Digger, thanks for the info. Though after reading it I'm afraid I'm still not seeing any clear declaration about FBS2 abilities in terms of the original question in the other thread. Again, I'm not even saying that Minelab is making such a statement because what I've read has been rather vague and can mean several things depending on how you read it.
Does it see two targets under the detection field at once and can separate them, or is it simply recording the history of the prior target it saw and keeping that on the screen while displaying the next one in the field? VLF stands for Very Low Frequency. Despite the marvelous advances of BBS and FBS, and now FBS2, a magnetic field is still a magnetic field and can only tell you so much, so I'm awaiting some real gritty details and a clear statement from Minelab that FBS2 can indeed see and separate two targets at once on the screen that are both being washed in the magnetic field at the same time.
And if that is the case, both targets still have to be at the same depth and laying very close to the point that they'd probably be touching, as the magnetic field can not hit a shallower target and still yet reach deeper to see a second one. The field in effect warps around the first metal object it sees and can go no further, as the eddy currents are "drawn" to and interact with the shallowest metal object under the coil. Even something shallower than the coin but as small as a staple will stop the field from advancing any further. If I'm missing some key and very plain wording that clearly states the ability to see and separate two targets in the field at the same time then please highlight that for me so I can stand corrected.
I remember reading a armature's (who had a background in electronics but if memory serves his speciality WASN'T detector technology) technical blurb about how these fields are processed. The RX coil receives it's signal from the detection field as a serial signal and not a parallel one. In other words, there is a "start" and an "end" to the signal as it is received. Think of it as somebody typing Morse code across a telegraph wire. You can't jump ahead and only look at a different part of the message separately without first receiving the leading code. That's sort of a bad example, because once the entire message is received you can in fact look at different words within it.
The way I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong) from what I've read the detection signal represents an entire "word" as the message, which can't be broken into individual words...As the entire signal represents the sum of all that is being "said", and there is no way to pick out relevant data from just a part of it.
Or, a more simple way to say it is...If you have the number 35690 as your received message (the sum conductivity of the target(s)), there is no way to go back and see what the actual numbers were (the individual conductivity of separate targets under the coil at the same time) that added up to 35690, let alone even know that there were indeed two targets in the field at the same time that added up to that final conductivity #.
And to complicate it even more (sorry, I tend to do that), in reality the final # is based on an averaged number somewhere halfway between the conductivity of the two targets. Say, for instance, seeing a pull tab and a silver dime at the same time...The resulting sum of conductivity is somewhere in between.
Again, I'm surely in no way an expert and only have a limited background in electronics, so what I've read could in fact be wrong or even the very way I "understood" the material...So feel free to set me straight on this if I'm blatantly wrong in my understanding.
Killmerg said:
Is it just showing a record of the responses received by the coil during a swing or is it actually giving a visual representation as to what and where multiple objects lies beneath the coil as it hovers over it.Thanks
That, summed up nice and short, is the question I still have. It just took me several paragraphs to say what you so clearly asked in one sentence. I haven't learned the lesson that brevity is the essence of wit, so I apologize to everybody for a rather lengthy message as I'm prone to do that.
Digger said:
The object at the bottom of the Smartscreen represents another target you passed over, but not currently under the center of the coil. The "Target Trace" tells you that you've passed over one target while getting to the other one. If you want to know the TID number for the other target, move the coil to isolate it, and center the coil over it.
This still sounds to me like a one target at a time type of deal. I need a definite statement from Minelab that says otherwise as this is one of the key things I want clarified before deciding to make the purchase. Really what I look forward to are field tests of it to another Minelab using a sharp detection field such as the 12x10 on undug targets. That will really show me just what the contrast in abilities are.
Again, thanks for the effort to provide me and others with this information. I really do appreciate the responses.
