Hi Guys:
I detected for several months in a field where i live in CA, at home in Indiana and at the beach with an MXT for several months. I regularly found coins, mostly clad of course
, and jewelry (for the most part junk) at 8+ inches, particularly in a field that my partner and I were gridding. I had to use my towel all the time to hold all the dirt I removed in trying to get deep enough for my targets after removing the plug.
Things changed when I purchased a V3 about four months ago. I have 130+ hours on the machine, mostly coin hunting in different sections of the same areas where I used the MXT. The "Other" half of the same field, included.
So far, I have yet to find more than 4-5 targets at more than 4 inches, only 1 in 15 or so will be outside of the range of my ProPointer. Let me say this:
My manual is dog eared, I have watched the videos.
I regularly adjust/optomize Rx Gain (Crank it up, dial it back to near stability), and discrimination sensitivity (high as can go, back it off if it becomes unstable). My gain can usually run between 11 and 15 in my main area without falsing and my disc. sensitivity is frequently at 85+. I run a frequency offset of +3 to +5 because my partner detects nearby. I recently dropped all metal sens to 50 to reduce any minor falsing and because my targets are so shallow that running it any higher made it hard to pinpoint...I certainly don't need deep pinpointing
I have used a variety of filter speed and have adjusted swing speed from four seconds per swing to about one second per swing depending on which filters I am using.
The program I use most frequently (70% of the time) is coin/jewelry with some modifications. I turned off modulation so that I don't miss deep targets and because my hearing can be iffy. I do use tone ID, and I turned ratchet on in pinpoint mode. As depth has concerned me for some time now, I have "reset" my two favorite programs as well as "Common" several times to make sure that I hadn't done something wrong.
I have done some "on top of the ground tests" a few times when starting to hunt just to make sure that things are OK and I find that I can get about 6-7 inches on a penny and 8 inches or so on a bottle cap. Interestingly, I find that sometimes turning Rx boost on will increase the depth of these "kickoff" tests, sometimes not.
Recently, I took a tiny gold necklace that I found strung out with the MXT and the V3 was unable to see it when it was wadded into a ball and left on the ground, the Rx gain was at 15, Disc Sens at 90, 10DD (yes, its fine, recommended gain of 15 with air test).
When I swing the detector I can occasionally get broken, deep, unrepeatable/hard to repeat chirps or sounds that indicate that the machine is trying to disc out something, typically it is a nail or other corroded/rusted item (probably a significant halo) and is never (never) a coin.
Finally, often when the detector reads 4-6 inches in search mode, I check with my pinpointer only to find that the coin is an inch or two deep. I typically gently scrub the grass when I detect, so it isn't a matter of the coil being off the ground.
My detector is one of the original Visions, still running 1.0 because I could care less about the wireless phones. I have #17 off the line, I believe. I want to work things out with this machine, but I am running out of adjustments to make and have read about all there is to read on this forum and several others.
I would appreciate any help that you can offer, especially any other glaring problems that there could be that I haven't figured out.
My MXT has been on loan for a few months, I get it back in about two weeks. I can't wait to grid out some areas and search them with both machines optimized to the best of my ability to see what happens!
Thanks in advance.
Tater.