Need Help Please

[Flintstone]

I have a MXT had it for two years. Always found a lot of coins. I found an old park last weekend,hunted sat. and sun. I found two silver quarters,one was 1951 the other 1949, one mercury dime and fourteen wheat Penny's, not counting four or five dollars in new money. Went back to the same park today and never found one coin new or old. I know the ground is full of iron with the reading of 53 on the MXT. I put the same quarter and dime in a hole I made and could not get a reading, even turning the gain up and down, sometimes it would say iron. What happened is my MXT broke, should I send it back for service. If anyone can help me please do. Thanks Dean

 

[badboy]

Check your connection at the box where it attach's to the coil. Sometimes they work loose

 

[bubblehead]

Hey Dean....I'm no pro by far but did you try all three modes? Try putting the coil near the wheel of the car or something really big....see if you get the overload tone. If you have another coil, swap out and try the coins again. Check the connection at the coil also. You've probably done all this but that's my 2

 

[Flintstone]

Thanks guys for the reply. The MXT would overload on foil or flat can.I did get lots of foil,nails,and pull tabs but I was digging everything that beeped. The VDI numbers would go all over the place,10-20-22-25-47-89, I tried all three modes and got the same thing. I even took out the battery with the MXT on and put it back someone said that this would recalibrate the machine. That didn't help either. I was there about three or four hours not one coin. I came home took off the coil, cleaned the coil cover and put the coil back on, then I set it on a wooden table and put in lock track and ran coins over it.Everything did just fine. a dime said a dime, a quarter said a quarter. I don't know if anything was loose or not it didn't seem loose when I took it off. But tomorrow I will go to another park that I hunted be for. If it does okay I will go back to the old park and see what happens. I will let you guys know what happens. Thanks Dean

 

[Rick(ND)]

One of the things it sounds like is that it was getting signals on trash, so it is probably working. Now when you bury a coin back in the ground sometimes when you put the dirt back you will not get a signal on it as I have seen many time. If you would have packed the ground down tight you may get a signal on the coins if not too deep.
Sounds like there is a lot of trash there so it maybe harder to get a good signal too and if you have a smaller coil I would try it too as the stock coil wasn't very good for me in some of the trashier parks and I got the 4X6 mini shooter and the 5X9 DD coil I use on my MXT that do well.
Let us know what you find out.

Rick

 

[Monte]

1st.. Congratulations on popping some silver!

2nd.. If you're referring to Iron Mineralization" then a Prospecting mode Ground Phase read-out of '53' is pretty darn mellow! Wish we had a lot of that good ground around here, where an MXT typically reads '78' to '83' and frequently can get to '84'-'86'!

If you're referring to the ground being full of iron trash, that's something else and wouldn't account for the '53' reading.

3rd.. It doesn't matter which make or model you have, digging a fresh hole and placing a coin at the bottom of an open home can pose a challenge. All the time? No. With every detector? No. But frequently you can have a problem when dealing with a freshly dug hole, and open hole at that, with a coin placed in the bottom. This is sometimes also the case during a target recovery attempt.

It's caused by several factors, to include:

 

[Flintstone]

Hi Monte, Thanks so mush for your words of wisdom. You were right I was excited, I had never found silver like that before. I had found two silver Roosevelt dimes. Maybe I did get tore up and went to fast or something, but I thought you could make a coin garden by buried coins. I was at the same place I found the other quarters and penny,s,maybe I did get them all. I just couldn't bring myself to think there were no more coins. I did go to another park today,and found the MXT worked fine. I don't have another coil just a 950, hope to get a 6x10 DD I have eighty dollars change saved up from my finds, won't be long now. I will go back to the old park next week it is going to rain the next couple days, so I will need to wait. But I will go to another part of the park. I do have a old Whites Eagle II SL that does very good, I have a small 600 coil for it do you think it will do better. I thank all you guys for your replies. I thought my MXT was broke. Thank God it wasn't. Thank so much Dean

 

[Monte]

you can't plant one and have it duplicate targets that have rested in position, undisturbed, in more compacted ground, that has also been undisturbed, and get the same results, unless it is virtually neutral ground.

If you tilled up a 3' x 6' area in a dirt garden and randomly planted a half-dozen coins to 'test', and you replaced the tilled dirt in the same general manner as it was when freshly tilled, you would be very close to duplicating the results you might get in a freshly plowed farm field with coins at similar depths.

If you want to duplicate the effects of a penny or dime or quarter or ??? that is buried at 4" or 5", and has been buried at that depth and in that position in that undisturbed ground for many years, then go ahead and make a test garden .... then come back in a few years after the ground has settled and everything is similar.

I am not, and haven't been, a fan of a "test garden" as such. What I WILL DO on occasion is freshly bury a coin and then test the response of SEVERAL detectors and coil combinations over the same target at the same time. That keeps all the "testing" even for all units. It doesn't tell me what all detectors will do in the real world, but it helps tell me which detectors might do better in a challenging situation compare with other makes and models.

Monte

 

[Flintstone]

Hi Monte, Dean here again took the MXT to another park and it did fine. Hit dimes, nickels, quarters. Went back to the old park same thing no reading or iron, VDI numbers all over the place. So i took my Eagle II SL with the six inch coil it did the same thing. So i started digging any + numbers even if they did say iron, and all over the place from 0-95, and did find a 1939 mercury dime, one buffalo nickel no date, and three wheat's. I checked in prospect mold and ground is 53-56. Just to let you know i am still trying, i know there is more silver there. Thanks Dean

 

[Monte]

it's a terrible case of outside RF interference!

I have hunted some sites in downtown Portland, Oregon over the past decade and, on occasion, depending upon the day of the week and time of day, there was maybe only one of five or six detectors I took there that might work.

What I had to do was catch it at the right time when there wasn't any annoyance. That was a silver-shooters day with most coins in the 1"-4" range and mixed in amongst a LOT of wino's screw caps ... but at least the detectors were then stable and all hits were good and clean.

Glad things are working okay at other locations!

Monte

 

[texasdave]

I have had the same exact experience at a couple of sites Dean and as Monte said in his post on RF interference, I found that to be the case one site in particular that has Stadium lights when they were on my MXT was practically useless at the park next door but if I returned the next day the interference was gone. Another site I hunt is hit and miss with the RF and I haven't been able to determine whats generating it. I just know that some times and some days the hunting is smooth with very little chatter and the VDI's don't jump around as much.