Swing Speed Too Slow???

[5900_XL-1]

I am learning FBS, first SE and now the Etrac. I have a mentor who is the best I have ever hunted with, patient with me, and I usually get an eventual comment that I should swing slower. I've emulated his swing speed for over a year, and it's fine for shallow and 6" targets. With the deeper stuff that I have in my home coin garden, specifically a 10" hand dollar that has been down in the ground more than a year, the standard "slow" swing speed I use in open-field swinging, skips over the signal.

I thought I would work that target ultra slow this morning, a little faster when I still can't pick it up, but not my general speed from open ground detecting. This signal doesn't want to hit, UNTIL I nearly double my usual speed. I then get the sweet warble, whereas slow to REALLY slower is a miserable tone that I surely miss on unknown deep coin targets. The slower the worse result.

So the old adage "Damned if you damned if you don't" comes to mind" with the common advice of swing slower. I've never been told to do a quicker swing, just slower.

What am I missing in my process? tia

 

[IDXMonster]

You're not missing anything. If the machine sees a batch of soil with a deep weaker signal somewhere in it and it ISNT ENOUGH OF A CHANGE FROM THE SURROUNDING GROUND MATRIX FOR THE MACHINE TO SEE THE "SPIKE".....it will track it out just like any other small soil anomaly. The deep signal,because its WEAKER, has to come and go quicker for the machine to recognize the "delta"....the "spike". This is where a quicker swing,the EXACTLY right SPEED of swing,will pick the target up.
I'll be honest with you XL...I run an Explorer2 and the CTX,and I have NEVER had ANY luck finding 9"+ coins with a "slow sweep speed". Ever. To give reference,my sweep speed is 2-3 seconds from one side to another and a span of about 5-6 feet. If you're only looking for the "up to 6" stuff" then about any movement of the coil might do. But it won't do shitt if you're looking for 9" dimes.
If someone claims differently,it needs to be validated on video,I don't buy it,I have NEVER bought it because I haven't SEEN it.
Now....ADVANCING SLOWLY forward to make sure all the ground is covered thoroughly...this is very much a valid point.

 

[Southwind]

Damned if you damned if you don't" comes to mind

BINGO!

Everyone has an opinion of what you should do when the reality is conditions dictate the proper actions. And since seldom are the conditions that same for any two people, and often change so they are different even for the same user, all one can do is tell you what they did for their conditions. They can give you suggestions that worked for them, but nothing says they will do squat for you. You figure out what works for you. End of story.

I have also found that this SLOWER that SLOW concept doesn't work well in my soil either. I get the best depth/accurate target ID and best tone at a faster swing. Pretty much the same speed I swing all my other detectors. I've tried the slow and it just did do squat for me.

Actually it seems to me that a slow swing speed would by design make deep targets more invisible. Shallower targets would probably do OK, but deep one would tend to be invisible. Does a detector circuit look for a sharp/quick change in the ground balanced level to decided if a target is present or not? If you move slow then the change from the natural ground balance level would only slowly change when a deep target was gone over. It would be easy for a detector to see this slow change as a change in the ground minerals rather than a coin unless in AM mode.

 

[enderman]

I am learning FBS, first SE and now the Etrac. I have a mentor who is the best I have ever hunted with, patient with me, and I usually get an eventual comment that I should swing slower. I've emulated his swing speed for over a year, and it's fine for shallow and 6" targets. With the deeper stuff that I have in my home coin garden, specifically a 10" hand dollar that has been down in the ground more than a year, the standard "slow" swing speed I use in open-field swinging, skips over the signal.

I thought I would work that target ultra slow this morning, a little faster when I still can't pick it up, but not my general speed from open ground detecting. This signal doesn't want to hit, UNTIL I nearly double my usual speed. I then get the sweet warble, whereas slow to REALLY slower is a miserable tone that I surely miss on unknown deep coin targets. The slower the worse result.

So the old adage "Damned if you damned if you don't" comes to mind" with the common advice of swing slower. I've never been told to do a quicker swing, just slower.

What am I missing in my process? tia

Look at it this way, you don't want fast or slow, you want control.

As long as the machine isn't nulling you're usually OK. When you do "X" a target, don't confuse slow with short. You have to (as you've found) take deliberate, confident swings just over the target, I'm talking 4"-6" wide sweeps max.

Sometimes by slowing down it can mean don't be so quick to walk off that weird deep junkish signal. If you take your time to try and "scratch" out a few you will find some of them are these actually sound pretty good and are these great deep silvers that the Etrac is known for.
If you are weed-wacking you'll walk over dozens of these targets in a mater of minutes while waiting for a shallow 12-42 to call your attention.

 

[Tony (Michigan)]

1. What is a "hand dollar"?
2. What coil are you using?
3. What are your settings?