Hello everyone and I am doing quite well.I have just been very busy the last 3 months and have not had time to hunt but that will soon change.If we dont get an early freeze up I am going to do some hunting in my totaly saturated local soils.I am also going to Savannah, GA for a few days this Thanksgiving and will give the E-Trac a workout down there if all goes well.
Now to answer a question posed a while back by digitrich,yes I have found that ultra deep coins give a warble or what I call a mottled or slightly broken/spongy signal.Once you get on to this type signal and realize it could very well be a deep coin instead of iron your old coin count will go way up,at least it did for me.I discovered this early on when I was hunting a old long gone park in a private pasture where I was comfortable digging a lot of iffy targets with a nice sharp relic shovel and many oversized plugs.
It is more pronounced on deep Indians/coppers than silver but does it as well on silver.I think the less than text book perfect signal is why a lot of folks are having trouble getting the extra deep coins and the Indians for sure.Also another important thing is to not get to dependant on the ID numbers as they are nice but only part of the info your machine sends to your brain to be processed.Get the best ear phones you can afford and learn all the various tones,sounds,lack of sounds and many combinations thereof.
I posted a number of times early on about how much your ability with the E-Trac could/ would improve if you could get an old site with deep targets that was private and the digging of a lot of deep larger than normal holes would be acceptable.Doing this is the only really good way I know of to learn what your machine is saying on those ultra deep sometimes broken up signals.
I learned more the first 2 hours testing this way than many days spent hunting previously.Will you dig more junk going for these almost ghostly targets/signals? Yes and most definitely YES but your older better coin count will also go up and for me that is what detecting is all about.Old coins and rellics are what excite me and not just the valluable ones as I love to dig those old crusty Indians as well.
I am far from an expert but have had good success with my E-Trac that far surpasses any of the previous top line units I put hundreds of hours on.One more very important point I want to mention as well.Even though I have gotten good depth with my E-Trac I feel where it outshines all other machines i have used is in it's phenominal ability to pull a great many coins at moderate depths out of some of the most trashy heavily hunted public parks and similar sites for me.
I have actually marked off several extremely iron infested 20' x 20' plots and went over them from several different angles/directions with multiple size coils on the F75,CZ3D,Explorer 11,SE Pro , Vision and then went over them with the E-Trac and got several good targets that I assume were to heavily masked for the previous machines.I did these tests as fairly as I know how and was using a high quality all metal Uniprobe PI pocket probe to pinpoint with.That in itself was a great eye opener as I could tell just how many iron/trash targets were in close proxemity to the desireable target and recover them as well.
I guess what I am saying besides the obvious fact that I am sold on the E-Tacs abilities is that if you want to get the best out of any top end machine you need to do your homework with the manual and online info and then you must do extensive infield trials and tests at actual sites you plan to hunt.After that you must put in many,many hours at those same sites honing your skills on said machine and stick with it.I feel that most people are not going to have the time or patience (myself included) to really master several machines so we need to stick with one or 2 at most to truly master them to the best of our abilities.
I only posted this to be of possible help to those who want to find more goodies and for no other reason as I do not sell any brand of machine and never have.My passion for detecting is all about finding the older coins and relics that may be lost at any given site,Ray.
Now to answer a question posed a while back by digitrich,yes I have found that ultra deep coins give a warble or what I call a mottled or slightly broken/spongy signal.Once you get on to this type signal and realize it could very well be a deep coin instead of iron your old coin count will go way up,at least it did for me.I discovered this early on when I was hunting a old long gone park in a private pasture where I was comfortable digging a lot of iffy targets with a nice sharp relic shovel and many oversized plugs.
It is more pronounced on deep Indians/coppers than silver but does it as well on silver.I think the less than text book perfect signal is why a lot of folks are having trouble getting the extra deep coins and the Indians for sure.Also another important thing is to not get to dependant on the ID numbers as they are nice but only part of the info your machine sends to your brain to be processed.Get the best ear phones you can afford and learn all the various tones,sounds,lack of sounds and many combinations thereof.
I posted a number of times early on about how much your ability with the E-Trac could/ would improve if you could get an old site with deep targets that was private and the digging of a lot of deep larger than normal holes would be acceptable.Doing this is the only really good way I know of to learn what your machine is saying on those ultra deep sometimes broken up signals.
I learned more the first 2 hours testing this way than many days spent hunting previously.Will you dig more junk going for these almost ghostly targets/signals? Yes and most definitely YES but your older better coin count will also go up and for me that is what detecting is all about.Old coins and rellics are what excite me and not just the valluable ones as I love to dig those old crusty Indians as well.
I am far from an expert but have had good success with my E-Trac that far surpasses any of the previous top line units I put hundreds of hours on.One more very important point I want to mention as well.Even though I have gotten good depth with my E-Trac I feel where it outshines all other machines i have used is in it's phenominal ability to pull a great many coins at moderate depths out of some of the most trashy heavily hunted public parks and similar sites for me.
I have actually marked off several extremely iron infested 20' x 20' plots and went over them from several different angles/directions with multiple size coils on the F75,CZ3D,Explorer 11,SE Pro , Vision and then went over them with the E-Trac and got several good targets that I assume were to heavily masked for the previous machines.I did these tests as fairly as I know how and was using a high quality all metal Uniprobe PI pocket probe to pinpoint with.That in itself was a great eye opener as I could tell just how many iron/trash targets were in close proxemity to the desireable target and recover them as well.
I guess what I am saying besides the obvious fact that I am sold on the E-Tacs abilities is that if you want to get the best out of any top end machine you need to do your homework with the manual and online info and then you must do extensive infield trials and tests at actual sites you plan to hunt.After that you must put in many,many hours at those same sites honing your skills on said machine and stick with it.I feel that most people are not going to have the time or patience (myself included) to really master several machines so we need to stick with one or 2 at most to truly master them to the best of our abilities.
I only posted this to be of possible help to those who want to find more goodies and for no other reason as I do not sell any brand of machine and never have.My passion for detecting is all about finding the older coins and relics that may be lost at any given site,Ray.
