OK just got off work, got home ,and went straight to this forum. lol. tech support anywhere else is hard to find right now.
1st off i would like to thank each and every one of you who put in your 2 cents. all great posts for my learning.
2nd ,here is the update on my v3i behavior: last night as I posted above, that it kept giving me a wild sputtering noise and with the coil still it would rapidly detect anything ,while it was high in the air even, switching to analyze mode showed wildly ,rapid earthquake type readings from all 3 frequencies. I tried everything ,battery charge ,switching batteries ,restoring all programs, ect. nothing worked so I went to bed discouraged about my new v3i.
this morning got up , took it to work with me to call kellyco tech support (witch could offer me no actual tech support today), so i turned it on at 1st break ,sadly started doing to same thing ,tried ground balance again and it would flicker rapidly on the pinpoint meters while ground balancing making the fast sputtering noise along with the flicker again, just going nuts with detecting as well. so I turned it off and went back to work. Now ,heres the strange part. turned it back on at lunch time and it was totally fine. went to ground balance ,ect. and everything was working great. what gives?? I did nothing but leave it in a heating car while I was gone. lol. could this be a bad coil?? as of right now its still fine ,but I suspect it will do this again while I'm out hunting. sorry for long post ,but u guys know your stuff. -metal