Loss of depth / Factory Reset

[TrpnBils]

Saw this posted on Facebook today on one of the 3030 groups I'm in. I blew it off at first, but then started reading the replies and thinking about my own experiences. Posting with permission, and I'm curious to see if anyone here has any thoughts on it:

Hi all, after some advice please. I have to do a factory reset every 3-4 times I have been out with the ctx, reason for this is that I lose depth, I can literally dig the hole out and turn it over and get no signal. Then spread the soil from the hole and it picks it up. Do a factory reset and all is good, depth is back to normal. Anyone had this or got a clue why this happens. My ctx is 4 years old.

 

[bklein]

Coin on edge or internal coin cell battery running low. (?)
Nothing magic about the dirt - should be able to test with a coin in your hand to see if a reset really changes things after the first sign of an issue (and reset).

 

[IDXMonster]

Agreed, many of these reports are very “oddly specific”....tiny item or some other fluke. There shouldn’t be a reason for obtaining reasonable depth after a reset that I know of. And as BK said....waving a coin will tell you if things are wacky or not.
It’s good to see you can still hunt out there! We have snow and there’s more coming...ARRGGGHHH!!!

 

[Daniel A.]

I'm having issues with depth as you describe except doing the factory reset does nothing, I thought at first it was my coil but changed to a different coil no change, maybe I need to try more times with the factory reset. Thinking about sending the machine in at this point. I can put a silver quarter 8 inches away not a sound from it at 4 inches it sounds but not great.

 

[Johnnyanglo]

Assuming the detector coil is functioning properly, a target that 'disappears' can be a poor conductor that's altered its orientation with respect to the magnetic field when being dug and now seems to disappear. Some detectors are more prone, such as the CTX which has trouble with weak conductors. Another source is simply EMI. The same test inside a house compared with away from electronics can yield better sensitivity and depth where EMI is reduced or eliminated. With the CTX, iron overwhelms nearby non-ferrous due to its much stronger field strength relative to non-ferrous that the CTX will often miss the co-located non-ferrous or only hit the non-ferrous in one sweep direction. Digging out the target can separate the targets enough to reveal the non-ferrous clearly which makes it appear like the detector had lost depth in the ground. Too aggressive use of Disc can silence marginal targets (especially in mineralized soils) that also appear to sound off when dug. The target signal breaks through when it rights itself (down-averages toward lower FE when the dirt is removed or target is brought to the surface) once freed from being up-averaged (pulled to higher FE values by the iron minerals or simply iron nails present which the Disc silences with the target). But target orientation is very important, sometimes even on the surface, a low-conductor disappears because of a non-preferential angle to the coil (in the water, a light non-ferrous target can float away drawn by the seabed currents, so it actually does disappear on its own). And a small percentage of CTX targets have strong signals in the ground, disappear in the dirt pile, and never are recovered (not in the hole either). Those are the mystery ones that seem to have no explanation where the good target went to (pinpointer can't find any trace. Likely the target fell to pieces while digging, that is most probable, indicating it was old rusted iron that disintegrated when dug causing the signal to disappear -- look for evidence of rust in the dirt).

 

[trojdor]

One possibility to the 'gradually losing depth' issue:
If you've let the inside of your coil cover build up with black sand (or heavily mineralized dirt), you can lose performance/depth with any machine.

The solution, of course, is to remove and clean the cover.

 

[Daniel A.]

Thanks for your thoughts guys, tested at a farm no high EMI nor iron issues, the silver quarter thrown on the ground should pick it up at 12-14 inches easy. Aggressive use of Disc could be possible the only thing is doing the factory reset would have corrected that I would think.