I hear you, Charles, on your preference for the smartfind screen. Me, I've always been a "numbers" guy -- my brain seems to like numbers and always has, and so when I started using the Explorer, I started on the digital screen and just never left it. But my point of view on that has always been that both methods, digital or smartfind, show the same thing (since pixels on the smartfind screen have a one-to-one correlation to number pairs on the digital screen). While you look for cursor positions, and patterns in the jumping/movement/fluttering of the cursor on the smartfind screen, I look for numerical values, and jumping/movement/fluttering on the digital screen. The patterns are revealed in both, it's just a matter of which way your brain can visualize best, I think.
So, along those lines, I think my point still stands. Here's what I mean.
It is my belief, based on experience using FBS, that the "magic" inherent in that platform is that instead of having target ferrous or non-ferrous information, and ground mineralization effects, all "wrapped into one receive signal from a single-frequency transmission," (which then needs to be "unwrapped" and broken into pieces as best as possible by the single-frequency machine's software), Minelab has found a way using FBS to "figure out" ferrous/non-ferrous information kind of "on the side," and then just feeding non-ferrous (let's call it conductive) target information (received as a result of multiple frequency EM wave transmissions), back to the user via the screen. And the only reason that we can't get a PERFECT conductive ID for a given target, is because soil mineralization messes with things, and some of the received "soil signal" (which includes both ferrous and conductive type signals) simply can't be stopped from "bleeding into" the algorithm outputting target ID numbers, ESPECIALLY on the FE side, and thus giving us the deterioration of ID number with depth that is common to ALL VLF frequency domain machines. It's just that FBS does a MUCH better job of keeping that contamination OUT of the target ID CO number as compared to other machines, especially on deep targets.
Now, this may not be exactly correct, technically, but it's what I've come up with after years of seeing how an Explorer "behaves," combined with some basic understanding of how metal detectors work. So, what I'm saying is, IF Minelab were to somehow succeed at accounting for ground mineralization in a even more accurate way, they could theoretically pull a large majority of, if not nearly all, ground effects OUT OF the target return signal, such that the return signal was nearly PURE TARGET INFO. And in that case, I could then see a lack of importance in having both FE and CO numbers, but instead just displaying a pure, uncontaminated-by-ground-mineralization conductive ID number...no need for FE/CO, no need for 2D smartfind screen, because there is nothing in the ID but nearly PURE conductive target characteristic info.
Obviously, this is easier said than done, easier to calculate mathematically in a lab than to accomplish in a real-world setting, but theoretically, I guess I could conceive of some future detecting platform being SO GOOD at separating ground info from target info, that the "2D" idea becomes superfluous and unnecessary. Is the Equinox representative of some "breakthrough" in this regard? Doubtful, but that seems to be some of what's being claimed by Minelab that they have, in fact, accomplished (at least in a more accurate way than before)...
Steve
