Sweep speed

[Anonymous]

OK, I have heard many folks say, on the various minelab forums here, to sweep your coil slowly, in order to find the deep ones.
How about one or two of you old timers speak in terms of feet per second, inches per second, or x feet in x seconds. SOMETHING to get my mind around what you are defining as slow sweep speed.
Thanks.
Dennis

 

[Anonymous]

One of the myths of the explorer is that it does better at depth with a slow sweep. It actually does better at higher speeds, like most other detectors. But... and this is a big but..
In most trashy environments the electronics cannot recover from the last signal quickly enough to process the next target, even with FAST on. This is when you need to slow way down. Best description I've heard is Painting the ground with the coil. You need to creep along and hit the area from many different angles with different size coils. I've found many coin spills in trash when it takes much time to find all targets, and probably left many more in the ground due to masking.
So in clean ground you can swing like a scythe, but to get the coins that others have missed and what the explorer excels at slow way down. Something in the order of 11 kiloseconds per cubit. Its and experience and feel thing.
Chris

 

[Anonymous]

Another little something to consider when thinking of how fast to swing the coil. This was originally posted by Rhodeman CO USA early part of October. We've been using these setting with a lot of success on open ground using the stock coil. You can swing like a mad man with a weed wacker, cover a lot of ground and using Audio 1 its easy to pick up a signal (up to 7") and come back to it.
I agree 100% with Chris that the only way to work trash is to slow down. Audio 1 is pretty nasty in trash so best to use normal. Beleive it or not we have bound silver dimes and quarters at 6 - 7" using the factory coin settings (EX 2) adjusting the sens to manual between 16 & 20.
Quote from Rhodeman CO USA:
"Today, I ran silent threshold (1 tick below the level you can still hear it) and IM wide open. I thought it worked pretty good.
I had earphones with the volume on the EX-XS at 1.
Gain was at 1. Yes, 1. Gives unbelievable depth resolution! You can lock on to a deep one and it still sounds good. The faint blips and plinks due to fast noise seem to fade away.
Audio 1. Just plain the only way to go in my book. Hit a quarter and you can circle it for hours, hearing nothing but good. Other objects seem to take on their own unique sound pattern. I'm still practicing on hearing the difference between pull tabs and rings. I'm digging a lot of good sounding pulltabs lately...
The nicest thing about this setup is that you hear EVERYthing, unless there's nothing, in which case you won't even have to listen to the background threshold tone! You probably won't dig the nail sound as it will be surrounded by iron sound usually. IM-16 eliminates the threshold nulling problem because there isn't anything to null on - period. It also prevents the null from clipping any audio responses because there's nothing to cause it to blank the sound. You don't have to run "fast" because you don't need to recover from any blanking."

 

[Anonymous]

<span style="background-color:#ffff00;">It is not that the detector goes deeper the slower we search but that we need time for good ground coverage and for our brains to process the data from the detector.</span>
The detection window speed is fairly wide on the Explorer so that it should feel comfortable when you sweep the coil. <span style="background-color:#ffff00;">When I get hits I constantly adjust the speed based on the amount of trash and how well targets sound. The adjustments can be fairly dramatic or only slight.</span> <STRONG>However, I am one of the guys that believe you need to go as slow as you can and be sure to get good ground coverage. A dime on edge close to iron or other trash can be missed if we go to fast.</STRONG>
I have tested speeds on several detector and as far as the Explorer is concerned you can sweep the coil so slow that you don't detect anything. That is true of all the other motion detectors. However, I have never been able to sweep the coil so fast over a target that it could not be detected if I had hit the target at just a snails pace.
<span style="background-color:#ffff00;">Good ground coverage is the name of the game and time for our brains to process the data from the detector.</span>
If we change setting or the area we are searching we should take note of how good a hit sounds at several speeds. That way we can find a comfortable speed that we like and that is best for trash, soil minerals, audio settings, etc. There is no need to whip the coil or move it at a snails pace for depth. It should be one that we are comfortable with. But, as I said I am one that goes very slow and want to hear every grain of the soil tell me its story of what is in the ground.
HH, Cody

 

[Anonymous]

Seen a forum with so many knowledgeable individuals that explain the why's and how's...I would like to add to explain sweep speed in seconds or whatever. First we all have a different physical make up..longers arms etc. and personally like the idea of painting the ground as a good illustration. Just might spread some coins on the ground and practice different ones, but in reallity what feels comfortable to you may be the best. I myself travel at a slow speed at 66 and do well getting deep silver while one of our younger fellows(35)travels along rather briskly and gets as many and as deep good targets as anyone in the club. Not being a technical type person I do feel having deep and fast on will allow you to swing faster provididing you have good hearing to pickup the telltale high spikes of silver coins. Hope I have helped and as Dennis relates no magic speed or no secret settings, just ones that work for you and an Explorer will do well in many varied settings..