Weird Falsing with the 6X10

[earthmansurfer]

I was hunting with the 6X10 and as the afternoon approached, after 2 or 3 hours of hunting, it really really started to false a lot (on iron mostly but also in general). I couldn't find a place to ground balance as it was reading iron everywhere? (When I did a probe on the soil earlier it said -94 but no mineralization in general. The soil normally reads -91 but it rained last night). I tried the frequency offset to no avail. I tried running GB offset in a range of +- 40 to no real avail. I lowered Rx from 12 and the Disc from 95 to 8 & 85 respectively and that seemed to quiet things a little bit although the machine was quite in the air at the previous settings anyway. I could even rest the machine on the ground without falsing - it was only when it was in motion. Even thought things were a bit quieter it was still falsing a lot on the ground. When I held the coil in the air and pressed zoom it said there was no EMI in the air, but as I held the pinpoint trigger and turned to the left it picked up a strong target (EMI ?) consistently coming from the street. When I pinpointed on the ground it generally gave a depth of from 8"-10". Now, I can pinpoint the air towards the street and pinpointing the ground shows me there is mineralization but Zoom+sensitivity says there is nothing - going by the bottom number, top number was 8% or so.??? Do you guys find Zoom + sensitivity to be accurate? I have had a similar issue before with falsing, pinpoint acting weird (which I have attributed to iron being off to the side of the target) but I have detected this spot with my other detector and never had this problem (though it doesn't go as deep). Sometimes during pinpoint it locked on as if there was a target there even if I lifted the coil into the air. Releasing the trigger cleared that up.

I got the machine acceptably quiet and then buried a coin at 5" or so. It had trouble picking it up and kept registering it as iron (mixed in with the coin.) I played with the filters and nothing really seemed to make much of a difference. I ground balanced again and it quieted down some more and I GB'd between every setting change. What I did notice with GB is that the machine takes a while to manually GB via the pumping method, at least at this site. When the arrows stop going in one direction and switch from left to right fairly quickly that tells me (along with the sound that the machine is properly GB'd). A good ground balance on this machine is more important that any machine I've ever had. Perhaps some of my problems were due to the iron mineralization? Eventually I could pick up the coin better but not like I should, so I stopped and...

Next I put on the stock coil and all was fine (Rx at 12, disc at 95, Filter 5 band). I could pick up the target solid at 5" with filters 5-10Hz. Iron was mostly no problem though it still falsed on it.

This isn't a complaint so much as I am really curious if I am doing something wrong or if it's just environmental conditions. The sometimes falsing and sometimes weird pinpointing are my only problems with the V3i thus far.

I would really appreciate any suggestions you all might have and sorry as I know this was a long post but I wanted to try to give all the info I can remember.

 

[Rob (IL)]

Maybe I missed something, but you said, "Next I put on the stock coil and all was fine (Rx at 12, disc at 95, Filter 5 band). I could pick up the target solid at 5" with filters 5-10Hz. Iron was mostly no problem though it still falsed on it."

The 6x10 should be a smoother and quieter coil than the 10D2 which is more sensitive. Though not as deep as the D2 the 6x10 is also less susceptible to EMI. So as I said unless I missed something I would say the 6x10 has a problem. Rob

 

[earthmansurfer]

I know, I thought that was odd that the Stock worked better. I'll give the 6X10 another go and if it still doesn't work well I'll return it.

 

[earthmansurfer]

I got out again for about 2 hours this evening and hunted with the stock coil. It ran pretty quiet even though I saw my largest signal % under zoom-sensitivity = 36%.
For the last 20 minutes I switched to the 6X10 and first reloaded the program and then ran the coil.

It was now FINE. The signal % on this one was only 10%. I'm glad the coil is ok. Sometimes the behavior of the V3i reminds me of when I first got my T2 and didn't know how to deal with it's extreme sensitivity. I was at a new location just to be safe.

My guess is that the machine is just VERY VERY sensitive at times. I noticed I could pinpoint fine and those times I couldn't I checked for a target off to the side and sure enough there was one there. I hadn't ever had this problem with other machines and it just adds to the evidence that the machine is both sensitive and powerful. On pinpoint (and in general) it's seeing targets and junk deeper than I am used to. Pinpoint was very accurate today and helped me to ID some targets. I called the only coin I dug and a long thin target ended up being an open pocket knife.

I do hope the machine does not act up like it did the other day. I'm really curious how accurate the signal % is for EMI as the other day, well, see my post above...

 

[Daniel Tn]

I took my VX3 to a spot I found lots of silver dimes and wheat cents back about 15 yrs ago. I hadn't been back there with any new machines and the site is mostly trash free except round tabs and rusty bottlecaps. I had the D2 coil and I ran into the same thing as you were describing with the machine falsing on the ground. This place don't have iron junk but I couldn't find a clear spot to GB in. I tried everything I knew to try and still didn't find a solution. I suspected the possibility of EMI but it would only false and such when the coil was near the ground. I finally gave up and went to some other spots and the machine was fine. I even lowered gain to 3 and disc sensitivity to 50 and it still would go crazy at that site.

 

[earthmansurfer]

Daniel, I often hunt spots that I just can't find a place to GB at.

I WISH there was a way to just manually move to a number that the ground probe read the ground at (at another time). Then I could just move the machine to e.g., -91 and know I'm close to the ground. I realize from experience that due to things like rain, the GB point can shift.

I've heard of pumping the coil and pulling the trigger and while in ground tracking (live screen) - under the offset column, you can push the up arrow or down arrow to "semi manually" GB the ground. Is anyone familiar with this? I really hope that in a future update we can do the GB from a number based mode as it's just too hard to find free ground. e.g. - my back yard doesn't have a place to GB that I have found. GB on this machine is MUCH MUCH more important than any machine I've ever had.

edit - I should add that when you first turn the machine on I think it automatically goes into fast track, so this can really throw things off if you don't do a GB to start, even if hunting the same spot as last time it was on (should you be over a target or holding the coil in the air.)

 

[ak_1234]

Daniel, I often hunt spots that I just can't find a place to GB at.

I WISH there was a way to just manually move to a number that the ground probe read the ground at (at another time). Then I could just move the machine to e.g., -91 and know I'm close to the ground. I realize from experience that due to things like rain, the GB point can shift.

I've heard of pumping the coil and pulling the trigger and while in ground tracking (live screen) - under the offset column, you can push the up arrow or down arrow to "semi manually" GB the ground. Is anyone familiar with this? I really hope that in a future update we can do the GB from a number based mode as it's just too hard to find free ground. e.g. - my back yard doesn't have a place to GB that I have found. GB on this machine is MUCH MUCH more important than any machine I've ever had.

edit - I should add that when you first turn the machine on I think it automatically goes into fast track, so this can really throw things off if you don't do a GB to start, even if hunting the same spot as last time it was on (should you be over a target or holding the coil in the air.)

If you have locktrac on, then the machine will not do the fast track on power up or changing various gain settings. It will start at the setting it was at when you powered down. It is stuck there until you do another manual balance. This may be different on each program. So cycling through various programs may or may not have autotrack active. Say you turned off autotrack in Coin and Jewelry and then switched to beach. Beach will have autotrac on and therefore go through its fast track thing. And if you have lock track on both, if you have adjusted your balance for C&J in one park and your balance for beach at the beach, they will have different track settings. So cycling through these will also give different results. You can get deeper into the settings and exclude your tracking settings from all programs so the settings are stored in common and then cycling through should give you the same results.

You can adjust your track offset, but you don't have to be pulling the trigger to do so. It is in the track live control. When you get the balance you want, adjust the offset up or down to give you the response you like. When you are doing the manual balance, the audio you hear will be with the offset not applied so you can hear when the change of audio is minimal. But, in pinpoint and all metal search the offset will be applied for the audio. (It also affects other things, but your ears are going to be what hears it).

 

[earthmansurfer]

AK_1234 - Thanks so much for sharing that! I had read so many times about fast track and never noticed it was only for when auto track was selected. A few posters never even mentioned that. That is a big help to know. Also, I didn't know each program keeps a separate lock track setting (if lock track is selected). I might do what you suggested (using exclude) so that I can share settings across the programs but right now my three programs I use are really just coil specific programs (Filters, Recovery delay, Rx and disc are different along with the coil selection) so it won't help much but when I add more programs it will.

I realize you don't need to pull the trigger to do the offset and perhaps I described it wrong as the post wasn't clear to me. Here is the post from Magic quoting Tony (maybe someone can describe what he said relative to my post above).

This is a tip from Tony in Orlando Fla. and a good one I might add.
All the credit goes to him and this is what he wrote. Just wanted to keep this forum updated.....


Quote from Tony...

What we are doing here is manually ground balancing the V3 with a technique similar to the older units that had a dial for manual ground balance.

In most cases, using the GB procedure in the manual should work very well, in autotrac or tracloc.

Using the older styled GB control, we would find a clear spot of ground and pull the Pinpoint button and lower the coil to the ground from about waist high. If the threshold become louder as the coil approached the ground, we would consider this TOO POSITIVE and turn the control to the negative side usually to the left and then release and pull the trigger or push the button and lower the coil again and listen to the threshold. If the threshold still increased we would turn the control a little more to the negative side in hopes of getting the threshold to be only slightly positive as the coil approached the ground. This was manual GB as we knew it years ago.

IF you wanted to take control and be responsible for your OWN GB settings, you can accomplish this.

What we are doing is this....

in the tracking live control window we are setting the tracking to LOCTRAC and then move the cursor to the OFFSET column.

Now, raise the coil off the ground (while over an area with no metal) and pull the pinpoint trigger and keep it held and lower the coil to the ground while listening to the threshold. (Hopefully your V3 is set to hear the threshold.)

Now you make an observation on what your heard. Did the threshold increase? Decrease or stay the same?

Optimum GB is when the threshold does not change much as you lower or raise the coil to the ground while continuously holding the PINPOINT BUTTON..


IF the threshold stayed about the same, you are most likely set to a near perfect GB.

IF the threshold went quiet on you, this means the V is currently set too negative and you need to raise the offset #s while bobbing the coil in hopes of achieving no change in tone.

If the threshold increased, the V is set too positive and needs to be set in the other direction towards a negative #.


This can all be done while holding the pinpoint and pressing the appropriate up or down offset button till you achieve the GB of your choice.


As you can see, some folks will think this is too cumbersome and simply go back to the method explained in the manual.

Others, who want and understand what true manual GB is and what it can accomplish will use this method.


Both methods, meaning the method in the owners manual and THIS method work, its simply a choice is all.


Hope I got this written clearly for all to follow along.
_________________
MAGIC

 

[ak_1234]

You're welcome. I think I know where I made my reading mistake. Oops I was reading your post as having to be in track mode (trig+enter). Nope, you just said trigger which does equal pinpoint and that is what you'd want for listening to the effects of your changes. D'oh!