What's the difference with tracking??

[Marty]

Hi there, just looking at a GT write-up in a minelab brochure. I noticed they say the GT has Automatic Ground Balance AND Automatic Ground Tracking?? I always thought they were the same thing?
Can anyone tell me the difference between the two??
Thanks....

 

[Art (NWOH)]

Ground balance is the ability of the detector to allow for the value of the dirt so it can ignore it. Therefore anything that is not equal to the value of the dirt must be a metal object.

The GT can be balanced manually by pumping the coil, or will balance itself after a bit as you sweep the coil. You can let it track or lock the balance with the FIX setting . This is in the ALL METAL MODE.

You could say that it tracks during the ground balance operation, as it adjusts to the value of the dirt. While hunting in the TRACK mode, the GT constantly evaluates the dirt to determine what offset value to use, and changes the ground balance as necessary. This is called TRACKING.

To make a long story short.....
Tracking is the automatic adjustment of ground balance, and ground balance is automatic because of tracking.

In disc mode, I'm not sure that it's proper to say that the GT really tracks or balances at all. I think that it compares the response of the dirt and metal objects at different frequencies to determine what is or isn't a valid target. Dirt can be expected to give a particular response at different frequencies than metal will. What appears valid as metal can be sorted out from what is dirt in this way.
If I have this wrong, then someone please jump in and straighten me out.

Hope I didn't confuse you too much.

HH

 

[Rick(ND)]

As you say ground tracking is in all metal mode only and is disabled when in the disc mode as it uses the BBS for the disc mode by comparing the ground to any other metal target.
If some one ask me how that all works I tell them "very well"

Rick