Sweep speed and falsing

[Cutaplug]

I'm getting a lot of falsing even when I run auto + 3. For those who run the e-trac hot and are used to falsing, how do you determine when to "recheck" a signal if you hear it on the first sweep? Do you recheck every signal that give a good tone? Is your sweep speed really slow so it helps you hear the coin signals better? I guess I started out swining fast coming from an AT Pro so maybe that's where I'm messing up.

 

[squirrel1]

Hello. Were your ground conditions really wet where you are getting your falses? This will amplify falsing in high iron content areas. Have you noise cancelled? Yes, swinging too fast will cause extra amounts of falsing. I find in manual sensitivity it's really hard to swing too slow and not be able to get a signal on a target. I don't use auto sensitivty very much but many on this forum have experiences saying a faster swing speed is necessary in Auto to wake the etrac up on signals. What does your machine run in your sites in auto plus 3? I find when it only runs in the mid to high teens say up to 20 in auto plus 3, the etrac is seeing bad ground and needs a slower sweep speed to minimize falsing. Good luck in your hunting. Also forgot to mention, where is your ferrous discrimination set at? If you will will keep your ferrous disc at 24 and lower will quiet the etrac down. I generally run mine down to 27 and it does make the machine noiser when around iron.

 

[E-TREC-Virginia]

I also run my disc down to 27 so I can pick up the really deep coins that sometimes read down in the 20's. But as a squirrel1 said, it will make the machine sound off a lot. I usually start out using auto plus 3 and see where the machine is running. If it's up in the mid 20's, I'll run in auto. If not, I'll run manual and bump it up to a point right before it starts to chatter to much. If running auto plus 3, use your noise cancel and slow your swing speed down to like 4 - 6 seconds per swing or up your disc as much as you can without sacrificing the intended targets.

 

[Big Boys Hobbies]

Are you using high trash? Slow you swing speed down and listen for solid repeatable hits. It's a learned process. It won't come overnight. You will get it with persistence!

 

[NebTrac]

I almost always run in Auto +3. For my area and soil conditions, I can get coins at a good 10+ inch range....this is for "First Settler Era" coins. There are some places when I seem to be finding the earlier wheats and Mercs, that I feel there are deeper coins, I will go into Manual.

I will make this statement, because in Auto I really find it to be true.


You can swing TOO Slow in Auto. In my test garden an eight inch Indian Head will NOT sound off with a "crawl" type swing. You need to be moving over it a little faster. True, too fast and you might miss it. In MANUAL only have I been able to hit it at a snail's pace.

The guys are also right, too fast of a swing will produce more falsing. I find I get it on the 'end of a swing' more, if I'm going too fast. The best way to understand this is to plant a test garden and work with your machine there, if you don't have one.

I usually use about a 2 second per one way swing. Now if I'm getting a lot of nulling, I will slow down some (using Andy's coin program).

As for the 'falsing'. You'll need to check over the signals. A good signal will stop you dead, but say you catch a little 'blip'. So you stop and run right back over it. If it doesn't sound off again in a little swing or two over that spot, then you move on.

You should get a consistent signal almost all the time with a good target mixed with iron.

Play with the signals, circle the target, go to Quickmask, try and isolate.....but bottom line is to dig a few falses and see what's going on. As for iron, falses come off sounding real good with Fencing staples, bent nails, great big nails and barbwire.

Here's a video I did on 'falsing', because for me there wasn't any information, in video form, on this subject for the E-Trac.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JxjLLX0yHo

NebTrac

 

[pilot]

NebTrac,
That is exactly what I have found...exactly! I have also used the wiggle technique to zero in on an iffy target or just short quick passes over the area, not slowly creeping from side to side. When I have tested sweep speed I have found that you can go too slow. This seemed to be confirmed on my last hunt when I speeded up my sweep to no slower than a 2 sec. swing and most of the time a tad faster. There is a sweet spot for swing speed but like everything else in this hobby it probably changes with soil conditions.

HH
Kim

 

[Cutaplug]

Thanks for all the great info everyone. I think the site I'm detecting does have a lot of deep rusty nails. It's weird because when I run in auto +3 the sens can be at 15 and then 100 ft away be running at 22 fairly consistantly. Is this because of ground mineralization or rust from iron? I live in Central Missouri. I noise cancel and run FE at 27 but I'm thinking up bumping it up to 24 to see if that helps any. Here are my settings:

Andy S. Discrimination pattern
Deep off
Fast off
Auto +3
Gain 28
Trash High
Ground Difficult

The soil wasn't wet but wasn't dry either. What I've been reading and hearing in the field is that the coin sound will be much more smooth and consistant. I've included a graphic. Is A what you would consider a good coin sound? It seems like on iron falsing the signal will spike faster and higher than with a coin such as what is in D. Is this true? For those of you who have a lot of time on the etrac do you still dig large deep rusty nails or are you able to skip them because they provide a different tone than a coin?

 

[earthmansurfer]

Great Video Nebrac. That is quite helpful. My threshold is on super soft as the sound annoys me but I try to pay attention to it none the less. Great points regarding threshold. You swing just a bit quicker than me but pretty close. I slow down and try different speeds whenever I find a target though.

Nice thread.

EMS

 

[Cutaplug]

@NebTrac
@Earthmansurfer

I've been watching both ya'lls videos and they are extremely helpful. Just being able to see a bad signal and then a good deep signal has helped me understand what to look for, thanks a bunch!

 

[Jason in Enid]

Don't over think the signals too much! If you get a positive signal that is repeatable, DIG IT! Sometimes you get nails or screws, but that's the price you pay for playing the game. If you waste a lot of time checking and rechecking and anakyzing and rechecking again you are wasting time for future targets. Beep, dig, move to next target.

 

[Cutaplug]

Don't over think the signals too much! If you get a positive signal that is repeatable, DIG IT! Sometimes you get nails or screws, but that's the price you pay for playing the game. If you waste a lot of time checking and rechecking and anakyzing and rechecking again you are wasting time for future targets. Beep, dig, move to next target.

Good advice =) The main problem I'm having is that I'm hearing tons of blips and don't know which ones to stop and recheck/verify. I've learned to dig repeatable possitive signals and such, but I get so many signals on the initial pass that I'm stopping every step and rechecking tons of signals. Is that just part of running the machine in Auto +3 or manual hot?

 

[Jason in Enid]

I ALWAYS run the coil back and forth a couple times when I get a tone. If the tone doesn't come back (just nulls out) or it seems to be jumping around, then it's an iron false. Move on to the next and don't worry about missing something.

You will soon learn that there are lots of "blips" and "squeeks" from iron falses. It won't take long to learn them from solid targets.

 

[Cutaplug]

Is it possible to dig 8"-9" coins if running a sensitivity level of around 23? Or only when sens is upwards of 28-30 do you see the really deep targets? I guess if I'm running auto + 3 in the lower levels then ever other detectorist who's been there before me was competing with the same bad soil conditions right =) so at that point it's a matter of who's machine goes deeper in those conditions.

 

[squirrel1]

I have saw silver dimes at 7" at manual 15 sensivity. Good tone with a jumpy but ok conductive number. I have seen 10" wheats in auto plus3 machine displaying 27, again with a somewhat jumpy conductive number but good enough to know it was a good diggable target. I'm not one to take my time and dig slow and make an approach to a coin to determine how it was laying in the ground. My point is this, higher sensivities would be better suited to find the above deep targets; especially those that don't give such a good return signal i.e. coins or rings on edge.

 

[earthmansurfer]

RCDetector - I will agree with squirrel with an "IF", "If your ground is supports that". I have tested in some of my videos dropping manual from 30 to auto +3 at 25 to 27 and either 1 -the signal is almost gone, 2 - degrades to where I can walk over it, or 3 - the signal is still pretty good - All of this on 7" and 8" coins. So, I have found it can work with a lower sensitivity, but in my ground you can easily pass up a deeper coin. My ground is 1% (high) iron mineralized - meaning even though 1% mineralization is low, like 90% or so of that is iron mineralized, so it affects deeper signals.

My simple suggestion is to try to run as hot as you can handle in an area with deeper coins and when you find what you think is deeper, lower the sensitivity, both in manual and in auto. You will need to do this on many coins to really know, but you will get your answer.

Hope that was helpful,
Albert

 

[Cutaplug]

I adjusted my discrim FE from the 27 mark up to around 23 and it eliminted most of my falsing. In auto +3 I was running at 19 and I was actually able to run in manual 28 because of the lower FE setting. Do you think I'll miss deep coins running this way?

@earthmansurfer

I noticed you run your FE at around 22 or so? The Andy S. setting that a lot of people use is set at 27 so Is there a reason you lowered it on your machine?

While out today I decided to dig all signals that sounded like a coin and disregard the FE numbers completely. Dug several coins on edge including green wheats and a 1905 barber dime at about 5" sitting completely vertical. Has anyone else noticed higher FE numbers on coins that are sitting vertical? On at least three of the coins I noticed an FE # around 35...

 

[earthmansurfer]

Too Funny RCDetector - I'm reading your post (before you had mentioned me) and thinking "Yeah, that is why I did that too!" eheheeh I am not sure if all of what I was hearing was falses or not. And also, at the time I dropped it the ground was pretty wet so falsing was more prevalent. I ran the 6X8 SEF the other day and I opened up the screen to 27 with it - NO PROBLEM. So, maybe you are right, it was falsing as the 6X8 SEF see's less soil!

GREAT TEST you did. I have seen some very deep Fe 35's with high CO numbers that sounded good but I haven't broken myself to dig them yet. Now, I might have to. Thanks for that! (Unless I dig too much iron, then you'll hear about it. ;-) heheh) The one thing I have noticed about coins on edge is that my pinpoints are way off, like into the side of the hole.

EMS

 

[Cutaplug]

@EMS That's funny. It probably was falsing because at 27 FE most of the signals I got were non repeatable. So I would walk a step and then double check like 10 signals. I plan on focusing on two things the next times I go out:

1. Run in FE 27 until I get a good signal. Then switch to FE 24 and hit in all directions to see if I would have picked it up. After digging a bunch of signals including deep coins this way I can determine if I'll miss coins running at FE 24 instead of 27. If not I can't see any reason to listen to all the chatter and stop every half a second.

2. Dig all smooth signals that I find with good CO readings, even if they are high FE. I'm trying to determine if on a coin the majority of the time it reads in the 1-22 range and then spikes occasionally, or if it is possible that a consistent FE 22+ reading can still be a coin.

 

[earthmansurfer]

Thanks RCDetector - Again, that is great information. How deep were those coins that read high Fe and consistent CO? What is your ground like? (mineralization if you know). I see those numbers and like I said am tempted to dig but haven't yet, but now I will.

I think the reason I haven't dug those deeper Fe signals is because I experience "thunking" on those fringe targets. You can see that in my video. Beyond that I get no signal. Do you get a "thunking" sound? I am trying to determine how some people dig coins with higher Fe numbers and others have never (though have dug many good sounding higher Fe numbers).

Thanks again,
Albert

 

[Cutaplug]

Went out today for about 5 hours. Almost all my finds were 5+ inches deep in an old park. I've noticed that a deep coin (6+ inches) can sound great but still get higher FE numbers. A lot of times I'll see FE around 18 or 22 and it will jump up to 35 rarely. It's weird because sometimes its a solid 12/43 then on another coin it can be 18-22/43. There are a lot of nails everywhere around here so that could be why I see higher numbers creep up. I don't think the soil is too mineralized, I just think it has loads of rusty nails of all different sizes in it, nulling is frequent. On auto +3 it would run at 18-22 but I was able to bump it to 27 manual and hunt comfortably. Attacehd is a pic of my finds. 15 wheaties, 4 merc, 1 rossie, silver bracelete with 1/10 gold plating & silver coil holder with a susan b. I also found a really old thin silver bracelet with a neat design at about 8-9" deep and then lost it out of my pouch Didn't realize it until I got home but will definately go back to look for it.