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Yep....You were right Monte, I like my Xterra 70

Mike Hillis

Well-known member
My detecting plans changed today due to some unforeseen circumstances so I didn't get to do all that I had planned to.

But I did get to spend a couple of hours in the afternoon with the XT70. Took it to a close by elementary school and hunted the sand playground just to get a feel for it. I could tell that someone else had been there but did they work it? or just pass through?

Plugged in my Timberwolf Predators and turned the XT70 on and just as I thought from listing to the outside speaker, the tones were sweet in those good headphones. The first hour was mostly getting acquainted, but by the second hour I was doing a pretty good job calling the target before I recovered it.

Ran through all the options and found in this mineralization that the best TID locks came when I had Tracking on with the TID Stability on. Just the Stability feature alone didn't work as good as having both it and Tracking engaged. So heads up out there...staying balanced to the ground it going to reduce the number bounce.

The Threshold works just like the manual states. The more positive the setting, the less modulation your audio has. A good pair of headphones is a must with this machine to really enjoy the audio characteristics. The threshold was very comfortable at a 3 setting. Good modulation and great rejected target notification. Also noticed it had a fast recovery time so I didn't feel like I was missing anything because of the recovery speed.

Forget pinpoint mode, just hit the mode button and toggle over into the prospecting mode. Audio pinpointing excellence over there. Very clean mode and I used it alot for pinpointing. When I could tell that I had multiple targets close together, the prospecting mode make short work of sorting them out. Very nice!

Pinpoint mode works ok. With Tracking on, I was actually getting a valid TID number in Pinpoint mode about 50 percent of the time. With tracking off, the percentage decreased. But for pinpointing, I preferred just toggling over to Prospecting mode.

Deep rusty iron liked to spill over in the 47 and 46 numbers.

Spent time in all the different tone modes. Liked them all.

Very enjoyable couple of hours. Added another 5.47 to the clad jar including my second ever Susan B Anthony dollar coin.

Only thing bugging me is the grip. It has a much firmer grip than I am used to and my hand doesn't like it. I don't know what I'll do about it yet. But something will come to mind.

During my evenings this week I'll spend some time with my test targets and map out the notches so I can make me a pretty little color strip to put below the notch display to help me keep up with whats what.

Now to get me that high frequency coil....and figure out what to do with the grip...

HH
 
My initial manual ground balance was 12. I forgot how to auto ground balance (left the manual at the house). Then when I turned tracking on, it tracked between 12 & 8, mostly stayed on 8. Which sounds right for this particular playground and comes close to matching what my other machines told me about it in the past. The T2 will balance out at a 89-90. The DFX phase reading for this one is a 92-93.

This is one of the better ones. They get much worse a bit further up.

The ground numbers seemed really weird to me at first, because they were so low. Then when I got back to the house and got the manual out, and reread some old posts on this forum I saw that the Xterra reads backwards from most machines. The more mineralized the soil, the lower the number.

HH
 
<i>the Xterra reads backwards from most machines. The more mineralized the soil, the lower the number. </i><p>Since Austrailia is on the opposite side of the equator, they number things backwards down there.
 
I made one for myself out of 7/8"(OD).058(wall) aluminum and a smaller piece of 3/4"(OD).065(wall)glued inside of the 7/8" after I put a nice bend in it with a pipe bender. The head fits very snug. I used a closed cell grip from the Gripworks (just like you find on push brooms, only thicker). If you would like to see a picture of mine, shoot me an email.

Bill
 
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