-gain against the sensitivity and see if you can reach an acceptable compromise.

 

[squirrel1]

What was your suggested sensivity reading? How high did your CTX run in auto? Bad ground would be something like an auto plus 3 sensitivity reading of say 21 or less. Try running a manual ground balance with manual sensitivity as high as you can without a lot of falsing. Make sure you do a noise cancel and slow your sweep down. And the big 17 incher coil is probably a no no in real harsh soil.

 

[gitterdug]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b85S2hUFXeA

I found this enlightening. Once I saw this I thought.....well......that is logical. I just never thought of it before. New trick, Old Dog......Might give it a shot.

HH

Dennis

 

[nolanation]

My pinpointer does the same thing in certain areas around here, just bad ground. Tune it to the ground like the above video shows, also make sure you don't push it into the ground when searching for the target, that makes it worse.

 

[Choc-Minelab]

Gitterdug - Perfect video. That is just how my pin pointer is acting in this particular yard. I will give the video solution a try. Something else that is interesting, but have not tried, emailed to me from Bart (BigBoysHobbies), he said "you do know you can't leave it on for more than a minute. If you do you have to turn it off and back on to reset it. That is totally normal."

aurumpro - Great information and details. I think I have my volume gain at 18, but had not thought about changing it lower to prevent some falsing in the mineralized ground. What are your sens readings in your mineralized ground?

JamesM and Squirrel1

 

[JamesM]

JamesM and Squirrel1

 

[Choc-Minelab]

I went back to the house this evening for a 1hr hunt to try out some of the recommendations. Settings: ground coin, 50 CO, coin pattern, fast recovery, sens auto +2. Noise cancelled, then ground balanced. The sens readings were 17/10. The suggested sens of 10 seemed low. It did run smooth. I found a couple of coins. Thanks for the help.

 

[aurumpro]

Gday t8474kj1
Mate, I try to run my volume gain as high as possible as it amplifies the weak targets.
But in high mineralisation it can also amplify the ground signal that you are trying to get rid of, so I recommend running it one number below where it becomes noisy.
Same goes for Recovery deep, but use it if you can as it is beneficial if its not falsing.
Sensitivity I also try to run as high as possible too, usually its on +3 but I lower it as needed but first I try using the V-gain to deal with the falsing rather than lower the sensitivity.
And I NEVER use manual in mineralised conditions as Auto is much better as it is actually tracking and individually adjusting each of the 3 frequency's independently to suit the ground.
Manual fixes the 3 frequency's at the value you set them at, so you will only be able to set them at the level where falsing begins in ONE of them but the others may have the potential to be set much higher but you have limited them by using manual sensitivity.

Anyone who recommends manual in mineralised ground clearly dose not understand how the sensitivity function works.

 

[squirrel1]

Running manual sensitivity in bad ground is not a bad thing as long as the CTX is not too chatty. Even in good ground the CTX in high manual sensivity settings will become overly chatty at times. But guess what you probably won't be digging many 9 inch dimes when running in auto sensitivity. Not that it' s not possible but you will find deeper coins generally in high manual sensivity settings. A suoer quiet metal detector is not always the best way to run one for the deepest of finds. But each have their choosings. Good luck.