x-terra 305 on wet sand - correct settings advice

[teviotlad]

Was on the beach today and detecting between the high and low tide area, ie wet sand. I discovered a very important setting for wet sand. You MUST NOT have the sensitivity set too high that it causes falsing, as false targets mask real targets due to the detector recovery speed. So if you have say sens at 8 or 9 and are getting false targets or chatter, then the detector will take a small response time when processing these false targets as you are sweeping, and any real target during this time will BE IGNORED. So you MUST turn your sensitivity down to say 5 or 6 to eliminate all falsing. I found this out today and my find rate jumped as soon as I turned my sens down. You get less depth but you get more real targets not bein masked by the machine recovering from false targets. this is for wet sand.

I thought initially that you could run it with falsing/chatter on the wet sand but you would get repeatable signals for real targets, but this is not the case. It seems to be similar effect to 2 real targets close together, ie one false target and a real target, and depending on which way you sweep, one of the targets will not be sensed as the detector is processing the first target. Also, if your sensitivity is too high you will notice the false targets are sounding as -4 or iron, so the detector is processing these false iron targets and not detecting the "nearby" real targets, due to recovery speed.

YOU MUST RUN THIS MACHINE ON LOW SENSITIVITY ON WET SAND. so that you are getting a nice silent search with NO falsing or chatter. otherwise your find rate will be low. As soon as i turned the sens down i immediately began to hit targets and found some pound coins immediately.

 

[jsblake]

I TRIED MY XTERRA 305 IN WET SAND LAST WINTER IN S. TEXAS. NO MATTER WHERE I SET THE SENSITIVITY,I COULD NOT GET A GOOD SIGNAL. THIS YEAR I HAVE THE MINLAB SAFARI. FROM ALL IVE HEARD,THE SAFARI DOES GREAT IN SAND AND WET SAND. WE LEAVE FOR TEXAS NEXT MONTH, SO WILL KNOW SOON. IM GLAD IT WORKS FOR YOU.

 

[teviotlad]

it isnt a great machine on wet sand, thats the bottom line. hope you do well with the safari wish i had one.

 

[Digger]

Good to hear you were able to find some coins by lowering the Sensitivity. I don't doubt that would be a solution for the 305. But my guess would be that the problem is more a matter of maintaining a proper ground balance than recovery speed or having to set your Sensitivity that low. If it were recovery speed, the FBS and BBS units wouldn't be as effective in wet sand as they are. Wet sand ground phase varies greatly within a matter of inches. Having a model with Tracking or Beach Tracking (like the X-TERRA 70 or 705) or one that automatically adjusts to the ground (such as the FBS models) would allow you to maintain a higher sensitivity, resulting in a greater depth of detection. Compensating with a low Sensitivity setting on your 305 will likely result in missing smaller or deeper targets. JMHO HH Randy

 

[bruce1036]

Great to see another Xterra 305 user on the forum. I had my 305 for two years now and have done very well with it.
We travel to Wells, Maine several times a year and always stop to York beach ( Long Sands) in the evening after everyone leaves.
I've never had good luck with the wet beach sand, but it's a killer in the dry sand. It seems that the beaches seemed to
be wetter with more of a high tide this year, so I never had much luck this year.
Good luck with the 305 and hope the wet sands do you well.

Minelab Xterra 305
Stock coil

Garrett Ace 250
Execelerator 10 x 14 DD
Stock coil
Sniper coil

Happy Hunting

Bruce

 

[teviotlad]

i do ok with the 305 on wet sand i had 20 or coins yesterday for about 6 pound total ie 10 dollars, but like digger says not deep all within 4 or 5 inches max. so it does work. but not with sens high. i cannot seem to balance it at all on wet sand i wonder if it cannot balance on wet sand. am off to blackpool beach today. will take some pics. regs.

 

[Digger]

I don't think it is a matter of the 305 not being able to ground balance on wet sand. I think it is more apt to be that the mineralization constantly changes in wet sand. So unless you are constantly changing the GB with each sweep, the ground phase setting won't keep up. Mineralization varies in all soil. It is just more "pronounced" in wet conditions. That is why Tracking can "keep up" with those changes. Since Beach Tracking is actually quicker than Tracking, Minelab recommends using Beach Tracking for the conditions you described. Unfortunately, the 305 and 505 do not have Tracking or Beach Tracking. But if you detect parallel to the water's edge, you could reduce the degree to what the mineralization changes, compared to walking in and out of the wet sand. You still won't be able to keep up with the constant changes in mineralization. But by walking along the water line, you will have a better "average" ground phase setting than going from one extreme to the other. JMHO HH Randy

 

[teviotlad]

i think u got it right there digger. am just back from the beach and found a huge fat chunky silver ring with about 40 sparkly stones on it, about 3 inch down in wet stony sand. wish they were diamonds. its hallmarked but cant make out the hallmark

 

[teviotlad]

oh and thanks for the advice digger. while i was on the beach 2 young lads with a 50 quid machine on their 1st day out, were strugglin. so i took them down to a cut and they began to hit targets ie big lumps of iron, but they were lovin it findin stuff. so next thing i get an iron signal which i ignored, but the lads dug it. out came a nice gents waterproof digital sports watch casio style in good working order !. they were happy as larry. another 2 converts me thinks. just after givin the lads advice and help i found the big chunky silver ring, on an otherwise fruitless barren day. funny how these things happen.

 

[Furious T]

Sounds like you're having fun, and that's the main thing. I dont have the 305, but I do have the "70", and, as digger said, using the Tracking mode helps heaps in both dry and wet sand. What can seem like a nice white/gloden sand beach just looking at it, can actuallt be a real minefield of mineralised sand, with large and numerous variations of the mineralisation. The X Terras do a great job for a vlf machine, and the tracking mode gives them an adge of some other vlfs, I'm sure. Just my own experience. Pete

 

[Digger]

That Karma can sneak up on you when you least expect it! Congrats on the silver ring! HH Randy

 

[Mick in Dubbo]

While the 305 may be unstable in the wet sand, a good target will still give you a solid repeatable signal. About the only other thing that can help the 305, is to get a DD coil for it. This will reduce the falsing by about 70% (from memory). Don't get the 5x10 coil though as it is NOT waterproof. The 6in high frequency might be a help for wet sand. It will see less matrix. Unfortunately, if you try and hunt with waves crashing over the coil, then it will false chronically (pretty normal for a VLF detector). The 10.5 in round DD coils would be alright, although a bit toe heavy.
Mick Evans.

 

[Digger]

As Mick pointed out, the Elliptical coil is classified as "water resistant". I would add that both of the 10.5-inch DD coils are also classified as being "water resistant" as well. The only DD coils available for the X-TERRA that are considered "waterproof" are the 6-inch DD at 18.75 kHz and the Coiltek 15-inch All Terrain DD at 7.5 kHz. HH Randy

 

[teviotlad]

just ran a wet sand test with 305. on the wet brown sand below high water mark. not black sand. buried 2p coin 6 inches. set gb to low reading ie 3. could not detect it. sens at 7 from 10. increased gb to 19. easily detected. test result = set gb to high end of scale for wet sand. i also detected for while with gb set low. didnt find much. set gb to high ie 19 , found much more.

 

[23950522]

if you want to be able to detect the whole of the beach , from the dry to the wet sand you need a Multi frequency machine, single frequency VLF dont matter what make of machine, is a compromise..even the mighty Deus cant hack the highly mineralised wet sand , 305 505 705 on the dry sand or dry shingle works fine ,

 

[cypearl]

Once in a competition with 505 i could n't detect at all in the black sand. Falsing a lot but when I went after again with a buddy was fine. I can not remember if the sand was wet or dry although. I could not understand why was doing that may be from the many detectorists near each other. Now in brown sand I can detect a feet deep a coin target no matter if it's wet.

 

[Pennypacker]

I think the mineralization changes a lot from beach to beach, day by day, depending on which way the wind is blowing.

Some beaches areound here look like they have really dark streaks of black sand, but upon closer inspection it is a crushed up purple Garnet material that gathers in layers and streaks, detecting is fine.
I suspect you may not even be able to see when the iron is in the top 6"s or not just by looking, you just have to try it or pass a magnet through the sand.

All in all my 505 works pretty good on fresh water wet sand.