PP mode excal II

[djbutch]

Was just wondering I see a lot of folks hunt in PP mode on the beaches?I was told PP mode was a very small area on the coil and you would miss a lot of targets unless you are right on top of them?I appreciate any feedback about digging in PP mode.

Thanks Butch

 

[Buried Crap NJ]

If you haven't already check my post on first gold for 2013. It shows how PP will capture targets not found in discriminate. I dug only 35 targets that day but most of them never toned in disc. Disc.is just not as deep as PP and PP will allow a fasters sweep speed and sweeter threshold adjustments . The coil seems to detect targets further away then in Disc. I have used a remote PP switch for about a year now. I always search in PP and check in Disc. Many of my gold finds last season were tones I thought I had heard in PP in each case those murmers was a gold ring, not heard in Disc. and barely heard in PP.Since May 2012 I use the CTX 3030 and hunt exclusively in open screen with no discriminate and check in one of the four other sreeens available at the time. works the same way.The targets your looking for don't make big loud tones, unless your looking for coins?
BCNJ

 

[Critterhunter]

It's not just the more depth PP gives with volume cranked to full, nor the fact that you can usually run sensitivity at full blast despite mineralization (I ain't seen a spot yet where I couldn't), but it's also that PP seems to cut through minerals like a hot knife through butter, where even the legendary abilities of BBS to do that has issues at some places.

One beach that really opened my eyes to that, I had hunted for a good while with few targets to show for it in disc. I decided to see how PP would do at this very badly mineralized beach and it was like night and day. Targets everywhere and in no time I had an apron full of coins.

Kept using my remote PP on my GT to flip back to disc and was shocked to find it choking or nulling on targets only 5 or so inches deep, where as PP was banging real easy and loud on these targets. I'd dig them up expecting iron, and they'd turn out to be coins or other non-ferrous targets. Disc either was choking on them like they were iron, or it would null, or it wouldn't even give a threshold change at all to indicate anything.

Here's the clincher on the PI-like depth and ability to slice through the worst of grounds- That day I didn't even raise discrimination from what was stable for disc. Nor did I raise volume from lowest to highest. Yes, highest volume and highest sensitivity will give PP more depth than disc, and in fact lowest volume in PP will give me less depth than disc, but the fact is I didn't even need to do that that day. I kept volume at it's lowest and sensitivity at what was stable for disc, yet it was seeing stuff disc simply couldn't.

That right there tells me that it's not just PP's increased depth, but it's also it's ability to punch through very bad ground. This particular beach was loaded with microscopic iron, black sand, and other forms of mineralization.

Do a search for the word "Sovereign" in the beach forum. The first or so thread that pops up should be one called Sovereign Compared to PI's or something like that. One guy put an impressive list in there of top end PI units he's owned over the years, and yet he says PP mode on his GT is as deep if not deeper for him. Very impressive. They should have marked the PP switch as "PI Mode". And you can often tell iron from other targets in PP without needing to flip back to disc to judge.

 

[surfman]

Great post BC, critter. That's all I needed to hear. Back to the work bench for me.

 

[Critterhunter]

One thing- I used to think PP was not as deep as disc in my soil. Reason? When I switched to PP to PP a target it often wouldn't hear it at depth. Turned out that using lowest volume will not give PP as good of depth as disc (unless the soil is so bad disc can't handle it) when both are at the same sensitivity setting. My tests show with both at full volume and full sensitivity in a low EMI environment doing a youtube air testing video, PP at lowest volume got less depth than disc, but with full volume PP got a good bit more than disc did.

Also, a trick the experienced PP mode guys use- Many of them raise sensitivity to full, which most of the time is still stable in PP despite bad ground, and then still flip back to disc to reverse discriminate/check the target. Doesn't matter if disc is unstable due to full blast sensitivity for PP mode, since you aren't using disc but a second to see if something sounds off. If it doesn't sound off then does it sound deeper in PP than disc probably can see IN THAT SOIL or sand's conditions? Then it could very well be something other than iron. Scoop down to fit the coil down in there and flip back to disc and see if it's sounding off now.

Or, what I do, is just stay in PP until I get it out of the hole and dumped onto the beach, and then flip over to disc and see if it sounds off. If it don't then now I know it's iron for sure, though often PP will have traits (fuzzy approach/leaving target or one way hits) that tip you off to iron without needing to flip to disc to check. Some guys, once they have the target dumped on the beach and flip to disc and see it's still nulling, will then just dump the sand back in the hole without recovering the iron, leaving it for the PI guys. I don't usually do that. I figure if I get that iron out of there then I won't see it next time, or it might even be masking a deeper ring or something.

Also, the full blast sensitivity thing when flipping back to disc- Although it might be unstable, you can still wiggle and ID or tone out of it good enough to have an idea what it might be. OBN told me that trick and it works. Makes perfect sense to me.

Mainly though I ain't had the need to hunt with sensitivity and volume at full with PP at one really bad beach I hit. PP is so good at seeing stuff that disc can't even at shallower depths in these bad minerals there that I don't care about the extra depth so long as targets are numerous, so I just keep sensitivity at what is stable for disc and volume all the way down. Only if the targets get scarce will I flip to full sensitivity/volume.

Now, here's the thing- If I'm in a hurry then I'll just ignore all shallower sounding hits in PP, and only look for the super deep whisper ones with PP then, so that I'm insuring I'm punching down well beyond the depths of probably any other machine that hit that beach, and also down to where heavy gold rings tend to sink to pretty fast.

I plan to try this only digging deep whispers thing on land where I know deep coins lurk. That's when you can think of it as going "where no detector has gone before" perhaps, and also by avoiding the shallower hits your time traveling to an older age before numerous junk items like foil or tabs were invented.

Paying careful attention to PP's audio report you can often ID iron, so in a way you've got a PI unit with some very good discrimination abilities. Also, I believe it was OBN that told me PP has about 10 different "words" to judge other targets by. I look forward to learning those as I use it more this year.

Exciting to think of working a known deep coin spot with the abilities of depth and ground penetration of this PP mode deal here. Like having a whole other machine in your Sovereign or Excalibur in a way, like perhaps a Deeptech Vista detector mode in many ways here.

Also, if even the legendary abilities of BBS disc mode is having issues with minerals, then imagine what it's doing to other machines at such a site. The thought of PP not only going beyond what BBS in disc can do well at in many situations, just has me intrigued as heck to push down there at land and beach sites and see what kind of goodies have long been well out of reach for a detector up until that point.

 

[pasttom]

I am new to swinging an Excal so forgive me if this is off, but reading this thread suggests to me the fulfillment of a long time fantasy, It appears from what has been said that power pinpoint hunting actually allows one to have the benefit of the focus of a smaller coil with the depth of a larger coil at the flip of a switch and turn of a knob! "OK genie give my other two to someone else I am good!"
Or am I missing something?
Tom

 

[rbdigger]

I am new to swinging an Excal so forgive me if this is off, but reading this thread suggests to me the fulfillment of a long time fantasy, It appears from what has been said that power pinpoint hunting actually allows one to have the benefit of the focus of a smaller coil with the depth of a larger coil at the flip of a switch and turn of a knob! "OK genie give my other two to someone else I am good!"
Or am I missing something?
Tom

I am very new to the Excal II, but I have quite a few hours on it now and have found gold, silver, and coins. So, maybe my input will be of some value to you. I hunt in PP and use the remote switch I installed to check targets in Disc mode. I have found that on my FL beaches I get the best depth in PP and best discrimination ability from Disc mode with the Sensitivity wide open and the Threshold set to a point where it is stable in PP mode. I have the volume up high as well. I have tried running less hot too, but overall the "hot" settings seem to work best where I hunt.

I do not see that with these settings the "width" of detection is reduced much from Disc mode, or if I had less Sensitivity set. As I swing I pick up whispers of targets outside the radius of the 10" coil I swing. Often times additional swings will find the strongest signal still coming up as I move forward just a bit. For me it has been much harder to determine the "width" of detection when in Disc mode, but it too seems wider than the coil itself. So, for me anyway, I do not see PP in high Sensitivity being more focused with respect to how far outside the coil I first hear targets. However, I have found that PP mode is def better for determining the "sweet spot" or strongest signal point. So, I still use PP to determine where I actually stick my scoop in the sand to dig. Not sure if any of this makes any sense, but I hope so.

 

[OldBeechnut]

couple examples, remote,...cherry pickin a fresh drop beach, covering more area, digging targets of value first
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBXAdnoEQps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQSdVbvl83E

 

[Critterhunter]

One other tip about using PP...It's not just the more depth like or perhaps even beyond some PI units, or the ability to cut through minerals better, but also here's a handy tip for the reverse discrimination thing- At that one mineralized beach I hunt, kwhen working it in PP, often if I hit a signal, I'd then find right where it is, center the coil right over it, and then flip to disc and do the tight/fast Sovereign wiggle. Often these non-ferrous (meaning non-iron) targets would then sound through and give me an idea in disc what they might be tone or ID wise, but if I moved the coil just a little off center, due to the extremely bad microscopic iron, black sand, and minerals, the signal would go completely dead.

That right there is reason enough to hunt in PP, even if you don't want to dig any deep stuff disc can't see. Just center over it, flip to disc, wiggle, and if it don't sound off then walk on. But, does it sound shallow enough *for that particular beach or even land site*, that disc should be able to hear it if you are centered right over it in that respect? If it doesn't then it's iron probably, but if it sounds deeper than disc probably can see *for that particular site*, as all sites are different as to the depths disc can achieve, then it could be a deeper non-ferrous target that disc just can't see.

And remember, these depths change depending on site. At this particular mineralized beach, coins only 5 or so inches deep were either choking badly, nulling out, or not even changing the threshold at all. And again, I didn't even have to raise volume to full or sensitivity higher than what was stable for disc. It was the minerals that PP could cut through that made the difference, not the depth.

I was in a mood for a while, since targets were so numerous, to just center right over them with PP and then flip to disc and wiggle. Many times I could at least get a broken response because I was right over it, so then those are the ones I would dig. But, if I hadn't found it with PP, chances are I would have never seen that target in disc, because unless I got right over it and wiggled, I'd simply get no response. Some of them I'd do a long general "hunting for my next target" over before digging, and disc simply would not alert me to them.

There are many ways PP can be used. Reverse disc hunting to cover a beach faster, and then flipping to disc and if it doesn't sound off moving on. Using the "get right over it and wiggle in disc" thing, and if it don't sound off moving on. Or, and this one I like best...Hunting in PP and only going after the deepest of whispers, because now you are getting down where heavy gold rings might sink to. All depends on the beach. Is it all "fluff" stuff at shallower depths like foil and tabs? Then avoid that level of light stuff and look for the deep whispers.

Think of doing that on land as well, when you want to get past modern coins and modern trash (like say tabs and foil which came out around 1965), and only dig the super deep stuff. Time travel past the trash by using depth as your ally in PP, and also you are probably going deeper than any machine has before at such a land site. This one I plan to use a lot this year, at land sites I know should hold (based on soil type), some very deep old coins. But don't let the soil type fool you, one of my deepest coin sites is full of limestone clay, yet it has got so swampy in the past that I guess those coins sank right through the stuff. And it ain't fill either...

One more tip- Do you ever hit a really bad section of beach where the black sand has concentrated right on top of the sand? When that happens, even BBS will go bonkers with false coin hits like you are sweeping over sheet metal. Flip to PP mode. I've done this. It helps. Any hits that you hear, and you will still get falses when it's this bad with black sand with a almost solid layer of it, sweep over them and see how broad they are. If they are broad then it's the black sand, but if you can get a tight response then smile before you dig, because I can almost bet no other machine out there has dared trying to work that stuff...

Here's a pictorial video I did contrasting PP and disc in an air test, along with full versus lowest volume and it's effect on the GT in both modes. Doing this, using a ruler in the foreground of the camera to precisely measure things, really helped open my eyes to the whole debate on PP vs Disc, of which I was on the other side of that debate for a while...

http://youtu.be/G817__EOC8A

 

[Mel Parker]

hunting in discriminate will net you more good targets in the long run because your not wasting your time digging deep Iron. Why spend over $1000 to own one of the greatest discriminating water machines available and not hunt in discriminate. I know there are exceptions in hunting different areas but in the long run I believe discrimate is the way to go.

 

[Critterhunter]

Mel, agree totally. Only time I use PP is when targets are scarce in disc, or say when I'm digging a lot of shallow light fluff like foil at the beach or when all the stuff I'm reaching down to on land is more modern junk. That's when I use PP to get down deeper, past either the modern junk on land, or past the light stuff in the sand down to where heavier gold is going to settle unless it has just been dropped and hasn't sunk that far yet.

I read an excellent article on this, where a coin or a ring will sink down to a certain depth in soil or sand until it's mass and weight are equal to the surrounding ground. Light fluffy foil and such in the sand won't sink much usually, based on both it's relative weight and also how large it's surface area is to resist traveling further into the ground.

Only exception of course is due to wave action or sand being moved or other factors, and even on land I've dug coins well down into hard packed clay that wasn't fill dirt. Why? Only thing I can figure is that, while the coin's surface area and weight shouldn't have allowed it to sink very far in that clay, once it reached a point of being equal to the ground around it, that the soil would get so wet and soupy at certain times of the year that the density of the soil washed deluted, and so allowed the coin to sink to some pretty amazing depths. I've dug a few coins at one spot with hard heavy clay at about 11 to 11.5" deep, and I know that soil is not fill. Then I realized, that field sits lower than the surrounding area, and so say in the spring when heavy rains it would probably get like a swimming pool in there.

I also ran across an article a while back, where at one particular beach a man tied a gold ring to a string, and in dry sand was amazed to find how far it sunk without even being disturbed after a while. I find that hard to believe, but then again I guess there might be some sand types that are almost like a powder, and so fluffy that the ring can do that without people walking over it or such maybe? Maybe even something stupid like a nearby road with heavy semis driving down it causes enough low vibration in the ground to "shake" the ring to further depths?

 

[Buried Crap NJ]

hunting in discriminate will net you more good targets in the long run because your not wasting your time digging deep Iron. Why spend over $1000 to own one of the greatest discriminating water machines available and not hunt in discriminate. I know there are exceptions in hunting different areas but in the long run I believe discrimate is the way to go.

Mel When I first started hunting in PP I was digging Iron I'll give you that. I'd like to think of it as aquiring the target in PP and digging through Discriminate.Most of the target I dig can't be heard in discriminate. If its a lound blarring target I leave them for the skimmers to dig.
PP has so much more information that Discriminate. I do hunt in Disc. When conditions dictate I do

 

[Mel Parker]

either Pin-point or Discriminate modes are OK it just depends on the individuals choice. In saying that, salt water beaches are a hugh area to cover and lots of people like myself have to travel hundreds of miles to get there and once there we have a time limitation. That's why I prefer Discriminate over all metal P/P especially when I'm in the water which is 90% of the time. I tend to work where the crowds are or were so most everything is recent drops.

 

[rbdigger]

hunting in discriminate will net you more good targets in the long run because your not wasting your time digging deep Iron. Why spend over $1000 to own one of the greatest discriminating water machines available and not hunt in discriminate. I know there are exceptions in hunting different areas but in the long run I believe discrimate is the way to go.

With the remote PP/Disc button mod installed hunting in PP and then briefly going to Disc via the remote button to check is a very fast and efficient way to hunt with the Excal. Hit a target in PP, push the remote button, no good target, move on, good target dig. Target too deep to get a Disc tone. Well digging is up to you. Hunting in PP mode with the remote switch is just as fast (actually faster because of the faster signal recovery in PP mode) as hunting in Disc mode and you don't dig any more deep iron than if you hunted in Disc mode alone. At least that has been my experience.

Since I put the remote switch on my Excal II my hunting is 100 times more efficient and I dig so many more good targets versus junk in and out of the water.

 

[arclyt]

Does anyone have the info on the remote switch taht is mentioned hear in this thread--thanks

 

[OldBeechnut]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrhG4xgE5mc

 

[WaderMike]

Does anyone have the info on the remote switch taht is mentioned hear in this thread--thanks

try here
and thats an excellent vid on youtube by OBN

edit, must learn to type quicker ....

 

[opa81]

I'm getting more and more excited reading about the PP mode. But I have 5 different coils with my GT. I was wondering if there is a coil that is best suited for hunting in PP.

My coils range from the 5 inch Sniper coil to the 15 inch WOT.


Thanks,

Andre

 

[Mel Parker]

but thanks to Joe aka Oldbeechnut it's finally catching on.

 

[OldBeechnut]

Thanks to you Mel for starting the fire, I just threw gasoline on it with the video's


And The first one I see on the beach's I hunt, I will regret making that video.....Luckly I have a few other tricks up my sleves. Skullies...