Made an interesting discovery about the Ace today.

[Mick in Dubbo]

Although I haven't had much of a chance to get out and hunt lately, I've spent a bit of time over the last couple of afternoon's experimenting with the Ace and X-Terra, to see what I can get out of them.
In particular, one of the experiments, was to determine, how to best hunt next to play equipment. Using the metal pole of the cloths line as my test rig, I experimented with different sensitivity settings to see what would yield the best outcome. As I hunt almost exclusively with the large coil, that is what I had on the Ace. A coin 3 inches from the pole, seemed to be the closest distance that I could pick it up. I tried one bar of sensitivity, but found only the area under the receive coil to be the only active area. 2 bars of sensitivity worked best, as the area under the outer coil became sensitive at this point.
What I found to be most interesting though, was when I pinpointed the target. If there is no target under the coil, the if I pinpoint with the coil near the pole, then slide the coil back toward myself, then the signal would hang on for about 8 inches. However, if a target was at 3+ inches from the pole, then when I pinpointed, the pinpoint feature would behave like it normally would when it had a target under it! Although it can still pick up the pole, as soon as the target passed under the edge of the receive coil, then the pinpoint dropped off in normal way and remain silent till the target had passed under the transmit coil. As soon as that had happened, the coil picked up the pole again!
I'll play around with the standard coil and see what happens with that. I assume that I'll be able to get closer.
Mick Evans.

 

[cwilk]

I was washing clothes and walked over to a playground to hunt rather than sit and watch my clothes spin. I was also experimenting with various sensitivities and notching out various targets to best detect around the jungle gym. I found sensitivity of 3 and nickel and one to the right of nickel, dime, quarter and half on was the best setup and gave the fewest false signals. Was able to get to within about 2-3 inches of the poles and was rewarded with a John Adams (My first presidential dollar!) dollar coin smack in the middle of the equipment. Moved over to the swingset which was obviously a different kind of metal because it indicated nickel everytime I got within 6 inches of a pole. Lowered sensitivity to 2 and results were better. I kept nickel on because I had found a gold ring there before. I have hunted this set at least 10 times over the summer and today I found a clad quarter about 3 inches from a pole and fairly deep at 6 inches. It was black and had been in the ground for quite some time. I had obviously not gotten it before running at higher sensitivity probably figuring the signal was just the pole. I only have the standard coil for my Ace 250. What should my next purchase be? I like hunting open grassy areas better so I am leaning toward the larger coil.

All totaled my little 25 minute experiment led to 7 coins for $1.91, 3 toy cars, the normal dozen or so pop tops and bits of foil, as well as a lead sinker. Oh yeah and one basket of nice clean duds!

I will add your findingss to my notes and appreciate your posting them.

Chris

 

[Uncle Willy]

Yeah and if you place the coil against the pole then drag it back real quick you'll often get a double blip if a coin is there. Let us know more about your experiment.

Bill

 

[Uncle Willy]

The Sniper coil works great around playground equipment. I have a Sun Ray probe on my 250 and I use it to detect up next to the metal.

Bill

 

[khouse]

What did the Xterra do using the same test?

 

[Mick in Dubbo]

Spent about 90 minutes doing more tests today. Due to the wife travelling away a one of the kids sick, there was no chance of getting out to detect.
Firstly, the Ace. using both the standard and large coil, there was almost no difference in how close I could get to the pole. Both around 3 inches. pinpointing at this range is possible, with the way I described yesterday. One correction about yesterday though. When set at 2 bars of sensitivity, the pinpoint would drop out after a bit over 4 inches from the pole, if there was no target under it.
Now to to the really juicy bit. With the sniper coil on, you actually crank the sensitivity up to maximum to get the best out of it, when hunting next to a pole. Sounds counter intuitive, but works! You will hear the pole, but also the coin! (I haven't tried to notch out the pole yet Chris. I reckon that that would be very effective on targets that don't come in the same notch as the pole.) I can often (not always) hear a coin that is up hard against the pole. However, at a measured half an inch range, things get very interesting indeed. The sniper coil can pick up a coin AND PINPOINT IT! here's where the tip comes in. When you want to pinpoint it, firstly go into pinpoint in the normal way, then, keeping the coil at 90 degrees to the ground, sweep it past the pole a foot or 2 off the ground; till you pick up the pole. once you have the pinpoint sounding off the pole, slowly dip the front of the coil down, just till you stop hearing the pole. At this point, lower the coil down next to the ground and you can pinpoint in the same way as you do with the larger coils when doing a shallow pinpoint! It is IMPORTANT though, not to tilt the coil any farther over than is necessary to stop picking up the pole, as you will not pick up the coin! At first, when I heard that this coil doesn't give off a signal above it when pinpointing, I thought that it gave off a signal to the side; but that isn't all that it cuts out. It seems that it doesn't give off a signal to the side either! That is why it is important not to tilt the coil too far over, as the coin signal will be lost as well if the coil isn't looking strait at it.
I subjected the the X-Terra 30 and the XS Explorer to the same tests with the following results. With the standard coil on the X-Terra, I couldn't ping a coin that was closer than 7 inches! With the ten and a half inch round DD coil on it, I could get 3 inches away and ping a coin, but would have to pinpoint without going into pinpoint mode. Doing that would have a similar result as the standard coil. I found that setting the sensitivity at 4, worked best for the X-Terra. The Explorer set on factory presets, could ping a coin as close as 2 inches, if I moved the coil slowly, however, I have found in the past, if I'm trying to do this with anymore than just a pole present, then it can't get within cooee of any metal.
Hopefully this could be of some use.
Mick Evans.