Some advice on my CZ 3D

[Blackadder43]

Hello everyone, I am a UK based digging fiend ;-) And wow actualy found a forum dedicated to my machine, Bonus

I'll try and be brief and get to the point but if you are easily bored then probaly best to skip read my posts.

Serial number on mine is 10210805, so am i right in presuming this is one of the first made ones?

From my as yet brief reading of this forum these are quite sought after machines?

So, i purchased this one new about 5 ish years ago, i used it for a while but because work was very busy and hectic then i didnt realy give it a chance, found plenty of coins but didnt have the dedication or pashion to test it thoroughly.

So now i need to get out and get more excercise for my Diabetes and blood pressure i thought what better way than metal detecting.

I have only been out twice this week and have to admit i was fumbling around not quite knowing what i was doing.

First time was a couple of hours on my local beach with a very high tide creeping up on me very fast.

In any of the Discrim modes i was getting lots of false signals and couldnt for the life of me work it out (i was in salt mode)
Found a few coins before the tide made it impossible to detect anymore.
Came home and did some research, found out my "groundbalancing" needs some work, also one of the threads i looked at said the machine may have been picking up the incoming tide, i was detecting within 20 feet of a high and rough tide.
This i accepted as a reasonable excuse.

Second time i went to a very large park nearby, my first half hour the detector was bleeping on every swing, especialy at the far end of each swing, this again was in 0,1,2 and 3 discrim modes, sensitivity 10 and ground at 8
So i then switched to auto tune (enhanced) this seemed better as when i did get a signal i could mess about in the discrim modes before i decided to dig.

I found about 20 coins (a few from early 1900) but felt i was piddling against the wind.
I also used the default settings that the manual suggested but found the silence eery and felt i was just walking past so much stuff.

Now i have only read the first 2 pages of this forum and have learnt so much already.
I thought max sensitivity was the way to go but after reading a few threads i realise i can turn it down without losing to much apart from my sanity.
I did skip a few good beeps that showed as tin foil, realy wished i dug those now

So now to a few questions:
Where do i find the "airtest parameters"?
Can someone give me the equivilent British coinage to replace the USA coinage used in these tests?
For about a year my metal detector was stored in a cupboard that houses my electric meter, would that have damaged anything in anyway? (batterys were removed)
Is 5 a good sensitivity to start with?
Hopefully in a couple of days i should have permission to detect on a farm right in the middle of heavy roman occupation territory, can i then crank the sensitivity right up to 10?
How important is ground balancing on a field that holds relatively no junk?
For the cz3d what swing speed is best?

Many thanks to anyone who has made it this far and any information is going to be greatly appreciated

Ok thats enough for now
And wow again for finding this forum.....top marks

 

[therover]

Blackadder,

Just a few things to get started.

1) Ground balancing is imperative, and it has to be done in the all metal ( autotune ) mode. The manual shows 2 ways of doing this, the bobbing method being more precise.

2) Once you have a proper ground balance and switch into discriminate mode, LOWER YOUR SENSITIVITY. You should run it around 3 or 4 to start off with and detect with that sensitivity level for at least 15-20 hours to get to learn the detector and eliminate falsing.

3) Always run in discriminate mode 0 to start off, so you can hear the low tone iron and hear the low tone/high tone bounces that are false signals. If you run higher discriminating, for any low tone/high tone bounce, you will only hear the high tone and think it is a good target and end up digging lots of iron. Also, I would suggest digging any deep target ( over 8 inches deep) that signals low tone since the CZ can get fooled by deeper targets and down scales the signal into the iron tone range. I have dug 10 inch + deep silver coins in spots I know there were older coins, digging the deeper low tones. They have to be faint and deep. In older sites, I keep the volume under 5 so the audio is modulated and the deeper targets are softer ( not as loud) as shallow targets. It's a good way to tell deeper targets without having to always check the depth.

4) Use the stock coil ( 8 inch coil ) only for your first 15-20 hours.

5) As you get better with the machine and learn how to use the VCO pin point to size targets, you can start to learn how iron sizes and how it does not pin point in the same spot.

6) Sweep speed is moderate to slow...and very slow if you run the sensitivity high since that eliminates some falsing.

I believe that the CZ's depth maxes out in discriminate mode around 5 or 6, and when you get higher, the bigger the footprint of the signal which can lead to masking....and there is very little depth increase after that. The only time I run my sensitivity at 9 or 10 is when I am in auto tune mode, where I need to hear the threshold.

As far as the air test parameters go...they are just air tests. I have a 1021 serial number CZ3D also, and it air tests a clad dime at 11+ inches with GB at 10, Vol 10, Sen 5, Discrim 0, enhanced mode. I bet yours is pretty much close to that. I would not worry too much about it at this point...get out there and learn your machine. If all you are digging after proper ground balancing and running in Disc 0, sensitivity 4 of 5, are shallow targets, and you are not getting ANY deepies, then there may be something wrong. I would take a few different coins and check them out and if you can get air tests at 8 or 9 inches on most if not all of them, you are good to go.

 

[Blackadder43]

Therover
Thanks for your reply.

1) Agreed, i realy need to spend the timelearning to GB my machine.

2) I was running the sensitivity at max thinking i would miss stuff if i didnt, will drop it back to 4 for a while.

3)

and hear the low tone/high tone bounces that are false signals

What causes these? or is that a silly question?
Hmmm volume i had cranked up aswell and adjusted the sound with my headphones, will knock that back to 5 aswell and see what happens.

4) And after the 20 hours with the 8" spider coil what would you suggest?

5) For some reason i seem to be pretty accurate at the pinpointing thing ;-)

6) Yep, think i may have been a bit to fast with the swing, need to let the excitement and novelty value pass and then i can slow down a bit and take my time.

I have only been out for a few hours after a 5 year break and a few of the coins were down 7 to 8" so not all bad at the moment. The real test will come when i can get on the farm fields, as i said its in the middle of an area well known for its roman history.

Many thanks for your time, i am still reading and learning from these forums.
Have learnt more in the past few hours than i have all week on the net.

 

[tvr]

therover is spot on with his recommendations.

Sometimes iron will make the tone bounce from low tone to high tone. Slow the sweep way down over a target that bounces the tone between low and high and see if it then stays low. If it does, then it is a pretty good indication of iron.

A target that bounces from low tone to mid-tone is a different story; dig those!

Enjoy getting use to the CZ. They are very good detectors.
Cheers,
tvr

 

[davkeene]

You mention in paragraph #4 "Use the stock coil (8 inch coil) only for your first 15-20 hours." What coil would you recommend after that the hockey puck or 10.5" or larger? Thanks for any info.

 

[therover]

It all depends on what type of hunting you will be doing. Beach hunting and farm fields, get the 10.5 inch coil. Trashy parks and tot lots, get the small 5 inch coil.

The 5 inch coil will surprise you. You may not get the coverage and it may seem like it takes 3 days to go 20 feet, but you can crank up the sensitivity a bit, the coil is super stable and still goes deep, and it can sniff out good targets among the garbage. If you strictly coin hunt, this is a great coil. You can cherry pick the high tones and will find some sleeper coins.

As far as Blackadders question about low tone/high tone bounces...I don't know why that happens other than it may be the wrap around effect of iron pushing past the lowest range and going into the high tone range.

And TVR is correct...dig those low/mid tone bounces most times. You will be surprised how many gold rings fit into that type of signal...especially on a salt water beach.

Blackadder....one thing I forgot to mention. Remember to sweep from all angles and dig all high tone repeatables. If you sweep from multiple angles and get low tones more than 65-70% of the time along with the false high tones, it's most probably iron. You want that sweet, mellow high tone that signals deep, old coin.

JC

 

[Dan-Pa.]

If hunting in the wet sand ground balance where you are hunting.

Try not to lift your coil at the end of the left to right swing as it will false...keep the coil level even if it means shortening your swing.

Practice the bobbing method of ground balancing with volume and sens. at 10 so you can fine tune( audio heard better)..turn them down later to where you wish but have to remind you even on land in most cases 4.8 is the highest you can go while keeping unit stable...probably lower in wet salt sand conditions.

Hunt very slow as it will give you more depth and stability...Indeed the CZ3D is a user friendly unit to setup but learning the unit will take some time..

Any specific questions fire away as many learned CZ detectorists on forum...

 

[Blackadder43]

Thanks guys,
Managed to grab a few hours yesterday at the park again.
Tryed the Ground balancing "bobbing" method, not realy sure if i got it correct and the next hour detecting kind of backed that up.
So my attempts at balancing put the GB button at 7, volume was 5, sensitivity was a tickle under 5 , discrim 0 and switch in enhance.
Every swing at these settings produced a minimum of 1 beep, 90% of which were top end beeps the others iron beeps, usualy 2 beeps tho at random times and places in the swing, and none repeatable in the same spot but were repeatable in other places on the swing, basicaly it was chattering to me but in beeps and not like static chatter
I tryed slow sweeps which helped a bit but still not enough to be comfy with.

So what i did then was take the GB down to "instruction manual" advise level which is 5, this stopped the false beeps but i am wondering how much depth and sensitivity i lost by doing this?
I did knock it up to 6 and had the odd 1 or 2 falsies which i could cope with, so is this a lazy and not very accurate way of ground balancing?

I had 1 good signal that read 8" plus, dug the hole and found nothing, although it still beeped it didnt get louder as i would expect and pinpointing put the object dead centre of my hole, i gave up in the end as the clay is quite hard to dig at that level (was probaly micro millimetres away from something good lol, need to get a probe sorted) and to be honest the object would have to be pretty substancial to be able to sink to that level in clay so i presumed it was something big buried deeper when the area was created in the 60's.

So the bobbing method of ground balancing, i realy didnt notice any change in the pitch of the hum so kind of just set it at the mid point between instruction advise and max GB, this didnt work.
Although the bobbing method is supposed to be more accurate is any of the others a bit more idiot proof? where the differences are so obvious a blind and deaf rat could sort them?

Thanks guys

 

[cometguy]

Good job getting out and trying. Ground balance is pretty important, some would say critical at finding things. Honestly, I have taken off and forgotten to ground balance and then remembered. Another good thing, ground balancing is something that you can practice and will get better at with time. It seems so simple, but I will also
confess at realizing I was doing wrong and actually taking the instructions outside with me to tune. Wait till you throw in another detector or two and try to remember which does what. Your falsing could certainly be part of ground balancing and also part of coil arcing. Keep at it, get out and do it, and share your stories as you go.
Thanks for posting.

HH, Don

 

[Blackadder43]

and also part of coil arcing

That sounds bad......because i havent used this machine in 5 years i was wondering if it needs a service?
What is coil arcing?

 

[cometguy]

No don't panic. I didn't think about how that might sound. I call it that when your swing isn't quite flat and it leaves the ground or tilts at the end of your swing.
It raises the coil up enough that it might make a sound. I hadn't paid enough attention to your posts till I saw the other one about English coins. I am sorry.
I think your idea of starting a data base of information about the coins and where they fall is a great one.

HH, Don