Xcal sensitivity

[dewcon4414]

Ok guys i noticed today i cant make my Xcal chatter in MAX sensitivity in wet sand. It will if you hit it on the sand very hard and occasionally when the coil is lifted at the end of a long swing. I tested a couple of found targets in the wet sand..... one was a clad dime at 10 inches. i could hear it best with sensitivity at 7 ... any higher just didnt make a difference. In the water at waist high id get falsing as the water was pulled over the coil occasionally or if i taped the coil. I switched to PP.... still a stable threshold but you could hear the minerals with a slight increase in threshold. Looks like good depth..... but im surprised i cant make it unstable in the wet sand.

Dew

 

[Crispy Critter]

Hmmm.....are you complaining or are you bragging?

 

[dewcon4414]

More confused.... I did some more testing today with the Xcal and the Minelab SE a machine im more accustom to. Gridded off a large section of the beach and set the SE. Found a couple of deep pull tabs right off. I found the Xcal would ID the tab at about 4 inches about the ground then disappear. What was odd is once the signal was lost to get it back i had to take the coil all the way back to the ground. I lowered the sensitivity to 7ish .... it still saw the target at 4 inches but once lost would reacquire the target when lowered. I found no small gold in these gridded area using the two machines.... but of the targets i did find there were a couple of tiny flakes of copper and a couple of REAL deep crown caps that the SE hit on that the Xcal. BUT the REAL test is on gold isnt it... since we arent looking for pennies or trash? It was an interesting 3 hours.

Dew

 

[Crispy Critter]

I too on occasion, notice my E-Trac doing kind of the same. If I remember right, both my Sov. and Excal. would do it on occasion too. There are times when I can't get the TID reading to change (even when swinging over another known target) and like you said, I would "set it on the ground" or hold the coil steady for a little bit and then the threshold would return and the machine would be ready to go.I think it's just the nature of the beast's.

As far as one machine detecting target's and the other not? It may be that what we are noticing are the differences in the discrimination feature's of the two different machine's? The SE, as I'm sure you know, is capable of being set more precisely. What was your disc. setting on the excal.? Could there have been large or multiple pieces of trash effecting the signal that the Excal. was receiving from the pull tab that could have caused it to null when you raised the coil more than 4" above the ground? How deep was the target?

I also wonder......if when checking a signal and at the same time, raising the coil, would there come a point to where the signal would degrade so much that it would be identified by the machine as "trash" then discriminated?

So many question's and so little time. Hopefully an expert will chime in and answer them all for us.

HH, crispy critter

 

[dewcon4414]

On the SE those moments of SCREEN FREEZE is just to much sensitivity based on the amount of targets. I had the Xcal at its lowest disc setting and yes the SE has a lot more capability to tweak it in. There wasnt any other targets, i check that. Im not sure that thought about it disc it as trash is it ... just because when i reduced the sensitivity it saw the target and didnt loose it when moving the coil up or down like when using the higher sensitivity. The pull tabs were around 6 inches down. Like you said lots of questions... but im working it out lol, thanks.

Dew

 

[Crispy Critter]

Thanks for sharing your experiances Dew.

 

[dewcon4414]

NP CC.... these comparisons and other shared information help us all learn.... and the more we learn the better the nut behind the wheel will make a difference to what we find.

Dew