Need Help, new falsing issue I have never encountered relic hunting

[jtalley007]

Guys, as most of you know I love my CTX 3030 and have been digging some of the deepest civil war bullets I have ever dug in over 40 years of detecting in pounded places. Normally my machine is smooth and at times even maxed out.

Today I was detecting in a spot I have been a few times with no falsing issues at all and digging targets to china there before.

Today when I would swing the coil I would get false hits that target ID'd 01 10 every time and I could not get it to stop even noise cancelling, lowering sensitivity to 23, trying auto +3 and for the first time ever a soft reboot by removing the battery while it was on.

Nothing I did helped one bit. For the most part my depth was fair to poor in the same area I dug a measured minnie ball 18" a few weeks back.

Today, I was also getting marginal tone and target ID even on shallow bullets.

I have been in this area about 5 times with no issues, maxed out totally smooth so something is majorly wrong I think?

My first guess would be the coil. When I first got the machine it was doing something like that on the beach, they replaced the coil and have had no problems since.

Any suggestions? I am going beach hunting the first week in March so it is a bad time to have detector problems for sure.

Thanks

 

[nolanation]

Are you sure it's not your shoes? Also check the coil cover.

 

[jtalley007]

Nolanation, I have been detecting since 1973 and have 1000's of hours relic hunting, beach hunting, you name it so it's not something simple like that.

As far as the coil cover I cleaned my coil cover before I left and during the hunt just in case. I have my shaft extended all the way out so it's nowhere near my shoes.

I even slid the control box back and made sure the coil connection was nice and tight and it was.

I will try it here at home tomorrow and see if it still does it as well.

Like I mentioned I have been detecting at this same place with the 3030 5 or 6 times and nothing like this here or the other 5 or 6 relic hunts with it.

One of the things I have loved about the 3030 is how stable it is even cranked up, think that is why I am doing so well with it.

I wear the same boots all the time so I know that is not it but the whole thing was very weird.

It is acting like the falsing I was getting on the beach when I first got the detector and I had a bad coil, when I touch the coil to the ground it is the worst, I am using combined and it says 01 10 and the same tone.

Hope more guys will chime in if my post doesn't get buried.

Thanks for the input, any more suggestions?

 

[Charles (Sabre)(Tx)]

There hasn't been any new structures that have been put up around there recently has there? Some towers can cause interference...or maybe high electrical charges in the air?

UFO? Unidentied Falsing Occurrence...

 

[hershey1]

Edit your 1 line out to 38. What is happening is called iron wrap around. I have had this happen to me in places I have hunted many times. 38 is what I chose to stop at but you can set yours to suit yourself. Remember the top right of your screen can be big silver so do not reject the 1 line all the way across. I may have not explained this very well but hopefully Larry or others can chime in. Also the RELIC abilities of the CTX are pretty good. HH

 

[Larry (IL)]

The problem could be just about anything and you will have to start eliminating possibilities. Try different locations, times or another coil. I knew one guy who had a local radio station that lowered it's broadcast power at 5 PM every day and it took him forever to figure out why his detector falsed a lot during the day but not after supper time in his local park.

It should be easy to isolate the problem to the coil, location or even the time. Good luck.

 

[Big Boys Hobbies]

Try your machine in several locations to see if you can get consistent problems.

If you have any doubts on your machine send it it.

 

[lomoch]

I like to hear how this goes if you can report back. I wonder if you can replicate elsewhere where you know there is limited EMI.

Again, please keep us up to speed in how this plays out.

 

[sonnydigs]

n/t

 

[Sir Digs A Lot]

You mentioned noise canceling, did you ground balance? I have had my CTX act up on me three times with similar symptoms as you described. A GB was done and everything went back to normal.

 

[Digger]

I'd suggest you try that same coil in a different site, to see if the problems are still there. If you have access to another coil, give that a shot. This process will let you know if it is due to the specific site or the detector/coil. Minelab builds excellent products, and the CTX is no exception. However, recognizing the microchip technology incorporated into the smart coils is quite sophisticated, a malfunctioning coil just might be the problem (again). JMHO HH Randy

 

[jtalley007]

Here are the things I tried, ( keep in mind I have 40 years of experience under my belt and am covering the exact same trench, exact same dirt, conditions like damp soil the same)

Ground balance
noise cancelling multiple times
turn the machine off and back on several times
changed to a factory coin program, did not help so changed back to custom relic.
soft reboot with machine on pulled out the battery.
lowered sensitivity
lowered gain
checked the connections inside.
tried every tone ID mode

What I have not done yet is try it here at home and try a different coil

Challenge with different coil is I have a new 6" and a new 17" but all the CTX coils and overall the detector is very stable so these things should tell me something.
rained today so did not feel like getting wet in the almost freezing weather, if it clears up tomorrow will give it a try and post the feedback.

Also called Minelab but had to leave them a message and not heard back yet, wish me luck and thanks for all the tips.

 

[christopher-ohio]

n/t

 

[jtalley007]

I sure hope not as much as I baby this thing and no more use than I have gotten out of it.

I suspect a coil problem but will know for sure when the weather clears up and allows me to get out and test it.

 

[C&RHunter]

I had an incident similar to yours last week. I went to my front yard to try some settings that I had changed. I have detected the front yard with my XS, E-Trac, and more recently the CTX. I have not had any problems. But one day last week the CTX was going crazy. I tried switching from manual to auto, lowering the sensitivity, doing a noise cancel(two or 3 times), and turned the CTX off and back on two or three times. Nothing was helping. It was a warm day and the yard was kind of wet from recent snow melt and little rain, but nothing extreme. I finally just started walking around, and finally the machine settled down and seemed to be working fine. Then I turned around and walked back to where I had been and the machine went crazy again. I kept walking the same direction and in a bit, the machine settled down again. What I decided it was EMI from the underground power line going from my transformer to the house and my shop. Once I was 50-75 feet away from the underground line, everything was okay. But I still haven't determined why the CTX acted so crazy that day, but had not acted up in the same area before, or just now, as I just went out a gave it another try. It worked fine........There may not be any power lines near where you had the problem, but it sounds similar to what happened to me........HH.

 

[ZOFCHAK]

.
rained today so did not feel like getting wet in the almost freezing weather..

Was the ground by chance frozen? My E-Trac would sometimes lose depth and get noisy when detecting partially frozen ground.

 

[jtalley007]

Ground was not frozen in the woods.

Usually any kind of power line may change from bad to worse back to bad but I have never seen one stop interfering.

Plus, the one thing I have noticed is how well the CTX 3030 cancels out noise.

My bullet patch I call it is where I dug a 16" minnie ball has an underground line that makes an F75 unusable, White's V3i only usable in medium frequency not low or not high and not 3 frequency. The CTX can be run in this place on 26-30 with gain 25-28 totally smooth.

The place I was having issues with has never given me any peep of EMI or ground issues so I have a feeling it is the coil?

I will get out to test it with a different coil today and post the results as well as communicate it to Minelab service which has been in touch with me.

appreciate all the feedback so far.

 

[Dr.Deus]

This is something i noticed as well, 3 weeks ago or so we had a quick thaw here.. I hunted this new area and managed to swipe a rosie.The CTX ran great at that outting but the following weekend the ground froze up again and made it difficult to dig and thats when i started to notice the machine getting noisy

Was the ground by chance frozen? My E-Trac would sometimes lose depth and get noisy when detecting partially frozen ground.