One-Way targets, newbie questions

[Anonymous]

Just got my Explorer II (upgraded from a Sovereign and a Tesoro). Went out to an old homesite (I've documented it back to 1835 and dug coins to 1841 there) to see if the new machine would pull any goodies out of this well searched site. I did find some wheats and was happy about that. I also felt the machine was very deep reading, I dug holes well beyond regular trowel depth several times. However, I had two things that puzzled me.
1: I kept getting these signals that would only sound off when sweeping from right to left. My Sovereign never does this, so I'm Minelabs confused. Sometimes the one-way targets would produce an occasional tone on the left to right sweep, but it would always be a lower pitched tone. So, all the advice says to dig any "repeatable" signal, and these were not repeatable, even though they sounded good on the one-way sweep. What's up with that???
2: Some targets would start out with a good high pitched tone in the upper right corner of the screen, stop sounding out after a few sweeps. I could hear the threshhold drop out over the target once the ID tone had stopped, does that mean it was something that was being masked from the Quickstart program I was using? If so, why did the Explorer take a few seconds to start masking?
While I've got your attention, let me ask a few more questions:
1: There seems to be a big gap between the program for Iron Mask at, -10 let's say, and the Quickstart program. What kind of targets are in the shaded area that is in between Iron Mask and Quick Start? All the pulltabs, screwtops, etc. I dug showed up in the high right or low right corner, so they aren't masked by either program. What is in that
'in-between' area?
2: How solid of a tone do you all dig? Most of my signals have a real warbly quality to them, multi-tone, or drifting up and down. But one that sounded funky I dug anyway and was a 1943 wheat at 8" or so. Just how repeatable is "repeatable".
3: Does everyone else have problems with this little scraps of flashing (aluminum I think) that the siding guys discard when they are trimming in windows/doors etc. You know what I'm talking about-little white scraps of thin aluminum, sometimes as small as a stamp, sometimes as big as credit card, but they sound/act like a coin target almost all the time. They don't hit you with the "pepsi can at 2 inches" blast, they are just as soft, subtle and solid as a nice old coin sleeping in the dirt. Since they are aluminum you'd think the machine would react a little differently than to clad/precious coinage. Any tips or tricks for the Explorer to cope with these little *&!@#!s ???
OK, sorry to blast you with a fusillade of newbie questions, but this seems like a great forum to get advice on. I'm sure I'll be back with more questions the more I use this little jewel.
Thanks,
Pete

 

[Anonymous]

Here's a site that helped me set up the Explorer,
alot of problems can be a misunderstanding on how to setup,

 

[Anonymous]

http://usetheminelabexplorerlikeapro.blogspot.com/

 

[Anonymous]

And the answer to most of your questions is that you are detecting in an iron trash filled environment and what you are experiencing is classic Explorer behavior in a trashy site. You will see much much much more of this.
1. The best signals are those that repeat from left to right and right to left and then turn 90 degrees and get them to repeat again. In trash you often don't get anything so clear. A nail can mask a coin completely in one direction, but hardly be a factor if you hit it from another direction. So it is often the case you will get a repeatable signal only from a certain angle, generally you should be able to get it from the opposite direction- 180 degrees away, but maybe not at all or as clearly at any other angle.
Generally a hit that only repeats from one direction of a swing is iron falsing, usually try get a hit in both R to L and L to R. Make sure you are swinging real slow with short sweeps when you do this and generally FAST on helps.
Next too questions are related: If a coin (normally hits upper right) is next to iron (normally upper left) it can be pulled very far to the upper left and this is why you hear it fade in and out. If you have on discrimination it will null on the sweeps that hit left. If you have discrimination off you will get a low sounding signal if you are running FERROUS. Generally that is why many of us run with minimal discrimination. You can sweep a good target many times and only get a solid hit 1 swing in 5; this means you might get a hit that catches your attention 20% of the time. The down side is you have to listen to and sort out many more signals in your head instead of just having a null. This does get tiring and can be overwhelming to a new user.
Also remember that real deep coins, coins on edge, or coins in mineralized ground can behave differently also, often close to iron falsing.
As far as how good a signal to dig just takes lots of experience. Discerning a coin next to iron from just iron falsing is very difficult. However in most hunted out areas this is where the coins are hiding and the explorer is probably the best unit available for sniffing these out. After three years I still get fooled by iron often. Most iffy hits that I'm almost sure are iron but still offer a glimmer of hope I will still get down on my knees and do a bit of poking with my periscope, about 10% of the time I am rewarded with a coin.
For starting out though the quick start is fine. Put a dozen hours or so on it before you start messing around. When I started I dug a few coins that had faded in and out. Opened up the disc to see they were bouncing to the left, and kept opening it up ever since. Didn't understand why then.
And aluminum chunks are tricky- no good advice here. They should be shallower and if you lift the coil sometimes you can tell whether you have a small shallow trash hit.

 

[Anonymous]

Misread the date and it was pointed out that a '43 copper would be quite a find!

 

[Anonymous]

I agree with your #1 and a nail disc'ing out the swing from another direction would really be something to get thrown off by. Now that I have used the same settings for quite a while most times I can recognize the difference in tones, and when it nulls the other way I am fairly confident to walk away. On my better sites I will chase them anyway even to get a few neat iron relics and the good news is I don't remember getting too many non ferrous surprises while doing this. Back when I swung a GTI there was a much higher % in chasing hightone iron targets than there is on the Explorer. What also is a big help is the target being deep. This knocks the tone enough down from the iron sound to make it easy to determine it's not iron and there is no need to X besides pinpointing. In conductive I will VERY rarely dig a lower tone (below coin) hit that is iron....and when I do it's almost always a flat thin deep piece of thin rust. That said, the tone usually gives a hint it may be iron but the disc. % is so incredibly high on the low tones you have to dig them anyway.
PS There is no better tool to have than the X-1 probe for really working out a site. I can likely dig (shovel) and check ten not so good hits just by probing the hole than digging and chasing 2 or 3 targets that turn out to be nothing. <span style="background-color:#ffff00;">The probe really opens ones eyes to how many targets go bye bye after cutting the plug.</span> Now that deserves to be highlighted because it's not said enough and may be the only piece of information someone will get from reading this long Sunday afternoon boring post. <img src="/metal/html/smile.gif" border=0 width=15 height=15 alt="">
C.C.