vaquero GB with height water table

[Lenny]

I just purchased a vaquero about two months ago and I am having trouble with ground balance. I live in a wide river valley with the ground water table at 2 to 3 feet below ground level . The ground balance is very high in the positive range and changes every 10 feet or so when detecting in the valley low areas. If I detect in higher ground above the valley area ground balance is steady in a neutral zone so to speak. The valley area is not that sandy however higher ground has very little sand if any. My question is if water or sand causing the wide variance in ground balance ?

 

[Welgund]

Is there lots of alkali in the lower valleys?

 

[Monte]

Quite possibly you're just enjoying some chllenging conditions that can occur from time-to-time, be it very water saturated or very dry. One quick example is an old neighborhood I hunted in Ogden, Utah after the original Bandido was introduced twenty-seven years ago. They hadn't started to demolish the homes or start any digging, and there was about a 20' distance between the houses. I could GB about a dozen times from where I started on the west side to the east side of that span.

I used my Vaqureo in a gold mining encampment in the mountains during the heat of summer when it was very dry, but it was a very mineralized location and I had to adjust the GB maybe once every minute or two.

Some places just happen to have a very mixed ground mineral make-up. And then there is ....... water. Then you need to consider 1.. How wet saturated the ground is, and 2.. The chemical make-up of the ground.

When water saturated an inch or more, there can be reactivity changes in the ground causing inconsistencies. You could also have alkaline ground conditions and ample water can cause problems.

Were you searching in the Threshold-based All Metal mode? What search coil size and type were you using?

If the intent was to GB then switch to the Disc. mode, then all you needed was a functional ground adjustment and hunt away if there was no noise in the Disc. mode.

Monte

 

[Lenny]

Thanks Monte. I dug a few post holes and let them fill with ground water and checked the pH and as I suspected the water was slightly acid ( 6.0 to 6.5 ) as this is Ohio river bottoms in western Kentucky and lots of coal and sand stone with plenty of line stone mixed in. Just learning the detector and hunting in the Disc. mode mostly and being near the river uncovering plenty of relics and some clad coins but nothing special yet. I will adjust the GB as needed and hunt on. Again thanks

 

[hatpin]

I tried hunting in ground that is always saturated by a spring . It was impossible to GB the Vaquero . I didnt spend much time there before giving up .