The F70 love/hate relationship

[Lowbatts]

Still getting used to it but here goes:

Things I love about the F70:
Super easy to work the menus, ground balance and setup for any conditions
Easy to swing all day long, light and somewhat ergonomic, big somewhat...
Yes I can tell the zincolns from the copper mems from the wheats, at last!
Battery life is superb
Pinpointing is awesome good
lightly masked/colocated targets seem easy to identify

Things I dislike about the F70
I cannot take this thing into the brush, that rear-mounted phone jack sits off the back of my elbow and in thick brush, it's a true connector-killer.

Likewise the battery compartment gets in the way of the swing if I'm wearing a belt full of gear, have to extend my arm farther forward than I have in the past, this is ergonomically BAD! I've swung CZ's since their inception, the 5, the 7 and the 20 and never got the elbow joint sore, now I know what tennis elbow feels like!

And as others have noted, the thing does not stay upright when you set it down unless you take great care to make sure it's sitting pretty. Not only that, it's high profile makes it an easy target when I'm drawing my digging targets from the back of my belt where I have to keep them now. Could be that I'm a short fat guy, too. Is there a short-fat guy mod available?

The CZ's tended to ignore those steel bottle caps, putting them in their low-born category for commmunity service work rather than in the way of coin shooting, the F70 apparently is more civic-minded. While their high-digit number bounce does give them away for the most part, they still ring too high, too often to ignore.

The ambiguous gripe:
Haven't dug anything near the best depth the CZ's could reach, especially the CZ5 or CZ7 with the 10.5 coil. Not sure that I'd read such a target accurately yet. That said the CZ's were not that ambiguous with their id on deepies, either.

My settings in trashy areas:
Program 1
Disc 5
Default speed
Sense maxed to just short of chirps
Thresh 0 to -2
Tones 3F
Notch 1

Program 2
Disc AT
Default speed
Sense maxed to low hum
Thresh -3

So if I get an iffy signal, I switch to program 2 and try to PP gauge the target size at depth. So far this has not resulted in deep target recovery except for iron and trash finds. Still poking around for a 10" coin.

Any tips?

 

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[Sandman]

Sounds like you have a fair handle on it and others hear your pain. It is hard to design a unit that fits all, but you'd think they could tell by the amount of us short, wide people out there.

 

[p2c]

Lowbatts,
Good to see another Illinois guy trying out the f70, I wish you luck. I know about the depth thing and agree that it is a little week on depth. I was with a guy using a CZ-5 who got a strong tone at 8-9 inches on a token. When I would sweep, several sweeps were nothing, and a few were very, and i mean very, faint. I have had mine since March. I've hunted, based on battery consumption, at least 280 hours with it, and know it well. Maxing things out for me is thresh 0 to +2 with sens up as high as it will go. I run Disc = 0 (I've read and experienced that this will give you the best depth outside of Auto-tune, which I prefer not being in due to liking 3h tones). In good soils where I've got sens up into the 90's, the deepest I think I can go is 7-8 inches. The 8 inch targets are very weak indeed. I worry that this may have something to do with what people purport to be quality issues with fishers, some units are great and some are just eh, because I don't think I could ever hit a coin at 10 inches with mine, let alone the 12+ claim they have. I do know when I got my 11 DD, that was a significant improvement.
For these reasons, my f70 is going to probably become a hand me down to my father-in-law, and I will probably switch over to the Dark Side, Minelab Etrac. I think the f70 would be a great unit all else said, if it only got the depth it claimed. Target separation is great, target id fine, pinpointing fine, lightweight, good price, but trying hard to work on depth, and maxing out, and i mean maxing out at 3 inches or so less than a lot of other good detectors are going, particularly in areas heavily hunted, has been a source of frustration to me.
I wish you luck with the f70, and that you can prove me wrong on the depth issue.
-Jon

 

[limegoldconvertible68]

Three of us from Illinois and we all suffer from the same love/hate relationship with our F70. My biggest problem is that I don't hunt with anyone else so I only have these board to make the comparisons with. I can consistently pull measured 6"-7" dimes with sens 99, thres 9 settings. Most hit very hard so I think I should have the power to go deeper but I never have. Why? I hear Etrac users talk about 12" dimes all the time but someone on that board posted a complaint about not getting coins deeper than 7" and when I responded that he just measures better nobody chimed in differently. Does this mean that most etrac users exaggerate to compensate for paying between 2 and 3 times what we did for their machine? On rare occasion I run into etrac users and once I looked over and saw one digging so I watched close. I saw his pile of dirt and then I saw him examine his find. He fills his hole and then comes over to show me his 9" deep find. He had half the dirt I do when I pull my dimes out. So I don't know what to believe.
P2c, when others are finding the deep targets that you can't pick up what thres setting are you using? With my limited experience increasing thres seems to be the key to getting the best depth. I think(key word think, no proof) that increasing the sens into the higher ranges really gives the biggest boost to very small targets. My newest experiment is working with "SL" but I can't make any observation yet because I haven't found enough targets to note anything significantly different.

 

[p2c]

Limegold,
I have hunted whenever I can with SL. SL will give you much better depth if there is not a lot of trash and interference. I can't confirm, but it seems with SL you may get a little wider footprint, and perhaps that helps a little as well. The problem with SL is it is more prone to interference. I prefer SL when possible also because it allows a slower swing, which I think is good for deep hunting, and in de a faster sweep is required to get the best depth.
I have hunted as high as thresh +9 and sens 99, yes I've been in places where that combo is stable. Normally, I stay in the 0 to +2 thresh range, as a lot of times where I hunt I'll just get too much interference. I've read, though not really confirmed that a higher sens gives better target separation. My understanding is that thresh increases the pre-amp to the signal, so if you turn it up, faint signals become more audible. The net result is that small items will be more likely heard and also the deep faint signal will more likely be heard. My understanding is sens increases the strength of the magnetic field, so deeper targets will more likely produce a signal. Hence, it is unclear which of the two (thresh or sens) is best to maximize and is probably likely dependent upon your soil type. When I hunt with higher thresh, I find myself excited on deep sounding weak signals, that end up only being a BB at 6 inches and not a coin at 10.
As to the Etrac and measuring, yes perhaps it is true that many don't honestly measure, and just go with their depth meter; but also I know several etrac users up here in chicagoland and the sheer number of stuff they pull is a phenomenon. Plus, I do know they get signals I will never hear, is it an honest 12" on a dime, I don't know. Is it deeper than I get, yes. I do know a lot of times my f 70 will say a dime is at 3 inches, when my coil is practically touching the ground right over the target, and it ends up being only an inch deep (not on edge). This leads to my suspicion about build quality, because lower f series detectors sometimes supposedly aren't set right in the factory, and this leads to faulty pinpointing (under representing depth) and reduced depth on swings. I know this isn't true of the f75, but don't know about the f70. Some sort of adjustable capacitor or something that wasn't tuned right on f5's and f2's. I do know from my experience as well verses a cz-5, an older model, perhaps comparable or less in price in the fisher line-up, that it killed, and I mean killed my f70 depth wise.
I do love the f70 in many ways and will miss it if I do make the switch, but at the same time I've seen guys who silver finds go up by 3 to 5 times as much when they go to etrac. My wife also is pushing the idea of this b/c she thinks my f70 would make a good gift to her father.

 

[Lowbatts]

Thanks guys, sounds like my story for the most part. But I've pulled small things like a tie tac from the 1890's at 7 inches, 00 buckshot almost as deep. Also I have found good coinage in places I've forsaken with my CZ's because of masking, but nothing near as deep.

Yes, I do want another CZ5 again becuse I know them and they rock on depth and id at depth. My CZ20 does not get the depth the CZ5 or CZ7 did but it still racks up impressively in other areas. Now that I've spent enough time hunting with ETrac users I feel they are superior coin shooting machines but I have no time with F75's so I have to leave that comparison open.

I do find one strong suit on the F70, it's depth and id in the mid range seems to be very good so bullets, buttons and relic hunting is most likely it's forte. The target numbers bounce wildly on junk from what I've experienced at every level and category, but seem really solid on good targets. But it also does have much quicker target id devaluation on good targets as depth or mineralization increase. My first silver coin with it was a silver rosie at 5 inches, perfectly on edge that id'd solidly in the mid 40's. Of course once on the surface and on it's side it rang in where it should.

In one area I like to hunt occasionally, the mineraliztion is so bad the Garret pro pointer will go off as if it's got a coin on it's tip anywhere it touches the ground, yet no targets or solid material are present. In this dirt the deepest coins may be only a couple inches. I've dug the deepest oldies there with my CZ's, the F70 did not cut through the top two inches of mineralization. It did however find some small brass and tin objects there with good numbers but only at two inches or less. But again this ground is very MD'ing UNfriendly.

So I love the machine, because I think it will produce a certain range of targets other machines will not and I know this because of finding certain target categories with ease that others have passed, even the ETrac users. This may due to their notching out everything but the high coin categories. But I am also aware that they have an easier time id'ing those high coin targets even at impressive depth, again with the trade-off that they may be missing the non-coin targets.

 

[EDDE]

As far as tennis elbow goes.I mounted a bicycle "bar end" just before the bend of the upper rod in front of the control box.It keeps my wrist straight and makes me use my whole arm/shoulder, not just my wrist and elbow
the short-fat guy mod see below

 

[Lowbatts]

As far as tennis elbow goes.I mounted a bicycle "bar end" just before the bend of the upper rod in front of the control box.It keeps my wrist straight and makes me use my whole arm/shoulder, not just my wrist and elbow
the short-fat guy mod see below

If I'm concluding right, this would be like the top-mounted pistol grip on your old BH. While it would definitely move the center of gravity forward on the F-70, it does sound like it would have the desired effect of getting the phone jack and battery compartment forward of their current position and much more out of the way.

This would have to be placed optimally on the F70 so that the control unit could still be accessed by the index finger, sounds possible.

 

[EDDE]

actually with my X5