earthmansurfer
Active member
I got out yesterday for 6 hours and hunted a 500 year old site. I mostly was finding buttons and then found a few old coins within a couple of hours. Just wanted to share some findings regarding the V3i:
1. Deep larger iron, when it's wet, is really sensitive to the 5Hz filters. It didn't cause as many problems yesterday with the iron though, as the ground had drained well. Even with the Filters higher and less RX gain, deep larger iron causes lots of falses. After digging it enough and it not being a masked coin I started to pass it up. I could get a good target audio from 5 - 10 Hz filters but 5 hit best with 7.5 a close second. When the iron bottered me I switched to 7.5. I didn't notice much of a difference within the pairs of filters (high and the other one). As said on the forums, deep iron doesn't usually pinpoint on center, that is when it falses and you try to pinpoint that false signal.
2. RX gain really helps with deep larger iron. I was able to keep my discrim high and adjust the RX gain. (I did come across points 1 and 2 on these forums, just a confirmation).
3. Recovery Speed - I found like 8 or so buttons. Only two buttons that were falling apart (not in pic) were not able to be picked up with a recovery delay of 60. The recovery delay of 20 had no problems, but yes the signal breaks up on targets (less so if you swing it faster). I preferred to hunt with it at 60 as it is just less fatigue on the ears. I found three old coins, from left to right 1765 hammered silver (I think, can't find it in my book yet), 1917 (aluminum), 1864 copper pfenning (oh and a very very nice old button). The recovery delay (between 20 and 60) didn't seem to matter (though I usually go with a lower sensitivity when using the 20 delay). All of the finds were in iron, and I mean IN IRON. It was not stop chatter from the iron (I had the iron tone on 5). The hits were mostly all clean. Quite often when I took the plug out of the ground, there was iron in, though smaller bits. All targets were around 3"-4", some a bit deeper (but not the coins). Two of the coins were in the hole wall and on their sides, but had good signals.
4. Polar Plot - worked well in the iron up to 3" or 4". Beyond that it still helped in that the swirls for better alloys were still in the upper right quadrant, where as almost always iron stuff will fall on the left side.
5. Ground Probe - The ground had a VDI of -91 (high iron mineralization) but the ground signal was nice, only like 1% Signal loss (low mineralization). The air had like 2% EMI. So it's safe to say that besides the strong iron in the ground, the hunting conditions are pretty ideal. I think I might hit the same area with less sensitivity since I didn't find anything deeper (probably due to the huge amount of iron there). Ideally it would be nice to take a 4X6 shooter coil in the iron I think. I'll probably get that one instead of the 5.3. Will also hunt parks with it. Probing the air under zoom-sensitivity and doing a ground probe are the first things I do when I go to a new site, and then I bury a coin and test the filters and recovery speeds. And now I'm also playing with correlate (trying to find something better to use in this heavy at times iron.)
6. Correlate - I ran in three frequency Correlate most of the time. The wrap was at -94 (which probably isn't very important for European coins) and the span was 40. This seemed to clean up some of the falses but I'm not really sure yet as I need to test more with buried coins. I did check it on targets and it was more picky - seemed to rule out iron falses better. Really too early to comment, just getting started with it.
I really really love hunting with the V3i. My only complaint thus far is the weight and it's rather because my back is sensitive as the balance is very nice. Probably another reason I will try to get away from too fast a recovery speed as the faster swinging hurts after a few hours. I'm learning the sounds and going deeper into the detector. Like customizing the screens and sounds more.
Hope this has been helpful, at least to you guys new to the machine.
1. Deep larger iron, when it's wet, is really sensitive to the 5Hz filters. It didn't cause as many problems yesterday with the iron though, as the ground had drained well. Even with the Filters higher and less RX gain, deep larger iron causes lots of falses. After digging it enough and it not being a masked coin I started to pass it up. I could get a good target audio from 5 - 10 Hz filters but 5 hit best with 7.5 a close second. When the iron bottered me I switched to 7.5. I didn't notice much of a difference within the pairs of filters (high and the other one). As said on the forums, deep iron doesn't usually pinpoint on center, that is when it falses and you try to pinpoint that false signal.
2. RX gain really helps with deep larger iron. I was able to keep my discrim high and adjust the RX gain. (I did come across points 1 and 2 on these forums, just a confirmation).
3. Recovery Speed - I found like 8 or so buttons. Only two buttons that were falling apart (not in pic) were not able to be picked up with a recovery delay of 60. The recovery delay of 20 had no problems, but yes the signal breaks up on targets (less so if you swing it faster). I preferred to hunt with it at 60 as it is just less fatigue on the ears. I found three old coins, from left to right 1765 hammered silver (I think, can't find it in my book yet), 1917 (aluminum), 1864 copper pfenning (oh and a very very nice old button). The recovery delay (between 20 and 60) didn't seem to matter (though I usually go with a lower sensitivity when using the 20 delay). All of the finds were in iron, and I mean IN IRON. It was not stop chatter from the iron (I had the iron tone on 5). The hits were mostly all clean. Quite often when I took the plug out of the ground, there was iron in, though smaller bits. All targets were around 3"-4", some a bit deeper (but not the coins). Two of the coins were in the hole wall and on their sides, but had good signals.
4. Polar Plot - worked well in the iron up to 3" or 4". Beyond that it still helped in that the swirls for better alloys were still in the upper right quadrant, where as almost always iron stuff will fall on the left side.
5. Ground Probe - The ground had a VDI of -91 (high iron mineralization) but the ground signal was nice, only like 1% Signal loss (low mineralization). The air had like 2% EMI. So it's safe to say that besides the strong iron in the ground, the hunting conditions are pretty ideal. I think I might hit the same area with less sensitivity since I didn't find anything deeper (probably due to the huge amount of iron there). Ideally it would be nice to take a 4X6 shooter coil in the iron I think. I'll probably get that one instead of the 5.3. Will also hunt parks with it. Probing the air under zoom-sensitivity and doing a ground probe are the first things I do when I go to a new site, and then I bury a coin and test the filters and recovery speeds. And now I'm also playing with correlate (trying to find something better to use in this heavy at times iron.)
6. Correlate - I ran in three frequency Correlate most of the time. The wrap was at -94 (which probably isn't very important for European coins) and the span was 40. This seemed to clean up some of the falses but I'm not really sure yet as I need to test more with buried coins. I did check it on targets and it was more picky - seemed to rule out iron falses better. Really too early to comment, just getting started with it.
I really really love hunting with the V3i. My only complaint thus far is the weight and it's rather because my back is sensitive as the balance is very nice. Probably another reason I will try to get away from too fast a recovery speed as the faster swinging hurts after a few hours. I'm learning the sounds and going deeper into the detector. Like customizing the screens and sounds more.
Hope this has been helpful, at least to you guys new to the machine.
A coil you might want to consider is the 6X10 DD, It would be lighter and still get good coverage, good separation and still get as deep as you need. It doesn't have the depth of the D2 but is sounds like depth is not a high priority.............. it will also be much better on your back.