Took the F5 out today for a hunt....ended up taking it back to Cabelas after using it for a day...Saw an F70 while I was there!!

[snh]

Well first off the F5 is gone....shortest ownership record for me...48 hours. Basically it suffers from the same interference issues as the first T2's ....accept 10 times worse....seriously. I could not run the gain above 3 without a constant 1HZ pulsing beep. Tried alternate frequencies....checked everything. It id this at several locations out in the middle of the desert...no power lines..no aircraft..no cell phones on either of us..nothing. The person I was with shut of his XLT..no help. He did not have a cell phone on him and even so we were a hundred feet apart.

Funny thing was the frequency of the pulse would change with which ever alternate Freq i would choose...it would speed up to 2HZ at the next Frequency and then speed to maybe 3HZ at the last...but none of the alternate frequencies reduced the intensity.

I had to lower threshold to -3 and gain to 2.....this is pointless as you might as well give it up...which I did.

So I called Cabelas and they said send it back...or I could take it to the Cabelas in Glendale Az..which I did. Bye Bye...CYA......sorry bro's but this is the 4th FT detector in 3 years that has failed for interference issues.

Now on the brighter side I did get to use it for 5 hours and test it out...I just had to listen to a mind numbing pulse and try and hear around it.

Now I found that in tones 1 and tones 2 you DO HAVE a threshold in discriminate. Howver 3 and 4 are silent search. This is great as I like to have this option.

I did like tones 2 which is similar to the dual tone option on the T2 and f75. Iron is a low growl and everything else is a medium tone. plus you have a VCO response in disc according to target size and depth. This would be great for relic hunting and if I were using it for that this is the mode I would use..Tones 2.

As for target seperation and ability to handle iron the unit was above average. We hunted extremely nasty homstead sites with as much iron as I have ever run into back east. It handled it like a champ. Even with gain turned down to minimal amounts the depth was still decent.

If they can stop this continual interference issues with these units the F5 would be a great machine. Hopefully it is just due to the fact that I had the first run of F5's.

It has alot of potential and is a huge step above the F4 and for not much more money either.

I would suggest caution buying ANY f5's until dealers get them and get to try them first.

By the way the machine did not false like that at my home but when i got back it was doing it here to...actually it started doing it above a gain of 7...then soon anything abobe 6...then 5...then 4 and finally anything above 3. I think maybe a circuit failure was to blame as it slowly degraded throughout the day until it became worthless.

Anyway it is now at Cabelas.

By the way they had an F70....I checked it out...almost bought it......but being a guinea pig once in a single month is enough for me. Considering every FT machine released in the past3 years has had interference problems I figured the F70 would just dissapoint me if it did it too.

For now I need a machine that is not a wuss when it comes to noise and will have to defer to another manufacturer. But dang...the F5 has potential.

Scott

 

[Steve(MS)]

Does sound like a faulty detector, hopefully they will get the next ones corrected. Thanks Scott for taking the time to give us a good report on the F5.
HH

 

[jim tn]

n/t

 

[Cal_Cobra]

That's a real bummer, but I know exactly how your feel, I seem to encounter a fair amount of EMI issues with my Fisher too (and it's pre FT).

 

[robert roy]

We'll have to see if others have the same issue with their detectors. If so, then you kow your detector isn't faulty.
Keep us informed please.
RR

 

[snh]

Irregardless of anything FT might say I know for a fact that the first run of T2's they sent were seriously defective. They were such junk that you could not find anyone who bought one that did not dump them pronto. T

It seems it takes them a few production runs to get it right...and I would guess mine was faulty on it's own and not something we can expect from the entire model line. Again it is such a nice unit for the money...I mean I would take an F5 over an F4 ANYDAY....well as long as the 5 works.

After having issues with the first releases sent to Cabelas I would just wait until they send em to the dealers. That way you know that you have later production runs as it seems fairly certain they release the first few hundred to Cabelas first. Then the dealers. Just look at the F70...Cabelas has several in each store and delaers have squat.

So let the general public buy these first early versions and wait until the later serial numbers hit the dealers....I mean hey...the general public has no clue what to expect from a detector. Shoot...yesterday when I was at THE BIG C looking at the F20 there were two guys talking about buying a BH unit and going gold prospecting since gold was a grand an ounce...and they walked away with the BH. That is who buys a detector at C-Mart Hey...perople without a clue....dude you are never going to find squat with a 300 dollar BH in the hot black sand of the LSD.....but hey let the lemmings skim off the early units for us.

I would still like to get a GOOD F5 and retest it. But after loosing ( and I am not joking) a couple thousand on new FT machines...I am not risking anymore of my scratch on them.
scott

 

[snh]

Not screwcaps mind you, like on a pepsi bottle..they always ID as zinc, but rather steel beer caps. I tried old rusty ones and even new shiny ones.....it would ID them as a zinc penny or dime without any iron growl mixed in. I was hunting in an area with quite a few of them both old and new.
Now maybe that was just my F5...but I know it has been a question asked by many concerning the T2, F75 and even the Coinstrike. Seem some detector models will ID them with a solid hit while others will not. Anyway it did like to lock on them as coin....now if they were rusty it would bounce around between the tab and quarter range but would not go low into iron.
Forgot to mention that for what it is worth.

 

[Chris(SoCenWI)]

n/t

 

[snh]

When I lived in Maine I just relic hunted. I would very seldom be near an area with bottlecaps....if I was then I was in an area that was too new. SO I rarely had the opportunity to run into them. Now on all other rusty steel items it was a champ....I mean I ran it in piles of square nails and it cruised through them without hitting high.
Wonder what it is that causes some machines to like them and others not...I know the Classic ID, for example, has no issue with them.
Who knows.

Scott

 

[Mike Hillis]

Real shame it followed along the same paths the others took.

Mike

 

[snh]

...and not a systemic issue. I want to try another F5 but don't feel it wise to risk more money. Although I could be motivated to try an F70....when the dealers get them though
scott

 

[Mike Hillis]

You can hope but the past shows that it is never just one. Your results tell me its going to be the same trip all over again. The T2 ran down the path, the F-75 has traveled that path, the F4 started out but got caught early and now the F5 seems to be starting out the same gate. It is a disturbing trend.

Yes its true that as time goes by they get the bugs worked out and they all turn into nice machines. But why can't it be done right the first time? Why do folks have to wait 6 months or a year before they can be confident of getting a bug free unit? Is it a plot to kill the resale market? Can't trust them to work right without a trip in to the factory so you had better buy new because you are definitely going to need the warranty?

I guess I just fell off the fan wagon

Mike

 

[snh]

...but not sure I will stick with it...
While I have no information that verifies it and it is just my theory...I also know I am right. Simply because I have been involved in releasing products to a retail market before.
That being said the simple theory is that FT gets it's nuts caught in a sling by getting committed to a release date. Look at Whites, they don't let any pre-release information out about a dang thing. Sure we all know they are getting ready to release the new PI based on Eric's Goldscan...but you will not see a flier or Internet add accidentally being released. Plus, they do not sell to large retailers anymore..I think Sears was the last one many years ago...so they avoid having to make a committed release date based on a best guess scenario. Hence you don't see them with huge issues like FT...they have minimal failures as would be expected in any maufacturing environement.

FT sells far more product to large retail outfits...ie. Cabelas, Walmart, Radio Slack and so on. These large retail chains require a fixed date that supply will arrive...unlike small detector dealers. These companies need to have Internet websites ready with dates...they print up huge catalogs and so and son on....and they spend millions in doing so. They need to know that all products to be listed in their catalog will actually be available when the new Spring sales catalog comes out.
Well that means they require the product to be in their warehouses on time...period. Since they have to print this stuff up months ahead of time it is all fore casted. Well when you get close to the date that Wally World or Cabelas has required items in stock...hey buddy you better get em there. So even if they have to stuff a control box with acorns and deal with warranty repairs later ...so what. They met the deadline and avoided penalties...and they always have a penalty. You don't just NOT send Cabelas the first 100 F5's. You ship what you got in whatever stage it is and deal with all the warranty issues later.

Why do that....because warranty work is cheaper than the penalty and...hey it postpones the dilemma....they will deal with the warranty issue as they trickle in and make excuses as they go. How do I know this.....shoot been through it many times before...been there..done that...not that I wanted to I was just the tech or R&D guy who was told what lie to tell when they started to come back. Or in the case of being a Field Engineer what lie to tell to keep the customer happy.... I have actually been told, to my face by VP of sales, to not tell the customer what actually happened and if we did we would be terminated.....that my friend is fact....told it to a room of Field Engineers at a semi annual meeting of FSE's!!!!!!!!!!!

So that is why this happens. If they would just stop committing to release dates when the detectors have not even been tested this would end. But think about this.....how long ago do you think they sat down with Cabelas and committed to the F5......heck months and months ago. Well you bet at that time there weren't any working F5 that had been field tested. They committed months before having anything close to working production models.

Remember it is one thing to build a working R&D model...it is completely different getting the same performance and such out of a production line machine. You get set back so many times when it shifts from R&D to production that it would boggle the mind....and actually it was very stressful for me when I was in R&D. I am in R&D now and it is such a task to go from prototype to mass produced widget and maintain performance....I hate it actually. Then add sales and marketing screaming at to meet a deadline and it is truly a nightmare at times.

Anyway FT did have not have F5' sitting around finished for 3-4 months...heck they don't even have enough for dealers at this time. Yet they had to commit to the Big C months ago so C could get catalogs and such in order. Hence...the same scenario as the T2. remember that fiasco..detectors shipped in white boxes with no labeling that looked like they sent some minimum wage working down to The UPS Store to quickly pack em up. That was the tell tale sign they were behind schedule and slapped anything in a box...lucky we did not get a turd on a stick with that one....and anyone who bought one remembers how horrid those first units were.

But they will deny it and in that is the snag that causes the same repeated problems. Don't fix the Root problem..just make excuses and divert attention. So much more would have been healed from a customer satisfaction angle if they would have just apologised, admitted what we all know was the truth and commit to change it.....but they won't as has been evident so far. Plus why should they.....they make more money from selling through the Wally Worlds and Cabelas then what they sell to the finite detector dealers....we are a grain of sand compared to the mass retail market...so why pay attention to us. ...we really are small potato's to FT.
scott
..........................

 

[vlad]

See if those work in the store. Sounds like Cabelas stands behind their products. If you buy a F-70 and it does not work, bring it back and try another. If that one fails, has problems.
What do you have to lose? You will get your money back.

And while you are at it look the BOUNTY HUNTER PLATINUM & GOLD HUNTER over good-rumor has it that they might be Chinese.

 

[vlad]

By the way, do you even OWN an F-75?
Go to the F-75 Forum for my test by multiple detectors on a bottle cap-they all accepted it as good part of the time.

 

[AndyNM]

I , as many others read all your posts about the new F5 with personal interest. In these Internet days buyers like me base their buying decision on impressions of a "first user" like you.

We don't believe much anymore in the field tests we read and trust our well known "detecting forum friends" more than any field tester. After your posts many will hold back now buying a F5.

One thing i wonder about is what happens to the F5 you brought back to Cabelas. Maybe you should have called First Texas and have send the detector in to give them a chance to check out what's wrong with the F5. You would have the chance that way to end up with the first perfect working F5 after First Texas gets it right. Did you tell Cabelas that the F5 seems to be defective ? Because if not it may be sold to the next person who ends up writing a bad review about the same broken detector. That way we may get the impression all F5s are bad because the same defective unit is sold again and again. Your F5 could have started a recall for all other F5s if they find a problem that effects all F5s.

I made the same mistake a year or two back when my T2 that i bought used didn't work anywhere due to interference. I thought that it's just the way the T2 works, but later i found out my T2 must have had a coil problem, because an other T2 i bought later worked fine.

I know that First Texas wants to hear about detector problems and they take care of it, IF they are reported.

Andy,NM

 

[snh]

I am short on cash and should be going out this weekend again and unlike the old days of Scott in Me. with 10 detectors...I have no spares. Basically due to my children now being teenagers and sucking the money out me

SO if I sent it back I would be out a detector until who knows when and I cannot afford to buy a spare. Since there are not that many F5's around it could have been quite a while until I saw another one. Plus.....I have no faith in Fisher fixing the interference issue. We went around and around on the T2 and my F5 and it was along while before anythging was done and even then they still suffer.
So once it started doing the same thing I was not about to go through the pain of what I went through with the T2....that was slow death. Still will never own any T2 ever again after that.

Now I did fill out the return paperwork that lists it as defective...and I think anyone would know it was used...it has desert dust all over it.

If we fear that the Big C will just reshelf it and resale it...man we need to boycott them. Fortunately I have no reason to think that at this time.

Now we need to see what happens with the dealers F5's and it may be they are just fine.....if there is no interference issues than this is a nice mid priced machine with some great features. I hope that is the case...even though some have accused me of being of the mind that I want them to fail so I can trash them . Certainly not, I get nothing for this and actually loose money everytime.

I am sure Fisher read these posts and figures.....hey he got his money back...no loss. Well BS bro....they did not refund my 40.00 fee for overnight express shipping...that is a straight up loss......add it to the growing list of lost money to date with them.
scott

 

[snh]

...but could not find anyone to let me try one. I did check out the Platinum..opened the box and peaked in....looked like a typical BH....cheap.
scott

 

[Chris(SoCenWI)]

n/t

 

[vlad]

n/t