Was it EMI?

[Overvoltage]

I was out hunting at my favorite ball field Sunday and was doing pretty well. I had already found a handfull of clad and a mens 10k ruby ring, when all of a sudden my CTX3030 started going crazy. I had this problem in this area once before and thought it mught be where an old burn pile may have been. I tried a noise canx. Did not help. I manually set noise canx to 3, then to 4. neither helped. I normally run sensitivity either auto +3 or Manual 26-28 and it usually is very stable. I had it in auto -2 and it became usable but only just. There are no cell towers or high power lines here. Then all of a sudden it stopped and everything was normal again. I backtracked over the ground where I had the problem and everything was normal. Could I have possibly been getting interference from a HAM radio or something else?

 

[McClod]

Sure sounds like a good possibility! If nothing else is in the area, not sure how a ham radio will affect the ctx, but I have a hand held ham radio I used to carry and use while flying laragliders, I think I'll charge it up and see how it affects mine. I'll try to get back and post after I try it out.

Edited....was Just thinking, The hand held won't have the power output anywhere near that of a larger home based unit, so it may not reproduce what you've experienced, have you noticed any tall antennas on roofs in the area? Some HAM operators have quite large antennas, I'm not an expert on the topic and it's been many moons since I've even used mine, worth a shot though I guess.

 

[AngelicStorm]

The samething happens to me. Maybe police radar or some other sudden ferequency burst such as solar flares/magnetic field fluctuations? I would like some answers on this too. Thanks.

 

[GKMan]

most likely it's HAARP...put on your tinfoil hats!

seriously though it would be interesting to know what the caused was. I have not had this happen to me.

 

[Dirtbag Kevin]

Happened almost every time I go out.. Does this place have stadium lights?

 

[Overvoltage]

There are stadium lights but they are a couple hundred yards away and it was about 11:00am Sunday morning and besides the dog walkers I was the only person out there. There were no lights on. I have also hunted there in the evening when ball games were going on and the lights were on and did not have any problems. I have hunted some areas around town that are directly under power line's and I only notice a slight bit of EMI falsing, nothing like this. May be the Air Force or Navy had a jet flying in the vicinity with an ECM pod operational . I don't know . I know it is not my CTX. There are a lot of tall trees around the park and neighborhoods beyond that. There may be a house with a tall antenna and I just cant see it.

 

[Dirtbag Kevin]

I have always attributed it to something underground.. I get spots like that too at parks. But like I said, just small patches.. It's definitely not our detectors.

 

[INSAYN]

Mine would do this at certain parks or curb strips, and only with my 11" coil, never with my 6" coil.
Had Minelab replace it and ever since I've had the new coil I can't think of any situations where the interference wasn't explained due to power box, light pole or other right in the vacinity. And certainly not at all like it was before, nor as long.

Again, the 6" coil never reacted to EMI that I know of, and so far neither has my 17".
I used to absolutely dread using the 11" coil due to all the commotion going on, and lower Auto or Manual sensitivity to get it to work, I resorted to using the 6" coil instead.
Now I really like the new 11" coil with it being so smooth, quiet and properly responsive to coins.

 

[McClod]

Well, won't be able to test it with my hand held HAM radio, not charging darn it! So one more thing I'll need to figure out whats wrong with.

 

[jimzilla]

Do you use your wireless module? If so it could be EMI that the WM10 is picking up. One of the areas I detect is a flight path for planes and every time a plane goes by I get EMI. Sometimes bad enough that I need to stop detecting for a few seconds

 

[Dirtbag Kevin]

I was messing around with manual noise cancel in a bad area and actually found a few channels that returned the ctx back to normal.. (for me was 2 & 8.) Every time I would auto noise cancel, these clearer channels were skipped? No loss of depth either. Try manual the next time. It can't only be me.