Mike Hillis
Well-known member
could all be used as descriptors for the F-75. Now that they are shipping the silence is lifted and I can talk about it.
John Gardiner is the master mind behind the F-75 and I say good job, John!
By the time I got a prototype, they had already worked through a lot of stuff, none of which I will repeat as it is no longer relevant.
Now the production release unit has changes on it based upon our test feedback. I'll not give out other testers names but needless to say, it was well tested in lots of environments.
I have no experience with some of the additions to the final released product.
What I enjoy about what John has done with this unit is that the machine itself gives the feedback necessary to operate it properly. A proper setup is the first hurdle that has to be overcome on any detector and one that gives you feedback to make a proper setup means you have a head start right at the beginning of the game. Proper setup has to start with three primary elements; ground balance, sensitivity setting, and sweep speed.
On the F-75 ground balance is fast, accurate, and gives you the information you need to set the Sensitivity setting correctly. The ground balance number in conjunction with the FE3O4 graph tells you right away with how much sensitivity you can get away with using. And the ground response to that setting in turn gives you feedback to getting that just right for your site. Then the Confidence bargraph lets you know if you are using the correct sweep speed to get optimum target response. Most of the time we have had to learn a units sweep speed preference by audio only, but the F-75's Confidence bar lets you actually see how your sweep is affecting the target signal's response. So I got both audio and visual confirmation when I had achieved the proper sweep.
The unit I was using had updates from prior tester feedback and I was looking for several things, how it performed in my ground as compared to the T2, how it performed in iron, how it performed in aluminum trash and how it performed in steel trash like bottlecaps.
Just in a nutshell, I found it to do a good job with identifying deep iron and soda cans. The Depth bar and Confidence bar work well together in identifying those objects. You might get a good number but the Confidence bar would be blank to one or two bars and the depth bar would be reading in the top, shallow segment.
It does false in iron though not nearly as bad as the T2. Bent and round deep iron did false like a coin with repeatable signals but switching to 2f mode and/or using 90 degree sweeps will show it for what it is. After digging a lot of deep iron of this type I learned to trust it. Felt like a gopher digging up some of that stuff, especially the deep nails that were bent into loops where both ends crossed. The T2 still has a better expanded range for iron and will probably outperform it in those settings, but I found the F-75 very acceptable running at a disc of 10.
In steel bottle caps, I found my unit to be very improved over the T2. Yes, most of them still give a high tone, but where as coins give very good number id locks, these caps didn't. With the T2 I would have to spend a lot of time analyzing a high coin signal to tell cap from a coin, with the F-75, just a couple/three sweeps told the tale right away. I don't know what they did but I found it a big improvement.
In aluminum trash, Yeah baby! Can you say Notch! These work and they work great! Being a notch fan, I can say I really enjoyed the notch setup they developed. Easy to use as a thumb switch once you understand it. I gave the Notch a 5 star review. I'm going to love using this unit jewelry hunting in parks and athletic fields.
There were some things that I had problems with but I'm not going to say anything about those until I see a production unit so don't even ask.
HH
Mike
John Gardiner is the master mind behind the F-75 and I say good job, John!
By the time I got a prototype, they had already worked through a lot of stuff, none of which I will repeat as it is no longer relevant.
Now the production release unit has changes on it based upon our test feedback. I'll not give out other testers names but needless to say, it was well tested in lots of environments.
I have no experience with some of the additions to the final released product.
What I enjoy about what John has done with this unit is that the machine itself gives the feedback necessary to operate it properly. A proper setup is the first hurdle that has to be overcome on any detector and one that gives you feedback to make a proper setup means you have a head start right at the beginning of the game. Proper setup has to start with three primary elements; ground balance, sensitivity setting, and sweep speed.
On the F-75 ground balance is fast, accurate, and gives you the information you need to set the Sensitivity setting correctly. The ground balance number in conjunction with the FE3O4 graph tells you right away with how much sensitivity you can get away with using. And the ground response to that setting in turn gives you feedback to getting that just right for your site. Then the Confidence bargraph lets you know if you are using the correct sweep speed to get optimum target response. Most of the time we have had to learn a units sweep speed preference by audio only, but the F-75's Confidence bar lets you actually see how your sweep is affecting the target signal's response. So I got both audio and visual confirmation when I had achieved the proper sweep.
The unit I was using had updates from prior tester feedback and I was looking for several things, how it performed in my ground as compared to the T2, how it performed in iron, how it performed in aluminum trash and how it performed in steel trash like bottlecaps.
Just in a nutshell, I found it to do a good job with identifying deep iron and soda cans. The Depth bar and Confidence bar work well together in identifying those objects. You might get a good number but the Confidence bar would be blank to one or two bars and the depth bar would be reading in the top, shallow segment.
It does false in iron though not nearly as bad as the T2. Bent and round deep iron did false like a coin with repeatable signals but switching to 2f mode and/or using 90 degree sweeps will show it for what it is. After digging a lot of deep iron of this type I learned to trust it. Felt like a gopher digging up some of that stuff, especially the deep nails that were bent into loops where both ends crossed. The T2 still has a better expanded range for iron and will probably outperform it in those settings, but I found the F-75 very acceptable running at a disc of 10.
In steel bottle caps, I found my unit to be very improved over the T2. Yes, most of them still give a high tone, but where as coins give very good number id locks, these caps didn't. With the T2 I would have to spend a lot of time analyzing a high coin signal to tell cap from a coin, with the F-75, just a couple/three sweeps told the tale right away. I don't know what they did but I found it a big improvement.
In aluminum trash, Yeah baby! Can you say Notch! These work and they work great! Being a notch fan, I can say I really enjoyed the notch setup they developed. Easy to use as a thumb switch once you understand it. I gave the Notch a 5 star review. I'm going to love using this unit jewelry hunting in parks and athletic fields.
There were some things that I had problems with but I'm not going to say anything about those until I see a production unit so don't even ask.
HH
Mike
Good feedback, Mike!