Studying the manual... trying to understand... waiting for it to "click" for me...

[jbow]

Over the last few days I have been going through the manual and re-writing things that interest me or confuse me. There is a lot to try to understand and a lot of things interact. I am trying to write some things that seem to interact in a different way so that I can better understand them, maybe write a setup method to use when going to a new site, maybe in steps. The manual is good and in depth but I think that the realtionship between settings and how they are set in order to gain maximum performance with the best stability is something to study and be better understood. It is all there I just don't yet understand it all... but I will!!

Still, I have a hard time in the field. Today I had to do a factory reset in the "coin and jewelry" program, it was unstable and somehow, in trying to tweak the analize screen I lost the humps and it began to display just like the main screen... factory reset fixed it. I would like to be able to run one frequency, (like 7.5 for relics) in search mode but run three frequencies in analize but I don't know if I can do this.
I was in some sandy soil at a CW site looking for minnies and was getting more stability using only 7.5 khz but I wanted to run three freq in analize. I ended going back to three frequencies on everything. I had to lower the RX to 4 even though it recommended 8 to 10. It seems like it may be more stable using standard or shifted audio without tone ID but i'm not sure and in any case... I like tone ID. (That is something I learned about the E-TRAC.. it falses much less in 2-tone ferrous, I am not sure if the V3 is more stable without tone ID.. what do you think?).

I was using the 10" DD and have tried using a friends coil, it didn't make any difference. I just cannot seem to make the detector calm down without really lowering the gain or the disc sens. I ordered the 5.3 coil Monday!!! Can't wait ot get it...

I still found a a minnie and a fired carbine of some sort but I wish it would false less.

I am going to a planned hunt in September and I am afraid I will spend most of my time trying to stabilize the detector. Hopefully between now and then I can figure this thing out.

I will post some of my thoughts on things I am getting out of the manual.

One thing I have noticed is that, if I am reading it correctly, autotrac speed, swing speed, filter, and sensitivity all work together and watching the tracking arrows will give a clue to whether you are getting top performance. Once again, if I am understanding it correctly... if you have autotrac speed set right for the site, your filter is set right for the site and your swing speed... then tracking will not be constant. If the machine is constantly tracking any or all of these things need to be adjusted. Autotrac should be tracking but not all the time. I think watching the "tracking" will help to you to figure out where to set the filter and the autotrac speed for best performance as long as your swing speed is the same while hunting as it is while checking the "tracking". Once tracking is running but isn't excessive I assume that the filter and autotrac speed is set correctly and then I can raise my sens as high as I can and still remain reasonably stable. I am going to be trying this more tomorrow. I am also using a slight autotrac "+ offset" to try and minimize ground mineral responses. Maybe it would help to do this after setting the filter and attotrac speed... then maximizing the sensitivity to the edge of stability.
I also think that I am going to create a "custom" tone scheme using 4 or 5 tones in a relic program based on the "coin and jewelry" platform and the same in a lawn or park type program. I am not sure if I like the VCO audio running while I am searching.

Also I learned that in difficult ground I should find a trouble spot, use locktrac, ground balance, and that will help neutralize that ground.

I noticed that bottle cap reject will also help reject square nails.

Anyway... I am waiting for it to "click" for me and I am sure it will soon.

Julien

 

[ak_1234]

Tracking does not use the filters so setting them will not affect how it tracks. It is triggered off of changes in the ground. You may be able to find an optimum sweep speed for tracking, but it's not supposed to be reliant on sweep speed. I don't think it is.

If you have rapidly changing ground, you may want to adjust your track speed to be faster so that it can keep up with the changing ground. If you have fairly stable ground, you are probably better off having a slower track speed because it will have much less chance of overshooting the ideal ground settings. How fast you swing your loop should have no effect on this setting. Sensitivity settings have no effect on tracking.

The faster you swing your loop, the higher the filter you want to use. Since you have previously used Minelabs, you're probably swinging slower than some so I'd guess you'd be happier with a 5Hz filter, but other factors do come into play, so you may need a faster filter.

Yes, difficult ground it is good to lock the track to your manually balanced setting.

The disc sens level is basically to tell the detector when to sound (and show) a target. When the filtered signal gets above the disc sens level, then it triggers that there is a target. So, if your detector is not properly ground balanced, or you have your disc settings high enough so that the ambient external noise triggers it, you will get falsing. That's another tradeoff. If you want to get the deep signals, you're going to need to tolerate some falsing, but how much is tolerable for a person? If we removed a lot of the signals that would show up as bad targets, a lot of real targets would also be lost just because of variations in the ground. The sensitivity settings were set up so that people could adjust them to run it hot enough to get them in trouble, and adjust them low enough to get them in trouble. But, where it works for each person in their ground, it's hard to predict.

I don't know if this would be good, but maybe set up a program to run in mixed mode, and set the sensitivity low enough to not false? You'll get the tone beeps for strong targets and the all metal signal will sound more stable for the weaker ones. It's a thought, but not everybody likes mixed mode. And I don't know if it would work for your conditions well.

I don't know if any of that helped. I hope so.

 

[hang7575]

I am going to the same hunt in Sept bringing the V and a MXT. I have been playing with the V in Prospect mode to use relic hunting in Va. They use that on the MXT with great results.Run all metal and dig everything .

 

[jbow]

Tracking does not use the filters so setting them will not affect how it tracks. It is triggered off of changes in the ground. You may be able to find an optimum sweep speed for tracking, but it's not supposed to be reliant on sweep speed. I don't think it is.

Well, if you sweep faster than the autotrac can adjust it seems there would be poorer performance... the reason I was thinking that sweep speed affects autotracing and thereby performance... and since the filters are also associated with sweep speed it just seemed to me that they all can be used to gain optimum performance by watching that tracking is not constant. I think sweep speed would affect tracking, filters are tied to sweep speed, and so it seems that autotrac speed would also be a consideration in setting these things and in consideration of your particular sweep speed and the ground conditions. Maybe I am wrong but it seemed to make some sense to me. Maybe I am misunderstanding something.

Thanks Anne... I appreciate your input.

Also I just tried something, I was playing with the sizing on the analize screen. I changed it to 5, which is I think 9". I also tried it on a 17" scale and I changed the sweep speed, for analize sizing to 12" per second. I noiticed that a minnie, on the ground, reads wider when swept from the side than it does when swept end to end. It seems tha it should read wider when swept end to end. Any thoughts on this?

Thanks,

Julien

 

[Monte]

Julien,

Yes, it can help, however I found it to be one of the adjustments I prefer to leave 'Off'. Naturally, it all depends upon your site, but in initial evaluations afield with the Vision/V3, and using an XLT and XL Pro in side-by-side comparisons at a good-sized renovation site, I almost didn't recover a 'V' nickel due to having the BCR set at #2 to #4.

Conditions:

 

[Sarah5150]

Seems like a lot to do I wish you luck...

 

[ak_1234]

My guess (and when I talked to Carl, this was his thought too) is that you are sweeping at a different speed when sweeping end to end rather than side to side?

Maybe I misread your first post. I was thinking that you were thinking that the filters had an effect on the tracking, which they don't. But, yes sweep speed does have an effect on the performance which is why we put in the different filters to accommodate your sweep style.

Hope your hunting goes well today. I am curious if you find different results looking at the track status and adjusting accordingly.

 

[jbow]

I am curious if you find different results looking at the track status and adjusting accordingly.

It is going to take me a few times to figure it out. I am also trying to understand the language, I get an awful lot of high tones with a +95 reading. I assume they are hot rocks. I will check closer to see if they are also +94 and lower. I am pretty much ignoring them because there are so many of them.

Thanks,

Julien

 

[jbow]

Thanks Monte...

I always value your opinion and help! I am running it "off" for now. It is enough for me right now just trying to understand this machine and get it to run with some stability or at least to understand what it is telling me. The T2/F75 were both hard to understand at first coming from a SovereignGT and a Tejon. It was as if there was something wrong with them. I will keep at the V3 until I understand it.
Thanks for the heads-up on the BCR. I will be careful.

Julien