Question on sensitivity setting

[fwcrawford]

Hey Guys,
I went up to a local school today for about an hour to try the Sovereign and play with the controls... I'm new to this machine and haven't done any hunting with it yet due to snow on the ground.
I set it up with disc. and notch at min., sens. in auto, iron mask on, and threshold just audible.
I started hunting and it seemed to work normal nulling occasionally on iron.
I then switched to manual setting for the sensitivity and set it about 12:00.
When I began searching the detector just went quiet when I started swinging and the only way the threshold would return was when the coil was stationary.
I adjusted the sens. more clockwise towards min. and kept trying it until finally it did somewhat better.
I think I read somewhere that if the sens. is set too high, the detector will just null constantly.
I know that too fast a swing will also cause this, but I was swinging it the same speed as in auto with no problem.. very slow.
I was only working a small area where I have found some deep coins in the past.
I also switched the iron mask off when in the manual setting for sens. and that too seemed to help.
I think I remember reading that switching the iron mask off helps in highly minerlized ground.
I think this ground is very minerlized due to some things I have experienced in the past hunting here.
One is that I cannot ground balance my X-Terra 50.. it just give a low tone when trying to balance and I cannot get it to get the normal sound of a balanced setting. The other thing I have noticed it that my vibraprobe 570 is useless at this site.
It vibrates every place you probe when looking for a target. I have not noticed this at any other sites I have hunted.
It is also red colored soil which I think is red clay.. I'm in central Virginia where many state has some of the worst ground they have seen.. up around Orange county.
I am about 30 away from there, but I think I may be experiencing this type of soil at this location.
I sure would appreciate some help on this.. should I just use the detector in auto mode? Is this the right setting for this site?
I believe this site has some good coins still in the ground, but don't know if I am using the right settings.
Thanks in advance for any replies,
Felix

 

[gear box]

That's one of the thing's you will encounter with the Sov. I think you were on the right track with the settings you had. When you switched to manual you found out the ground was highly mineralized or there was a lot of ferrous junk in the ground. You could have continued to turn your sens. down, maybe all the way down and or slowed your swing speed down or you could of also switched back to auto,sometimes auto is the only way to go in some spot's. Occasionally I will put the machine back to manual to see if I have moved out of the bad spot and if the machine has settled down some, if it has then I will continue in manual. Also remember that the Sov. will pick up a good target in a null. But it may be just a little blip or spike in audio so you can just keep swinging away but slow down even more in these spot's.
Good hunting Gary

 

[Nauti]

Hi Felix,Garys advice is spot on.....sometimes auto is the only setting that will give you any chance in difficult spots.A lot of people ignore this setting because depth is not as good as when the machine is set in manual.However,this setting was put on this machine for the type of ground that you are experiencing....either very highly mineralised or contaminated with a lot of ferous items....and it works very well in these conditions.Another good point that Gary made was about the nulling on the machine......the sov will still register good targets even when the threshold is nulled out...a lot of first time sov users do not realise this and think the threshold has to return before it can register a good target.I think that this is why it sometimes gets it's reputation of having an ultra slow recovery time.....it's not quite as slow as some think.
Also for the type of ground you are currently hunting in it may be worth investing in a smaller coil.I have been using a little joey coil because some of my fields are full of ferous items and i am now using it as my standard coil.....much better in these conditions than the standard 10" tornado.A smaller coil will also cope better with electrical and mineral interference.
All the best,Neil.

 

[fwcrawford]

n/t

 

[Critterhunter]

That's some really bad ground. The good news is that this should mean there will be plenty of old coins still laying around that other machines can't even hunt for due to the conditions. The Sovereign is meant to handle any kind of ground, especialy ground this bad. Like they say if the lowest manual setting isn't stopping the nulling then switch to auto. You either have really bad minerals or a lot of iron there, or maybe both. I wouldn't turn OFF iron mask unless the unit is still too noisy to hunt with. Sweep the coil very slow so it has time to adjust to the ground. Only use auto if it still won't in the lowest manual setting.

Try to keep the coil just off the ground to where it won't be hitting it randomly. That can cause nulling. I know the Sovereign hates air but another trick that might work (does on some other machines I've owned) is to raise the coil a little further off the ground than normal. This cuts down the intensity of the ground minerals a bit and will smooth a machine out. Like they said, the best thing to do would be to use a small coil like the S-5. It will see less ground minerals and/or iron and the threshold will not null out nearly as much.

I had a similar spot like that I hunted when I had my Explorer(s). It was unhuntable due to hot rocks and minerals with other machines. The Explorer still had problems but at least I could get a coin signal that was about 75% perfect. I started digging those and got a few silvers/indians that way that weren't even deep, like maybe 3 to 5 inches. I've gone back there once with the Sovereign so far for about twenty minutes and, while I didn't dig any coins yet, the machine did run WAY smoother than the Explorer and I was able to run with a high sensitivity as well. I did manage a copper women's compact and am looking forward to going back there. Next time I may take off the 10" coil and use the S-5 because you will find at spots like this with really heavy minerals, hot rocks, or iron that a small coil will not only run smoother but also get deeper than a larger coil.

Keep us informed on that spot...