Patriot love!

[bilder]

Went over my yard with the Patriot. I have hit the yard multiple times with my Bounty Hunter and was wondering what I may have missed.

Well, in just over an hour I came away with 1 memorial cent, 7 wheat pennies, a silver spoon handle, and my first buffalo nickle since I got back into the hobby.

The Patriot goes deep and was able to see beyond the nails and other trash. The nickle was 7-8 inches deep and one penny was at least 8 inches with a nail a couple inches above it. Some signals were choppy, but consistent.

 

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[Tjack]

Nice finds!!!!! It's a great machine!!!! Enjoy!!!!

 

[bilder]

Here are some better photos of the nickle and spoon handle.

The nickle is a 1936. Shame they do not come out of the ground in BU condition.

 

[Cal G.]

Congratulations, I think you got yourself a winner in the Patriot.

 

[BigWaveDave]

I'm a huge Patriot fan myself.

 

[HighVDI]

Anyone here able to curb the chatter with the patriot? I want the max depth and I know it is deep....but not with the settings I need to settle with. Even out in the middle of a field it seems noisy. Just doesn't seem right.

 

[Hsimmons75]

I bought two NEL coils for mine, the Hunter and the Sharpshooter. They quiet it down considerably and still hit deep. So far the Sharpshooter is my favorite, but I haven't had much time with the Hunter yet.

 

[trdking]

nice beefalo I LOVE THIS COIN. THEY COME OUT A COPPERY BROWN BUT STILL A FUN FIND sorry about the caps I am a little fat fingered. Has anyone seen the $50 Gold buffalo in reverse cameo? Amazing beautiful coin.

 

[digger27]

Anyone here able to curb the chatter with the patriot? I want the max depth and I know it is deep....but not with the settings I need to settle with. Even out in the middle of a field it seems noisy. Just doesn't seem right.

It can be chatty on some settings, on the other hand even in the most insane EMI infested sites I have found settings on my F70 to make it go from totally schizophrenic to dead calm and quiet and still find the goods.
I have tried all kinds of setting combinations...if you can think of it I have probably tried them or something close using all the settings gain, thresh, speed and disc...plus notch.
What have you tried so far?

Also I noticed on a few of these they let a few loose from the factory that had problems.
No depth, extra chatty that couldn't be calmed down...a friend with an F70 had issues in a new one too.
All of these people had to send them back but even though it was a hassle they were all glad they did because each one did have some problem that the factory fixed and they all returned working much, much better.
Sometimes it was electronic, sometimes a bad coil but all were repaired, tested to the max then returned.
You might have one if these bad ones.

What kind of issues are you having, explain the behavior if you can and please list your settings.
Things can and will get better.

 

[HighVDI]

It can be chatty on some settings, on the other hand even in the most insane EMI infested sites I have found settings on my F70 to make it go from totally schizophrenic to dead calm and quiet and still find the goods.
I have tried all kinds of setting combinations...if you can think of it I have probably tried them or something close using all the settings gain, thresh, speed and disc...plus notch.
What have you tried so far?

Also I noticed on a few of these they let a few loose from the factory that had problems.
No depth, extra chatty that couldn't be calmed down...a friend with an F70 had issues in a new one too.
All of these people had to send them back but even though it was a hassle they were all glad they did because each one did have some problem that the factory fixed and they all returned working much, much better.
Sometimes it was electronic, sometimes a bad coil but all were repaired, tested to the max then returned.
You might have one if these bad ones.

What kind of issues are you having, explain the behavior if you can and please list your settings.
Things can and will get better.

Why didn't I just pm you, duh...frustrated I guess. I should take it out tonight and just upload then link a youtube vid. To be honest, it does seem like there could be an issue. I can turn DST off on my 75 and it would be quieter for sure. Thanks, John.

 

[digger27]

Why didn't I just pm you, duh...frustrated I guess. I should take it out tonight and just upload then link a youtube vid. To be honest, it does seem like there could be an issue. I can turn DST off on my 75 and it would be quieter for sure. Thanks, John.

I assume you have done a master reset already, this clears up a lot of problems on good working units especially when you do it in problem sites.
Others have complained about frustratingly insane behavior that was intense but it turned out that was operator error...with a little knowledge and setting tips and changes they got back into line nicely.
Then there were a few that did have some actual problems.
It happens, and like I said kind of a hassle but I have not read one post from any F70 or Patriot owner yet that regretted sending back the unit and the short wait for the return.
What they got back was worth the wait in spades and FTP will take care of you...I think it embarrasses them when they send out bad units and it is a point of pride to make it more than right for the owner.

These have no DST and are extremely powerful and sensitive so in certain sites they can be a handful.
I have taken mine into sites where the massive, pulsing EMI problems were more than insane, one in particular at the edge of an old park in Missouri near the street where that problem was always present every time I went near it.
The worst EMI plagued site I have ever hunted.
Despite that I found settings that still jumped some but enabled me to find tons of coins, a gold ring on one hunt and a 8-9" Indian Head cent spill on another...and this was a park that supposedly had no older coins left to find.
On another visit I turned the sense way down and I was shocked at how quiet and stable it became then used those settings to find a merc in the entrance area with not only that heavy EMI but with about 100 years of trash to deal with...and I avoided digging most of that trash to do it.

In my present area I have an old park that has been hunted for decades and in one entrance area I have mineralized soil, massive iron, tons of trash, old trolley tracks not buried very deep running up the middle, WiFi from a home on one side and a fire station on the other plus my prime hunting area is a triangle surrounded on all sides by low electric wires.
In this exact area with the worst of all these problems using many different combinations of settings both a little jumpy and dead silent I have found silver jewelry, silver rosies and merc dimes, old Jeffersions, buffs and a deep V nickel, 150+ year old flat buttons, miners tags, a silver Masonic coin, old foreign coins going back to WW1 and so much more.
Also my only seated dime right near one of those power lines.
On a good working machine there is no site or obstacle this thing can't handle or conquer, I believe, with the right settings.
I haven't found one yet, anyway.

First thing we have to do is find out if you have any technological issues that need attention.
Second we just need to find some good settings to make you successful and still have a much more easier and fun time doing it.
A million combinations of possible settings on this thing to overcome all problem sites from what I have seen.
This is a remarkable machine, DST makes things easier but sometimes overcoming problems on a bit tougher path can be more rewarding.

Things will work out, you'll see.
I will help as much as I can along with others I am sure.

 

[HighVDI]

Been swinging my tejon, and F75 to take a break and clear the mind of the patriot but I need to address the issue. That is.....if there even is an issue at all. On a good note my other machines have been finding the goods! thanks digger27. I will upload vid soon.

 

[digger27]

One thing that Fisher guys have to learn to wrap their head around us how penetrating powerful these things can be at lower settings.
On many units turning up the gain gets you deeper, or at least let's you know about deeper targets, and lowering the gain reduces depth of targets it can sense.
These are different.
The startup settings at 60 gain and -3 thresh were programmed that way for a reason, the engineers believed these would be the quietest, deepest, least noisy settings for all around hunting in most normal situations.
That being said many hunters start out with them but change.
Many I know use gain set in the 40's all the time and still get way deep.
At 30 I have found these turn into target assassins that can find things in the most trashiest sites even with bigger coils and still get surprisingly deep.

I hunt with all kinds of settings from high and maxed out to low and quiet and have found great things at all depths.
85 is a favoured gain setting for me here, with the thresh in the negative numbers.
In a site with a ton of problems I had gain at 85, -2 thresh, disc turned up pretty well which also cuts out noise and found a thin, worn V nickel at the 8-9" area in mineralized dirt using multi tones.
It was not iffy, a for sure dig me signal and this was using the small, round sniper coil.
A friend that uses an E Trac couldn't believe the depth, I couldn't believe it but we both held that 1800's coin in our hands.

Sometimes I go down to 60 or less for deeper hunting in noisier site and still have confidence I am getting plenty deep.
I didn't have that confidence in the early days, I still believed higher gain meant deeper depth, but after seeing some surprising things in the field using lower settings I got over that eventually.

There are two gain range settings on this thing, 1-29 and then 30-99...both work in slightly different programmed ways to give us the best shot at everything out there and both are not what they seem like a volume knob on a stereo, all settings are much higher than you would think even on 1.
There is like a reverse governor of sorts, there is a certain low setting they can both get to but never down to nothing on either one.
The transmit power is the same on all settings, the gain is used to let in signals from smaller or deeper targets so you can hear them...but it also makes them chatty on higher settings too which many don't like or want to deal with.
There are combinations you can use to calm all this down if quiet is what you demand....high gain-low thresh...low gain-high thresh...higher disc can help as I mentioned plus the tone choices can affect things too.
Plus we have boost.
On lower very quiet settings I have found that feature can make a difference when moving the coil slow in difficult sites.
Deeper signals firm up, more targets show up and deeper than you might think possible even at gain at 50 or way less down to single digits.

It is all a matter of finding your sweet spot, what works for you the best where you are.
And using a good machine with no problems...which you might or might not have.

Over the years this kind of chatty problem has gotten many units sold quickly and cheap but lots if those times it was the owner coming from experiences with other brands turning them up too high.
Many times.
Those same units in the hands if in the know Fisher guys seemed to work perfectly fine, quiet and with no problems because these guys knew them well, understood them and set them better to work more than well.
DST helped a lot, if this was available there would have been tons of F75's that would not have Bern dumped so early and often but we don't have that on ours so we learn to make do, controlled them in other ways and there is always a way most of us have found.

Upload the vid, tell us about your settings too.

 

[HighVDI]

Took her out again for an evening hunt. Wasn't able to shoot a vid. I turned it on and it was all wonky again and I got pretty upset then just thought about what was described here. I found that the threshold seems to be the key over sens. On EMI chatter. Also disc 1 vs 0 is huge! Simple 1 click to disc. And that cures a bunch of chatter. I lowered my thresh from 3 to -1 and at sens. 90 it was just starting to get hairy. So then I figured I'd do the sens on 30 and try isolate signals as shown by digger27. I just figured I'd try disc on 6 to knock out the nails. My first signal was a bouncy low 20's to mid 50's but sounded solid, and "round".

I dug a plug and I could see a round impression in a clump that came out of the ground....then I saw the coin down in the hole. Plucked it out and it was a toasty indian. I then did nice, easy sweeps and focused on all signals above iron. I've been hammering this site since I found my seated quarter, walker half and largie here. Looking to clean it out in hopes to unmask a few more old silver coins!

I played with a few settings and ultimately went back to the low sens. Setting. As I came back to the same area that I dug the indian I got a weaker signal that sounded good and vdi was kinda all over. I cut a plug and the pinpointer sounded off in the middle of the hole. One scoop with my sampson and out popped an older looking coin! I put it in my finds pouch and kept going as I was running out of daylight. Got another weak signal very similar to the old coin I had just dug. Same exact depth and even same looking coin. Both of these were at the 6" mark. I then loaded up my gear and headed home. Cleaned up my finds some and it ends up I got a 1905 V nickel! A buffalo nickel, and an 18 something indian. Just wanted to note that the ONLY old coins found were using the low sens. Setup. Very interesting....and thanks digger for the info. I can see how the higher gain kind of muddles signals together and seems to false some ect. It's definitely a different animal compared to my f75 but I want to learn it! I'll keep it around for a while, lol.

 

[HighVDI]

Toasty little buggers

 

[digger27]

Great saves!

Yes, the move from 1 disc to 0 is insane and intense...a huge difference, 0 kicks it into some kind of high gear that I don't use much unless have the other settings set up for quieter hunting.
Lower gain turns the large coil into a sniper, or it thinks it is, anyway.

All metal with even higher settings is way calmer than 0 disc at the same settings, but don't ask me why that is.


As I mentioned many hunt with the gain in the 30's and 40's, quietly, and still seem satisfied with surprising depth.

On those bouncy but good signals...
I always try to get the center area lengthwise of my coil over all signals and try a few short, (two inches), quick side to side passes with just the scanning field area, the very center of the coil along the middle.
This should calm those number down to a smaller and more respectable range of numbers....6-8 for me in my rough soil on the deeper ones.
Jumping from 20's to 50's is too big a spread for me, most targets that do that are junk around here.

 

[atomicscott]

Took her out again for an evening hunt. Wasn't able to shoot a vid. I turned it on and it was all wonky again and I got pretty upset then just thought about what was described here. I found that the threshold seems to be the key over sens. On EMI chatter. Also disc 1 vs 0 is huge! Simple 1 click to disc. And that cures a bunch of chatter. I lowered my thresh from 3 to -1 and at sens. 90 it was just starting to get hairy. So then I figured I'd do the sens on 30 and try isolate signals as shown by digger27. I just figured I'd try disc on 6 to knock out the nails. My first signal was a bouncy low 20's to mid 50's but sounded solid, and "round".

I dug a plug and I could see a round impression in a clump that came out of the ground....then I saw the coin down in the hole. Plucked it out and it was a toasty indian. I then did nice, easy sweeps and focused on all signals above iron. I've been hammering this site since I found my seated quarter, walker half and largie here. Looking to clean it out in hopes to unmask a few more old silver coins!

I played with a few settings and ultimately went back to the low sens. Setting. As I came back to the same area that I dug the indian I got a weaker signal that sounded good and vdi was kinda all over. I cut a plug and the pinpointer sounded off in the middle of the hole. One scoop with my sampson and out popped an older looking coin! I put it in my finds pouch and kept going as I was running out of daylight. Got another weak signal very similar to the old coin I had just dug. Same exact depth and even same looking coin. Both of these were at the 6" mark. I then loaded up my gear and headed home. Cleaned up my finds some and it ends up I got a 1905 V nickel! A buffalo nickel, and an 18 something indian. Just wanted to note that the ONLY old coins found were using the low sens. Setup. Very interesting....and thanks digger for the info. I can see how the higher gain kind of muddles signals together and seems to false some ect. It's definitely a different animal compared to my f75 but I want to learn it! I'll keep it around for a while, lol.

Wow, sounds like a very nice machine! I have a Patriot on the way to replace the Omega 8000 I just sold. Hoping to have similar luck as you, I have an old (1905) home site where I have found an IH, a few wheats and 2 old pocket watches. I found that stuff with my X-Terra 505, never had any more luck with the Omega at that site and several coils, but I am hoping the Patriot will coax some silver out of this and my other'hunted out' sites! Great job and thanks for the info. Keep us all posted. Scott

 

[atomicscott]

One thing that Fisher guys have to learn to wrap their head around us how penetrating powerful these things can be at lower settings.
On many units turning up the gain gets you deeper, or at least let's you know about deeper targets, and lowering the gain reduces depth of targets it can sense.
These are different.
The startup settings at 60 gain and -3 thresh were programmed that way for a reason, the engineers believed these would be the quietest, deepest, least noisy settings for all around hunting in most normal situations.
That being said many hunters start out with them but change.
Many I know use gain set in the 40's all the time and still get way deep.
At 30 I have found these turn into target assassins that can find things in the most trashiest sites even with bigger coils and still get surprisingly deep.

I hunt with all kinds of settings from high and maxed out to low and quiet and have found great things at all depths.
85 is a favoured gain setting for me here, with the thresh in the negative numbers.
In a site with a ton of problems I had gain at 85, -2 thresh, disc turned up pretty well which also cuts out noise and found a thin, worn V nickel at the 8-9" area in mineralized dirt using multi tones.
It was not iffy, a for sure dig me signal and this was using the small, round sniper coil.
A friend that uses an E Trac couldn't believe the depth, I couldn't believe it but we both held that 1800's coin in our hands.

Sometimes I go down to 60 or less for deeper hunting in noisier site and still have confidence I am getting plenty deep.
I didn't have that confidence in the early days, I still believed higher gain meant deeper depth, but after seeing some surprising things in the field using lower settings I got over that eventually.

There are two gain range settings on this thing, 1-29 and then 30-99...both work in slightly different programmed ways to give us the best shot at everything out there and both are not what they seem like a volume knob on a stereo, all settings are much higher than you would think even on 1.
There is like a reverse governor of sorts, there is a certain low setting they can both get to but never down to nothing on either one.
The transmit power is the same on all settings, the gain is used to let in signals from smaller or deeper targets so you can hear them...but it also makes them chatty on higher settings too which many don't like or want to deal with.
There are combinations you can use to calm all this down if quiet is what you demand....high gain-low thresh...low gain-high thresh...higher disc can help as I mentioned plus the tone choices can affect things too.
Plus we have boost.
On lower very quiet settings I have found that feature can make a difference when moving the coil slow in difficult sites.
Deeper signals firm up, more targets show up and deeper than you might think possible even at gain at 50 or way less down to single digits.

It is all a matter of finding your sweet spot, what works for you the best where you are.
And using a good machine with no problems...which you might or might not have.

Over the years this kind of chatty problem has gotten many units sold quickly and cheap but lots if those times it was the owner coming from experiences with other brands turning them up too high.
Many times.
Those same units in the hands if in the know Fisher guys seemed to work perfectly fine, quiet and with no problems because these guys knew them well, understood them and set them better to work more than well.
DST helped a lot, if this was available there would have been tons of F75's that would not have Bern dumped so early and often but we don't have that on ours so we learn to make do, controlled them in other ways and there is always a way most of us have found.

Upload the vid, tell us about your settings too.

This is great news Dave! You answered a lot of my questions already. I posted about having a Patriot on the way, hoping to find some silver and my first merc, sadly after about 7 years digging, I still haven't found a silver dime! Found a '64 Canadian quarter, mostly silver, but that was the only silver coin I have found. 30-40 wheats, but never silver, very frustrating!

 

[digger27]

This is great news Dave! You answered a lot of my questions already. I posted about having a Patriot on the way, hoping to find some silver and my first merc, sadly after about 7 years digging, I still haven't found a silver dime! Found a '64 Canadian quarter, mostly silver, but that was the only silver coin I have found. 30-40 wheats, but never silver, very frustrating!

You will find these things gravitate towards precious metals.
If it is down there they can usually see it and tell you about it.
On my very first hunt before I knew what I was doing at all I was swinging really fast, much faster than I ever did with my F2 or anything else, and I was doing that because I was nearing the end and I was looking for one last good target before I went home.
I got a nice solid dig me tone and the depth meter tells me something is 4-5" deep.
I expected a coin, instead this very small silver charm pops up instead that was every bit at that depth it predicted.



Mower smacked, tiny, fairly deep...still hit like a shallow silver dollar.
Turns out that fast sweep speed aided in recovering this thing, in most cases you get better ID's at depth using a faster sweep, too.
Slow can also work and I have been doing that for a few years here in my problematic mineralized SE. soil but lately I am whipping that coil around and that seems to be working better than I ever thought it would.

On my fourth hunt I found gold in a very trashy picnic site very near trash and went on to find much more, plus a lot of other treasure including many silver coins.

Take your time, get to know it and most settings should work well if you have good soil, learn to tweak it if you don't and you should be successful no matter where you hunt.

 

[HighVDI]

Wow, sounds like a very nice machine! I have a Patriot on the way to replace the Omega 8000 I just sold. Hoping to have similar luck as you, I have an old (1905) home site where I have found an IH, a few wheats and 2 old pocket watches. I found that stuff with my X-Terra 505, never had any more luck with the Omega at that site and several coils, but I am hoping the Patriot will coax some silver out of this and my other'hunted out' sites! Great job and thanks for the info. Keep us all posted. Scott

It isn't a bad machine at all. I feel something was off with the one I had and it was just unusable over a moderate sens./gain setting. It's not that it didn't find objects, it just didn't turn out to be the machine I had anticipated. It was chatter filled even in the middle of nowhere while in farm fields. This was ultimately what I wanted it for. A deep seeking, crank it up full bore and hunt for foot deep coins but I'll just stick with my DST equipped F75 and Tesoro Tejon.

I hope you let us know how you get on with it. It can definitely unmask targets.