Went out Saturday and Sunday with the Sov. Saturday to our usual local beach haunt, Sunday we decided to venture out and go north about 5 miles to a different beach. As far as my machine responded, I might as well of been hunting on a different planet. I normally can run the sensitivity between 10 - 12 with no problem at my local spot. On Sunday I couldn't run any lower that 3:00 without falseing. My main concern was extremely slow come back after nulling, like 5 seconds. I charged batteries overnight on Friday. Shouldn't that be adequate for two 4 hour hunts? When you're forced to turn down the sensitivity, does it effect the recovery time? Or if the battery starts to wane will that do it? Maybe I should be charging the batteries before every hunt just to be safe. When you get accustomed to a certain set up and then everything went out the window, it really through me for a loop.
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Sov GT Super Slow Recovery
- Thread starter SurfPro
- Start date
Neil
Well-known member
If you werent getting that high blip every 30 seconds or so saying your batteries were low then you should be good in that dept.
Sounds like the soil you were hunting had alot more black sand/iron flakes or other mineralization, by your description your sov was struggling to keep up with the soil. slow down your sweep, turn down the sens like you did, make sure your not running any disc(set at 0) and notch set at 0. 12oclock is about as high as I ever got to run mine in disc mode(could run it higher in all metal), 1oclock to 3oclock was about right for my area depending on the day and the beach. if your swinging it and loosing your threshold thats also an indicator your swinging to fast or to much sens. sometimes you just have to crawl along with it, its actually pretty easy to swing to fast with a sov. try different sweep speeds on your next hunt on really deep targets and you will see how easy it is to loose/miss the deep ones. try the all metal mode too, that can show you if your over alot of iron pieces if your nulling alot.
Sounds like the soil you were hunting had alot more black sand/iron flakes or other mineralization, by your description your sov was struggling to keep up with the soil. slow down your sweep, turn down the sens like you did, make sure your not running any disc(set at 0) and notch set at 0. 12oclock is about as high as I ever got to run mine in disc mode(could run it higher in all metal), 1oclock to 3oclock was about right for my area depending on the day and the beach. if your swinging it and loosing your threshold thats also an indicator your swinging to fast or to much sens. sometimes you just have to crawl along with it, its actually pretty easy to swing to fast with a sov. try different sweep speeds on your next hunt on really deep targets and you will see how easy it is to loose/miss the deep ones. try the all metal mode too, that can show you if your over alot of iron pieces if your nulling alot.
That's a good idea, I had the battery pack with me at the time, I place the control box in a half gallon plastic bag, then inside the Mindlab blue bag and didn't feel like messing around with it. What about the coil cover? I've never had it off in 2 months. How often should it come of for a clean out? That said, how does the thing come off, it seems like a very tight fit.
I'd be interested to know how often you charge the batteries and how long? I only have the 10" Tornado that came with the machine.
I'd be interested to know how often you charge the batteries and how long? I only have the 10" Tornado that came with the machine.
Critterhunter
New member
You don't have your coil cable flopping around or near the coil do you? That can cause falsing on a machine.
GraveDiggerMax-VaBch-Va
New member
get some black electric tape and wrap it tight - straight up on the lower black rod.............coil above that point above
2 cents
2 cents
Neil said:
I basically by necessity, did exactly as your recommending. I've never used the notch or the disc as I understand that it limits your range for the good stuff. It doesn't seem like a practical way to hunt on the beach, to crawl along, that will take me some getting used to. When I switched to auto it helped quite a bit, but doesn't that diminish your depth as compared to manual? When you hunt in AM are you in track or fixed position and are you using the bob method to ground balance in track mode?
Thanks very much for your tips, they're really appreciated!
labeachbum
Member
make sure your coil cover is free of sand .............that will cause Major falseing ..........I ruined a full days of fun, at the beach Because of this simple mistake.
labeachbum
Member
Just pry Up with all your Fingers , it should come off ..............Now some are a Pain in the b*$# to come off & some come off pretty easy...............If you bought your Detector Used , There's a slight Slight chance there's epoxy on the cover, then it will not come Off.
Neil
Well-known member
SurfPro said:
neither on the all metal, the pinpoint mode is the one I liked best. if going to auto smoothed out your sov than your running to much sens and swinging to fast. pay attention to the threshold and make sure it stays smooth and steady and its not intermittent at all. a lowered sens isnt all that bad sometimes, depends on your beach. Id play around with the sens and sweepspeed until your happy with the depth and quality of responses.
auto diminishes depth but your also not going back and rechecking falses so which do you prefer?
you dont bob method ground balance the all metal mode, just swing it and let the machine adjust as necessary. you should be able to run a fairly high sens in that mode(pinpoint).
midalake said:
I bought it new and wondered about the cover when I got it. I also have a Dual Field, didn't come with a cover. I've had it for 2 years and the coil looks fine, it's not like I'm constantly scrubbing the sand. See any reason why the Locktite epoxy shouldn't go on the DF as well? The idea of the epoxy and the cover is to prevent the sand from wearing a hole in the coil eventually, right? Although that would probably take quite some time. Do you know whether or not the epoxy on the coil would void the warranty?
Thanks,
MIchael
Yes the epoxy will void the warenty. As to the batteries if you aren't getting a loud screach every 30 seconds or so the batteries are ok, this screach every 30 seconds is the battery low alert, if you charged over night you should get 12 hours or so.
As to the nulling, put it in all metal, slow swing and if its sounding off every few inches its probably iron flake or mineralization, if not its your sweep speed and sensitivity in disc mode thats more likely the problem. With the sovereign you need to adjust your swing and sensitivity to the conditions. Ahh that reminds me, my DF also came without cover, been meaning to order one
As to the nulling, put it in all metal, slow swing and if its sounding off every few inches its probably iron flake or mineralization, if not its your sweep speed and sensitivity in disc mode thats more likely the problem. With the sovereign you need to adjust your swing and sensitivity to the conditions. Ahh that reminds me, my DF also came without cover, been meaning to order one
Critterhunter
New member
You'll find that even if you have the sensitivity set right too fast of a sweep speed will cause the machine to null a lot on you. Try going VERY slow and see if the threshold will stay constant. If it does then it's a good indicator that you don't have sensitivity too high. I'm also finding that the worse the ground the slower you need to sweep to keep threshold from dropping out. I think by going slower the machine has more time to adjust to un-uniform ground without losing the threshold.
I wasn't a big fan of auto but provided there isn't a lot of electrical noise nearby my testing shows it will often give near the max sensitivity manual will allow, but that was with the S-5 coil. This was in very mineralized ground where I would have thought auto would drop sensitivity way lower than it needed to. On the other hand, there was no nearby electrical noise.
Then again, in my garage I found the difference in depth between auto and max manual for this coil to be almost non-existant. I'd keep that in mind if people have sites where nearby RF noise makes hunting with a larger coil almost impossible. You may in fact get much more depth with a smaller coil than the 10" at a spot like this. I found it had more depth than the 10" in my garage with a stabil manual or auto setting.
Not sure just how high auto will put a larger coil. I'd test your highest stabil manual setting against auto at a site and see if auto is dropping any depth by air testing. If it's not then I'd keep it in auto. I plan to do that test at a new site when conditions are rough and if auto is just about as deep then why put up with the blanking threshold that a manual setting near to what auto is doing can cause. It's just about impossible to lose the threshold in auto, but manual set to the same level might be constantly dropping out for seconds at a time when the ground conditions change quickly. Auto might drop a bit lower for a few seconds but it looks like it will keep coming back to where I would have had manual set at certain locations. I need to conduct more tests on this and prove things out for myself, but it's a working theory.
Remember the old slogan...Hunting with your sensitivity too high is like driving in a fog with your high beams on. It can give less depth because of the reflection of the signal on ground minerals, overloading the machine's receive circuit. Not to mention that you are less likely to pay attention to iffy signals believing they are ghosts if running it too high.
I'd also try to bob method people use to set sensitivity. Mostly though I just find a clean section of ground and keep sweeping the coil slowly back and fourth over one spot while I raise sensitivity. As soon as the threshold starts to blank drop it down a hair. Just be careful it's not nulling over iron as you increase the sensitivity and it's finally deep enough to hit the iron, causing you to think it's too high when it hasn't really reached it's limits yet. I'm still looking for a good way to tell the difference. Perhaps sweeping the spot in all metal first would lower that chance.
Still yet another option would be to run in silent search. It's said to allow you to increase your sweep speed a bit.
I ran across a tid bit of information the other day that I've never even given thought to. Some guys prefer using as long as a non-metalic lower shaft as possible to increase the distance between the coil and the metal upper part of the shaft as far as possible. They believe this increases the performance and allows you to get the machine just a little higher in sensitivity and still remain stabile because the coil is not seeing as much metal in it's detection field as it would be with a shorter lower shaft.
Some might argue that there shouldn't be a problem because the coil and shaft are never moving in relation to each other, but let's remember that isn't exactly the case. Even slight deflection in the orientation to each other could be taking place as you sweep, causing the coil to pick it up in some small way. Even if it's sort'a a myth with standard length lower rods it never hurts to rub that rabbit foot, so I think I'll follow that advice as I construct my custom lighter shaft.
I also like the idea above about running the coil straight up the shaft for a while to get as much of it as possible away from the coil as soon as possible. Believe I'll use that idea too.
One other legend of folk lore that I haven't heard in years is using aluminum foil to further shield the inside of a control box. I noticed the GT doesn't have any RF shielding at the back or front. Next time I have it apart I may add some. Should be safe to do so long as you glue it in place so it won't come loose and short the circuit board or something. At the back there is plenty of room on the control box. At the front there's a decent sized area inside the box as well. This plastic area is between the circuit board and the face plate. Just wonder if aluminum foil would get the job done or if you'd need special RF material of some type. In theory the board would receive less RF noise and so you'd be able to run it at higher sensitivity without falsing.
Then there's the debate about whether shortening your coil cables will pick up less noise and if the slightly lower wire resistance will amount to any kind of depth increase. Same idea behind some believing that the stock meter drawing power from the Tx coil might also result in less signal strength in the ground.
All fairly interesting ideas. I believe I'll post yours and these in the mod thread. Would also like to hear opinions on this and any other "improvements" people believe will allow the machine to run at higher performance.
I wasn't a big fan of auto but provided there isn't a lot of electrical noise nearby my testing shows it will often give near the max sensitivity manual will allow, but that was with the S-5 coil. This was in very mineralized ground where I would have thought auto would drop sensitivity way lower than it needed to. On the other hand, there was no nearby electrical noise.
Then again, in my garage I found the difference in depth between auto and max manual for this coil to be almost non-existant. I'd keep that in mind if people have sites where nearby RF noise makes hunting with a larger coil almost impossible. You may in fact get much more depth with a smaller coil than the 10" at a spot like this. I found it had more depth than the 10" in my garage with a stabil manual or auto setting.
Not sure just how high auto will put a larger coil. I'd test your highest stabil manual setting against auto at a site and see if auto is dropping any depth by air testing. If it's not then I'd keep it in auto. I plan to do that test at a new site when conditions are rough and if auto is just about as deep then why put up with the blanking threshold that a manual setting near to what auto is doing can cause. It's just about impossible to lose the threshold in auto, but manual set to the same level might be constantly dropping out for seconds at a time when the ground conditions change quickly. Auto might drop a bit lower for a few seconds but it looks like it will keep coming back to where I would have had manual set at certain locations. I need to conduct more tests on this and prove things out for myself, but it's a working theory.
Remember the old slogan...Hunting with your sensitivity too high is like driving in a fog with your high beams on. It can give less depth because of the reflection of the signal on ground minerals, overloading the machine's receive circuit. Not to mention that you are less likely to pay attention to iffy signals believing they are ghosts if running it too high.
I'd also try to bob method people use to set sensitivity. Mostly though I just find a clean section of ground and keep sweeping the coil slowly back and fourth over one spot while I raise sensitivity. As soon as the threshold starts to blank drop it down a hair. Just be careful it's not nulling over iron as you increase the sensitivity and it's finally deep enough to hit the iron, causing you to think it's too high when it hasn't really reached it's limits yet. I'm still looking for a good way to tell the difference. Perhaps sweeping the spot in all metal first would lower that chance.
Still yet another option would be to run in silent search. It's said to allow you to increase your sweep speed a bit.
I ran across a tid bit of information the other day that I've never even given thought to. Some guys prefer using as long as a non-metalic lower shaft as possible to increase the distance between the coil and the metal upper part of the shaft as far as possible. They believe this increases the performance and allows you to get the machine just a little higher in sensitivity and still remain stabile because the coil is not seeing as much metal in it's detection field as it would be with a shorter lower shaft.
Some might argue that there shouldn't be a problem because the coil and shaft are never moving in relation to each other, but let's remember that isn't exactly the case. Even slight deflection in the orientation to each other could be taking place as you sweep, causing the coil to pick it up in some small way. Even if it's sort'a a myth with standard length lower rods it never hurts to rub that rabbit foot, so I think I'll follow that advice as I construct my custom lighter shaft.
I also like the idea above about running the coil straight up the shaft for a while to get as much of it as possible away from the coil as soon as possible. Believe I'll use that idea too.
One other legend of folk lore that I haven't heard in years is using aluminum foil to further shield the inside of a control box. I noticed the GT doesn't have any RF shielding at the back or front. Next time I have it apart I may add some. Should be safe to do so long as you glue it in place so it won't come loose and short the circuit board or something. At the back there is plenty of room on the control box. At the front there's a decent sized area inside the box as well. This plastic area is between the circuit board and the face plate. Just wonder if aluminum foil would get the job done or if you'd need special RF material of some type. In theory the board would receive less RF noise and so you'd be able to run it at higher sensitivity without falsing.
Then there's the debate about whether shortening your coil cables will pick up less noise and if the slightly lower wire resistance will amount to any kind of depth increase. Same idea behind some believing that the stock meter drawing power from the Tx coil might also result in less signal strength in the ground.
All fairly interesting ideas. I believe I'll post yours and these in the mod thread. Would also like to hear opinions on this and any other "improvements" people believe will allow the machine to run at higher performance.
GraveDiggerMax-VaBch-Va
New member
u should apply two coats
some guys use spray on bed liner as well.......................results from what i have heard are good.
f y i..............only suggetions.................what works for a few, does not always work for the many
some guys use spray on bed liner as well.......................results from what i have heard are good.
f y i..............only suggetions.................what works for a few, does not always work for the many
GraveDiggerMax-VaBch-Va
New member
i got this info. from one of the better coil makers several years ago
just passing it along...................f y i
Date: February 04, 2008 08:48AM
Registered: 3 years ago
Posts: 591
The question of shortening or lengthening the cables has gone on for a long time. In our testing we have not noticed a difference in operation whether the cable is 7' or 42" in length. If it was 50' or so then you might see a difference. I have coils with both short and long cables and they operate the same.
just passing it along...................f y i
Date: February 04, 2008 08:48AM
Registered: 3 years ago
Posts: 591
The question of shortening or lengthening the cables has gone on for a long time. In our testing we have not noticed a difference in operation whether the cable is 7' or 42" in length. If it was 50' or so then you might see a difference. I have coils with both short and long cables and they operate the same.
midalake
TROLL
Get your unit outside, attach a wood dowel to your lower arm extending past your coil or any other item that would work. Put your machine in All metal pinpoint with the gain set high and threshold set with a barely detectable sound[with headphones of course] Take a quarter and pass it under the coil, keep passing it and put a mark on the dowel at the point of just being able to hear it. Start to back off the gain, as soon as you get the slightest loss of depth. Stop turn the gain back about 1/16 of an inch and mark the spot on your front panel with a pencil. You should ALWAYS run your machine at this point. This is truly the sweet spot of ANY Sovereign series unit. Only in extreme cases of black sand may you have some issues and then I would try to correct with the threshold setting first, before even thinking of touching the units gain. If you ever change coils repeat the process for each coil,
Dave
Dave