Question for Ray in MO?

[dreamweaver43]

Ray,

If you wouldn't mind sharing, how exactly are you setting up your etrac for coin hunting?
Thanks in advance.
Brad

 

[Ray-Mo.]

I run my E-Trac with stock Pro coil 99% of the time.
Stock factory coin mode.
Auto +3 sensitivity most of the time.
4 tones or multi tones depending on the ground and sound of deep targets in both modes.
volume limit 27-29
volume gain 28-30
responce normal
sounds conductive
variability around 24
limits 30
Recovery Deep on most sites.
Recovery fast on if a trashy site.
Trash density High or Low depending on amount of trash.
Ground difficult most sites hear in midwest where I hunt.
Pinpoint normal

Some recent discoveries as a result of some private sites I have been hunting where lots of holes dug are not an issue as in grassy hardpacked cow pastures .
1. Deeper coin hits at the limit of depth ability for soil conditions will break up audio wise and id will fluctuate quite a bit on copper mostly.One site with bad soil this will happen at 7"( auto sen. at 12-15) and at another site with very good soil where auto stays around 21-23 not counting the plus 3 I run with will be at 9"+ depths.
I am not seeing the depth meter over 3/4 pegged in these situations in pinpoint or disc. auto. mode and on some copper coin targets at max depth will read trash in pinpoint mode even though there is no iron close by as tested with all metal pocket uniprobe and pinpoint mode after coin is removed.
2. Silver coins of all depths in all soils I hunt in sound good to very edge of depth limits and Id well also in disc. and pinpoint,Dimes up to 11" and quarter at 12" being deepest I have recovered so far.I would say I have called 99% of silver coins so far as being silver before digging.A few times I was fooled and thought silver when in fact it would be 2 copper pennies at 5" or more in same hole.And some of the alum.screw caps are close to silver sound.Silver is just a stronger signal than copper or nickels and just screams silver to my ears to the point that a 6" silver dime hits as hard as a clad dime at 1".
3.Older nickels as in Shield , V/Liberty and Buffalo varieties hit softer than silver or copper coins even at fairly shallow depths but in pinpoint mode they come alive and hit much stronger.They seem to id good and solid number wise to pretty good depths but are a softer less solid sound in disc. mode.
4. Indian Head Pennies will id lower in some soils than others regardless of depth.I have found they id at Ferous 7-13 and conductive 26-36 but sound good and solid and after digging a few in a given area I was able to call most of them as Indians before even looking at the machine by sound alone.
5. Old rusty crown caps are not even an issue with the way I am running my E-Trac.On the other hand there are a few places I gave up on with the F75 as it loved them and drove me crazy!
6. All the nulling does for me is let me know trash is present and if it nulls a lot I will slow down swing speed a little but otherwise find good targets in the middle of solid 3 foot long nulls with no problem!
7. Most sites I have been hunting are dated 1870-1940 use or are sites 1860 to present but with a lot hunting preasure hence the very few 1950s and newer coins I find to post.At the sites with use to present I rarely find a coin less than 5" unless it was close to junk and masked by most previous machines.Almost all the Rosevelt and Washington silver was found 20 + years ago.I guess I need to start asking permission to hunt more private house sights to get more current silver.
8.Hope this will help some a little and this is only my personal findings as I coin hunt mostly old churches,parks,schools and fairgrounds in south west MO and south east KS
If you are searching at much older sights with the chance of earlier coinage you may want to modify the factory coin program so as not to discriminate out some of those late 1700 to mid 1800 coins ,Ray.

 

[Ray-Mo.]

n/t

 

[Rick(ND)]

Ray,

I didnt get a lot of time on mine before the ground froze, but your setting are just like mine and I feel I did very well with mine also. The first time out I thought it wasn't working right as as it was so quiet compared to my SE Pro and had to throw down a coin just to see if it worked. I was surprised at how it picked up some Wheaties at a place we have hit many times before. I also notice one signal that was iffy and it show possible coin and when I went to the quick mask it showed more of iron than anything else. Being it was a iffy coin I had to dig it and found it was a old wheatie with a rusty nail touching it, so this made me believe that the disc coin pattern you will have the better ID.
The E-Trac is impressing me and yet so easy to use as the factory presets with maybe a little + of the auto sensitivity works great.

I enjoy your post of the finds you are getting, give us all a little more confidence on our E-Trac and what it can do.

Rick

 

[sharpshooter]

[size=medium]Good info, Ray.

Thanks for taking the time to write up your settings as well as offering some hunting tips.[/size]

 

[Chris(SoCenWI)]

Some claim to be able to tell the difference but I haven't figured it out yet.

Good write up.

Chris

 

[Ex-Sox]

Thanks from me also Ray. I set mine up like yours today and did really well. I am not too far from you and figure we have about the same ground so I thought that I would try it. Seemed to work well!

 

[dreamweaver43]

Sunday haul.....

I had the machine set up pretty much the same. I read you write up this am before going out, and it really gave me more confidence. You are right on the money with some of stuff I've seen too.

One thing I've noticed is that when I run the machine +3 I struggle. I ran it at A today, and I hit coins solid at 8 inches (with the gain maxed out, so everything sounds solid) The Etrac is much more sensitive to smaller target compared to the explorer series, and is some of the sites I hunt there is alot of rusted out iron, etc. that makes any machine spark.

All of these targets could have been found by the explorer no doubt. But it really is cool to lock on to a deep target and call it. I called all the coins today except one, a nasty crusy wheat that boucing around 38-16 at 8 inches, which I thought was a indian. I couldn't do that with the explorer.

With more time on this machine......look out!!!!

Thanks Ray!!!!!
Brad

 

[ashdigger]

Ray, I'm in SW Mo. also and I set my machine up like you suggested for coins and it seems to be working fairly well thanks for the information.