What's up with that??

[TB from NC.]

I'm new to this forum and need some of your feedback on a weird thing that happened to my ATPro yesterday. I am a member of a club and yesterday we had our annual seeded hunt with many of our members showing up (this was my 2nd one; a parenthesis which will make sense later). My settings were on Pro Zero with Fe discrimination on 35 and full sensitivity with full batteries. Anyway, the hunt started and all was well; I was finding stuff, enjoying myself and all of the sudden right in the middle of the hunt, and with no metal detectors too close to me, my ATPro started acting up: VDI display churning up numbers at a fast pace, even with the coil up toward the sky, sounding crazy with high and low pitches....So I turned it off and started it again and the same thing happened. I was thinking "crap" my detector is dying on me. Again far away from detectors. After a few more trials, I was about to give up the hunt when on a hunch I decreased my sensitivity to 1/2 and all was well again. I finished my day without any issues and ended up having a blast. Last yr, same hunt same place same #of people, no problems whatsoever. So what's up with that? is it something I should worry about? is my detector dying or needing to be checked out by a specialist from Garrett? I don't want to be in the middle of a great hunt and having to give it up because my machine crapped on me. What do you think?

 

[JStuff]

Is it possible that you were near buried power lines? I've had the same thing happen.

 

[John-Edmonton]

Seeded hunt? You had interference from someone Else's detector. That's what can happen when several machines hunt in close proximity. The only thing else you could have done was change frequencies, which might have helped. Your machine is fine.

 

[Steve Keppel]

I've had that happen sometimes when I first turned it on, but the symptom disappeared immediately after I opened the battery storage door and backed out the batteries just enough to lose power, then re-inserted the battery holder and all was well. Of course, your troubles could be something else. But this has always worked for me. Good luck!

 

[asiandigger]

change the frequency, sometimes that helps but if you're close to a power line, or transformer- might as well go to a different locations

 

[Waterdog]

You did the right thing by lowering you power. The AT pro is a great machine and sometimes people try and push them too high. I have found that with the AT pro you don't have to run your sensitivity real high and you still get good depth.
Being in a seeded hunt? Everything is right on top, you don't need to run your power high to find coins on top.
Do you have a coil cover on your machine? If so carefully take it off and make sure that it is clean, sometimes dirt gets in there and can really mess with you.
HH

 

[TRIPLE-SSS]

Happened to me a couple times, have not had any problems since.