Manual Ground Balance Outing

[Metal Magnet]

Wanted to share my experience of "grounding down" for a place I have hunted to death. I know this spot very, very well. As soon as I entered the yard I was amazed. I honestly thought the AT was falsing until i moved around. I was shocked how alive the ground became. I started digging anything remotely mid tone. Lots of lead pieces. I grabbed 2 more pieces of lead shot - old with white patina. I found a lipstick case that was deep deep. And also a child's brooch - tiny.

I will be trying this at every spot I have gone to that is semi clean. I am now a believer that doing this process allows for great detection of very small and deep objects. I hit a penny near the road that about blew my ears off. Just amazing. If you haven't tried this, you really should. I auto balanced and then backed down until it chattered. Then I moved higher until i got a nice clean signal.

 

[hammer0419]

I can't wait till I can get an AT PRO.

 

[BigCatDaddy]

Interesting!! I'll have to give it a try although I really dont want to dig halfway to the center of the earth, too danged old!! And get us some pics, please!!

 

[William-NM]

Thanks for the report, very interesting. If I ever find a spot that isn't paved in aluminum and iron trash, I'm going to try that!
I think my next purchase will be the 5" x 8" coil to help sort through the junk.

 

[Metal Magnet]

Here is a pic of the finds. Funny enough, I thought the multi-colored case was a short lipstick case, but it isn't. It contains folded paper - weird.

[attachment 219917 IMG00240-20120109-1044.jpg]

 

[michaelosully]

What do you mean by "grounding down"??? Do you mean you are manually groundbalancing and then lowering the GB setting? Or, are you manually GB'ing as opposed to automatic GB'ing.

 

[Metal Magnet]

when i auto balance, it usually runs higher. so i lower the GB setting until chattery and then move up a hair. As I said, I don't do this in a place that is trashy at all as it tends to oversell.

 

[michaelosully]

Makes sense as I guess it is probably running a little 'hotter' and providing a little more depth. I usually just manually GB to a site and then set it slightly 'hotter' than necessary. Makes total sense to do this at a location that has been heavily hunted in the past. Thanks for explaining "grounding down" to me.

 

[Metal Magnet]

no problem! and yes, it runs really really hot. get ready to turn the earphone volume!

 

[EtracTom-AdirondacksNY]

Read on here it's ground balancing positive. You do an auto gb or manual gb then lower the gb number like 20 points lower makes it hotter on high conductors (copper and silver etc.) and you gb negative and go higher in numbers than your auto ballance or manual ballance was and it's better for lower conductors like gold and I guess nickles and such. As soon as I can get to detect I'm going to try it where I believe I have cleaned out this summer 2 areas I hunted with my At-Pro and Etrac.