Recommend Speed for Ground tracking

[daddyflea]

Someone give me a recommended setting for Ground tracking using Auto Track in Mild Ground 6X10 DD with a Sunray Probe. I am going to be hunting a large area most likely swinging fairly fast looking for deep silver.

 

[Rob (IL)]

Tracking is the process where the ground balance baseline is maintained automatically by a sampling process. As the coil is swept across the ground, samples are taken and compared to the ground balance baseline. If the matrix signature changes from the baseline, the detector makes the necessary adjustments to the ground balance offset to keep the ground signal neutralized.

If you sweep really fast, you may need to increase the tracking speed to enable the machine to keep up. If you have AT set too fast, you'll hear a threshold "overshoot" as the detector tries to correct for every little change in the ground. If you have AT set too slow, you'll hear the threshold continuously drop out, as the machine can't keep up with the ground changes. "Overshoot" is a positive increase in the threshold volume. "Undershoot" is continuous threshold drop-outs. If you’re not hearing "overshoot" or "undershoot" you are probably OK.

You'd have to have a really fast tracking speed to cause the unit to miss even a deep target, so long as you have your Recovery Delay, Physical Sweep speed and coil size all working "in harmony". The V3i has the "horsepower" to support a relative fast tracking speed w/o any loss of depth. Bob used a 50 tracking speed when he designed the Pro program. A "good" tracking speed is one that keeps your threshold steady while you're sweeping. I'd say if you have to err, err on the "high side".

The tracking is accommodating the changing ground conditions. Excessive tracking speed can result in noise and lost targets. Too slow can cause a loss of sensitivity and again, lost targets. Try various settings until you see your "tracking" alerts reduce to a "reasonable" number. I would also suggest that if your ground is so bad that you are continuously tracking, that you use Lock Track.

 

[daddyflea]

Thanks Rob reason I was asking had more to do with the Sunray Inline. I would not want to have to GB after every target. Really sounds like anything between 25 and 50 would work.

I recently spent some time experimenting with Recovery Delay and the results were eye opening. I found that my ideal Recovery Delay went from 45 to 80. I was hoping there was some sort of proven method to test tracking speed as well.

 

[Rob (IL)]

When we were testing the prototype, Jeff Foster found that there was an offset when trying to balance for salt water. The tracking was changed in an attempt to get rid of that offset. Such is life. I think having it with the original was better, and salt water offset could be corrected with the "manual" tracking offset.

Now here is the problem, as I said Bob used 50 in the Hi Pro program, and yet Da Fox uses 5 in his Florida soil. The soil determines the best speed. Leave "report" on and watch the arrows. Find a speed were you don't have overshoot or undershoot, the detector is quiet, and the arrows aren't constantly changing.

Here's an old post by the software engineer.

Tracking Speed, lower numbers equals slower track speed. The V is always tracking as long as auto track is on. The control adjusts the limit of how much it can track at one time. So, (example - numbers are not correct at all - just to give you an idea what's going on), say you have a ground signal that is off by 10000 from where ground really is. If you have your setting at 10, the detector would track at the most by 20 at one sample. If your ground was off by only 8, then it would adjust by 8 as that's less than the limit. But at 10000, it will be limited to 10 at that one data sample. Whereas, a setting of 20 will track at most by 40 per data sample. There are a lot of factors that come into play on how tracking is adjusted - whether it has seen a target recently, how fast the ground is changing, the user adjustable track speed, how close the ground setting is to the current ground. If the ground setting is close to the current ground, it will track to the current ground faster than if the current reading is far away (might be a target and don't want to track to targets).

 

[daddyflea]

Thanks i am itching to get out to this Property I have to hunt. Yall took all that Snow and sent it this way where it has turned to constant rain. My Head is pretty thick at times but when I get something figured out (Like the Recovery delay), I have it. My thinking on that may have been correct but in practice it was working against me.

This Ground Tracking speed bothers me because it seems no real right or wrong and the only way to test is hard use. This will be the first time I may be hunting in relatively clean ground, where I can see a little more depth. I think I settled on a speed of 40.

 

[rivergold]

Pull trigger and check for thresh hold. No hum,bump it up 5 numbers or so and sweep some more. TO much hum , lower numbers. It there is a lot of iron (man made) in ground it will be hard to use track. G.B. more often and turn auto off. Hope this helps.