I went to siesta beach for 2 hours yesterday. Spent the entire time in the water. An unbelievable 0 targets found and crazy noise from the machine. I spent much of my time trying to tune it. Each wave would cause a long drawn out tone like mentioned in this other thread. Obviously I didn't get it balanced correctly. Total time with the machine now at 10 hours.
I'm going to use this thread as a bit of a journal to record my experiences.
I want to mention that I was in a hurry as it was close to sunset. Lesson learned with this machine. Take your time, or waste your time.
This is a great gem of advise in that other thread.
Basically what Ghost said but with bullet points.
"1. Switch Off.
2. set threshold to 4 and disc to zero.
3 With coil flat on the sand, switch on straight to Lock and wait for the battery check and then let the detector stabilise for a minute or so
4. Listen for any elec interference and adjust for the quietest position if necessary.
5 Reset disc to zero and threshold to 4 after frequency adjust. Carry out frequency adjust with mode in Lock.
6. Select Fast track and attempt to ground balance on the wet sand by pumping the coil up and down several times until the ground balance is as best as you can get it. and then select Lock.(while coil is still on the ground) and then set Threshold to where you like it.
7. Lift the coil off the sand, if it produces a tone then the Ground Bal is still not right. Re Do the above until tone changes are minimal. When all is OK;
8. Set Disc to 3 to compensate for the salt. This should remove any remaining tone changes when the coil was raised.You can set the disc as high as 4 without loosing too much sensitivity to 10/18ct gold.
If all is well the machine should be fairly quiet when you scan the wet sand.
Now take the detector into the water just a few inches deep and retry, it should still be fairly quiet.
If the machine becomes noisy as you get into deeper water then re ground balance as per the above instructions. Do not let the coil come up out of the water while attempting ground balancing in the water. (REMEMBER TO RESET THE DISC TO ZERO BEFORE RE GROUND BALANCING)."
Salt Water ground balancing thread
Wanted to ad another article I found. Some great pinpointing tips.
LS article, review with pinpointing tips