Learning more about the T2.

[Mike Hillis]

I took my T2 and Cortes to church today and hunting the sand playground of our school and then the inside grassy courtyard.

The dry sand gb at 92 and .3 on the Fe meter. Very chattery at preset sens and preset disc. I had to raise the disc up to 40 to get it half way quiet. But I learned something else as I was working on stability. Turning the sens down to about 25 quieted it down pretty good, but 25 doens't get any depth. At the noisy 60 preset I was still getting 8" on a copper cent.

However, as I began to adjust gb to see if I could quiet it down that way, I seemed to get good response with a negative balance. Anotherwords, I fast grab at 92, then I'd turn it down by a couple of numbers to around 88-89. That also seemed to help and seemed more acceptable than a 25 sens setting so it is something I will spend more time on.

Into the courtyard. The grassy courtyard was a bit better but still high. Lots of chatter there too. A negative balance by a couple of numbers seem to help. I spent most of my time in there comparing signals between the two detectors. Hunted for a bit in 2+ mode, but the amount of iron tone was too distracting, so I switch to 3 for a bit, then went to dP. Dug 33 coins. Not too bad as the first time I went through this with a BH Tracker IV and dug 87 coins. It was frozen ground then so most of these where found in the area where the sun doesn't shine in the winter and the ground is frozen in ice.

Going to spend more time with high ferrous readings and negative gb.

HH

 

[Mr.Bill]

Into the courtyard. The grassy courtyard was a bit better but still high. Lots of chatter there too. A negative balance by a couple of numbers seem to help. I spent most of my time in there comparing signals between the two detectors. Hunted for a bit in 2+ mode, but the amount of iron tone was too distracting, so I switch to 3 for a bit, then went to dP.

Sounds like to me that the problem of the chatter was caused by the large amount of iron trash in the ground.

 

[Mike Hillis]

but some of it is just high mineralization. I think the positive offset just enhances the response to it. Saw the effect on the Cortes too but never knew exactly what was going on. Still don't exactly, but I'm learning.

HH

 

[Jason in TN]

I would bet some kind of electrical interferince. Did you try to change the freq.

 

[Eddie Currents]

From my experience the chatter seems to be mostly caused by local interference such as power lines.

Sometimes changing the freq helps a little but the best solution I've found for a particular site is to come back early in the morning. There is usually less interference due to less local power usage.

EC

 

[LilloEsquilo]

Some suggested that electrical interference was the culprit. But I disagree in this case, as his ground reading was 92 which is EXTREMELY high plus a .3 Fe reading.

So most likely it was ground with lots of iron based on that. That is very bad ground and pretty much anything is going to have problems in it. I'd be curious to see how changing the ground setting might have helped with it. Please post your results later Mike.

 

[Eddie Currents]

[quote LilloEsquilo]Some suggested that electrical interference was the culprit. But I disagree in this case, as his ground reading was 92 which is EXTREMELY high plus a .3 Fe reading.
[/quote]

It depends.

If the coil is held still and the chatter continues, it's electrical interference.

If it only chatters when sweeping the coil near the ground, it's the ground.

EC

 

[Mike Hillis]

Electrical interference is exhibited by audio or visual responses with a stationary coil. This is very easy to see and to tune out with a combination of sens setting and freq selection. I am very familiar and adept at dealing with electrical interference with high gain detectors.

What I am dealing with is ground mineralisation. This is small signal falsing with the coil in motion. Sounds like a distant Forth of July fireworks celebration in my headphones. Not a chance of hearing a faint good target through that noise. I normally raise the discrimination to cancel iron and lower the sens to mitigate it as much as possible, but to go completely stable require such a low sens setting that I deem it unacceptable.

Yesterday as I took my normal approach, which is to tune it the best I can and still keep some level of acceptable sens level and just hunt through the noise, I thought about the positive Fast Grab ground balance and that the positive setting could be exacerbating the mineral response. Turning down the ground balance helped some with the small signal falsing. It may be that a combination of negative ground balance and sens adjusting may be the ticket to a pleasant hunt in my ground.

Just need more time to experiment.

HH

 

[Eddie Currents]

[quote Mike Hillis]
Turning down the ground balance helped some
[/quote]

Just curious -- when in disc mode how are you turning down the ground balance? Or, did you mean that you turn it down in A.M. mode?

EC

 

[Mike Hillis]

yes, just switching over to All metal mode.

When you fast grab and then confirm your balance you will notice that you have a positive offset. Once I discovered this, I also confirmed it with the engineers.

Swithing over to all metal and just turning it down by one number (5 detents) will take you neutral. So I was trying first nuetral, then one and two numbers negative.

Wind is blowing about 55-60 mph here right now. Air is full of dirt so no testing this evening.

HH

 

[jeff@middlesex]

I think the positive offset just enhances the response to it

I agree 100% but it does sound more like hot ground and lots of iron trash in the ground. You mentioned it sounded like the fourth of July. All my hunting spots are like that, no break from the sounds, in fact have to actually take a break to give my ears and brain a rest. Information overload and listening for that unmistakable 2+ tone.

 

[Jackpine Savage]

iron to false high and create a problem that way...go for it! My experience with many detectors especially the ones over 10 Khz is that a negative balance where possible really helps on the higher conductive targets. Jack Gifford states that and although many disagree many others do agree. Use what works!!

Bill W.
ya need to try that in your ground and see how it does on some of those "missed" hits. Was gonna suggest that to you and forgot all about it. my bad. It's a least worth a try.

Tom