False signals.?

[Jeffo]

I use an ace 250 and so far I get so many false signals I turn down the sensitivity .i start to dig the soil and nothing's there I run over the area with pin point and try again .and again nothing .

 

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[pepperj]

Can be a couple of factors at play here, defective unit/coil, or mineralization/hot rocks, tapping the coil on a hard surface even the hard stalks of plants can cause a chirp/falsing from the coil.

 

[adamBomb]

I use an ace 250 and so far I get so many false signals I turn down the sensitivity .i start to dig the soil and nothing's there I run over the area with pin point and try again .and again nothing .

Where are you using it? What kind of soil? Have you done any air tests on it?

Most likely you are using it in a place with high soil mineralization and need to keep sens down and swing slow...assuming the ace can even handle the soil you are using. Could be a coil problem but if it air tests fine that its most likely not.

 

[Sandman]

This link explains a lot. http://www.metaldetectingintheusa.com/files/explanation-of-emi.pdf Turn off cell phone too.

 

[FreeBirdTim]

Did you wrap the coil cable tightly around the shaft of the detector? If you don't wrap it tightly, you will sometimes get false signals from the cable.

Here's how I wrap mine and I never get false signals:

 

[Loco-Digger]

I have mainly used Fisher detectors and am used to falsing. Stay aware of the surface you are detecting. Ruts in the soil and hard tall weeds can cause falsing. I always double check good beeps by swinging slowly over the spot in an X pattern. Only dig if you get a signal going both ways N-S & E-W for example. This also is how I normally pinpoint my targets. You are doing right by reducing the sensitivity. After a while you will be able to tell the diference between false signals and good signals. I always hunt and area in grids. First I hunt the area going E-W for example then I come back it hunt the area going N-S, this allows you to pull almost all targets at the site. Going the second direction will also allow you to get what you missed during the 1st pass and many times when coins are withing 6 inches of each other you may only hear one. So going over an area twice is recommended especially if you are pulling some good finds.

You may want to upgrade to a detector that allows manual ground balance. Presets GB's are great for mild soils, but not so good in highly mineralized areas.

GL & HH

 

[scavanau]

I use an ace 250 and so far I get so many false signals I turn down the sensitivity .i start to dig the soil and nothing's there I run over the area with pin point and try again .and again nothing .

I have the 250 and always keep the sensitivity at the factory preset. Only when I'm detecting an area I've pounded, and suspect more targets are left in the ground do I crank the power up. Then I expect false signals. Dig the signals that repeat.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Every time those "disappearing signals" threads/questions come on the forum, from a newbie, I harken back to several situations I've had meeting-up with newbies in my area, who had the same complaints. I would try and try over the phone & emails to diagnose the problem, to no avail. Then we'd agree to meet, and immediately the problem would become obvious to me to diagnose. Things that could not be diagnosed in printed text or phone calls. I had to be there to see what was going on (the mistake that newbie was doing). No amount of printed text or phone calls can convey things like sounds, tones, swing speed, repeatability, etc.....

Each time they were silly things, that once we each traded off a few flagged signals, and I looked at what they were doing, we could both immediately see the issue. Here's 2 examples, but DON'T GET LOST IN THE EXAMPLES:

a) a guy has an XLT, which is a motion discriminator (with a fairly fast clip required, when compared to more modern machines). Whenever the guy would get a signal, he would "slow down to try to hear it better". But then lo & behold, it would disappear ! (unless it was really shallow). Why? Because he was no longer giving it motion. So he'd give up, and go on to the next signal, only to have it happen over and over and over! He sent the XLT back to Whites for "repairs" several times. Each time, it would continue to do the same thing. He read the instruction manual several times, and was fit -to-be-tied!

We finally met up, and I could immediately see the error. And I asked him : "I thought you said you read the manual several times. Didn't you see the part about 'motion required' ?". He said yes, he'd read that. But he just thought that meant moving the coil from side to side as you swing, while walking/detecting/progressing foward. And he had thought: "That's a silly instruction. HOW ELSE is someone supposed to ever get any detecting done, if they're not 'moving the coil in motion' . I mean, duh, did they think someone was going to stand there motionless with the coil in one place, not progressing through the field ?" But when I showed him what that meant (the faster the swing, the deeper you go), only THEN did the "lights go on". And prior to that, no amount of printed text exchange could ever have shown what his issue was.

b) Another time a guy & I were detecting at an abandoned military barracks. He got a signal at the corner of a building, and dug down. After 10 minutes of ever-deeper and ever-wider hole, he could STILL not find the signal. He called me over. In 5 seconds after a single swing, I immediately found the problem: The signal he was getting was some flashing within the inside of the wooden molding of the corner of the barracks. And the guy didn't know that the tip of his coil was sensitive to signals too. He kept assuming the signal was downward. Doh!

So your best bet for "dissapearing signals" is to hook up with someone proficient in your area, and trade off flagged signals to compare.

 

[Msbeepbeep]

Welcome to T Net!

I have had signals disappear from time to time, once it was a small piece of tin foil that as I dug it up crumpled into a tiny speck that no longer gave a solid signal. Another time the target literally disintegrated as I dug into it and then become mixed with the soil so the detector ground balanced it out.

Hope you get the answers you need.