Thanks again Digger27!

[atomicscott]

Hi everybody! Went back to the old home site I hunted yesterday using some of Dave's (Digger27) tips. Turned sens down to 15, threshold on 4, 4 tones, de speed. Put flags out and hit the same 2 30x30 ft areas I hit yesterday. Right away, found a dime at 3" I missed (1974). Then found 1968 copper penny at about 7". Got a solid dime signal and dug the small washer at 6". Found the Shirley President suspender buckle from before 1930 at about 4". All good repeatable signals. I had a bouncy nickel foil ID but tone was decent, buried the handle on Lesche and finally pulled out a smashed aluminum pepsi bottle cap. At least 12" deep! I was shocked how deep and hard hitting these objects were with sens on 15! Nothing spectacular, found but gives me hope that some old coins are lurking there and the Patriot will find them! May try my NEL Sharpshooter from Omega, I have read that it will work just fine. Thanks again Dave!

 

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[Hsimmons75]

Nice job! I prefer to hit sites multiple times using different settings and coils. It seems like once you get started, the finds get fewer but better. At the end of the summer I was starting with the Hunter coil to cherry pick. Then I'd come back with the Sharpshooter and go slow. This is when I had my most finds. Then I'd go in the opposite direction with the Sharpshooter and dig anything that had good tones. One more time with the Hunter coil at higher settings and I'd be satisfied I got all I could. Some of my sites were small yards, so is get two steps in a day.

 

[digger27]

Hi everybody! Went back to the old home site I hunted yesterday using some of Dave's (Digger27) tips. Turned sens down to 15, threshold on 4, 4 tones, de speed. Put flags out and hit the same 2 30x30 ft areas I hit yesterday. Right away, found a dime at 3" I missed (1974). Then found 1968 copper penny at about 7". Got a solid dime signal and dug the small washer at 6". Found the Shirley President suspender buckle from before 1930 at about 4". All good repeatable signals. I had a bouncy nickel foil ID but tone was decent, buried the handle on Lesche and finally pulled out a smashed aluminum pepsi bottle cap. At least 12" deep! I was shocked how deep and hard hitting these objects were with sens on 15! Nothing spectacular, found but gives me hope that some old coins are lurking there and the Patriot will find them! May try my NEL Sharpshooter from Omega, I have read that it will work just fine. Thanks again Dave!

Glad I could help!

That is just stunning depth with the gain set so low, you must have some pretty good dirt there.
Did you get the feeling you were hunting with a sniper coil using these settings?
I always do when I lower that sense to below 40 using that big coil...a pretty eye opening or even shocking experience when it happens, isn't it?

Again I always used to chuckle in the past reading posts from owners that knocked the three units built on this platform forever after they bought and then dumped them quick.
In almost every case they took these already overpowered machines and insisted on turning them up too high and over-driving them until they were a chattering, unintelligible mess thinking that was the only way to get the greatest depth.
Like someone buying a Corvette and switching to competition mode to drive to the store for a loaf of bread then complaining it was just too powerful and hard to handle.
Logical thinking...it goes a long way to make sense in all kinds of things we experience in life I have found.

Now you are starting to understand the relationship a little more between the sense and thresh controls.
The ability to control the thresh in disc is one of the prime reasons I love to use this thing so much and that ability might not matter in some sites but it can have advantages in many other sites and conditions I discovered.

I found that using such high thresh does skew the tone when using multi tones and it is not a big deal but when using those options I prefer the thresh at -2 or lower because it just sounds better to me but that is just a personal preference.
Using these same settings you might want to try switching the tones to Dp sometime and see how you like it, (the fastest reaction time in DP because is the only one actually tied directly to what you see on the screen), and them maybe try 1 monotone next which is a favorite of mine hunting here in my iron infested dirt.
Monotone especially, not 1F or 2F, seems to have some of the best unmasking abilities I have experienced so far when you are hunting in heavy trash or iron infested sites.
You can set the disc anywhere you want but Tom Dankowski recommends going to 6 for high performance.

http://www.dankowskidetectors.com/discussions/read.php?2,2251

Here he mentions that 0-4 disc is just too much for most to deal with in most iron infested sites but after a lot of practice I got pretty good at it.
http://www.dankowskidetectors.com/discussions/read.php?2,5982

I use disc 6 sometimes but I usually go down to 1 and even 0 when I can and if you learn to do that you would not believe how complete of a picture of all that is happening below you that you will get when you listen and watch the screen doing it this way.
It takes a bit of practice to remember to watch that screen and to get good at processing what you are listening to and seeing on the screen because there is a ton of information coming at you and it comes fast but if you like doing this and you get good at it that is a skill that will serve you well even if you switch to other tone choices and settings.
I was hunting with a friend that used an E Trac once and let him listen to the monotone and he watched the screen as I swung around a small area.
He couldn't make sense of any of it and couldn't believe I could either but he knows I could because I hunted behind him and I kept finding targets he missed in that mineralized iron infested site we were hunting.
I told him it just took a lot of practice to understand it all.

Or, just stick to the settings you are using if you like them because they seem to be working for you.
That's the beauty of this thing, so many totally different settings you can use that all seem to work so well.



Great hunt...you are rocking!

 

[atomicscott]

Glad I could help!

That is just stunning depth with the gain set so low, you must have some pretty good dirt there.
Did you get the feeling you were hunting with a sniper coil using these settings?
I always do when I lower that sense to below 40 using that big coil...a pretty eye opening or even shocking experience when it happens, isn't it?

Again I always used to chuckle in the past reading posts from owners that knocked the three units built on this platform forever after they bought and then dumped them quick.
In almost every case they took these already overpowered machines and insisted on turning them up too high and over-driving them until they were a chattering, unintelligible mess thinking that was the only way to get the greatest depth.
Like someone buying a Corvette and switching to competition mode to drive to the store for a loaf of bread then complaining it was just too powerful and hard to handle.
Logical thinking...it goes a long way to make sense in all kinds of things we experience in life I have found.

Now you are starting to understand the relationship a little more between the sense and thresh controls.
The ability to control the thresh in disc is one of the prime reasons I love to use this thing so much and that ability might not matter in some sites but it can have advantages in many other sites and conditions I discovered.

I found that using such high thresh does skew the tone when using multi tones and it is not a big deal but when using those options I prefer the thresh at -2 or lower because it just sounds better to me but that is just a personal preference.
Using these same settings you might want to try switching the tones to Dp sometime and see how you like it, (the fastest reaction time in DP because is the only one actually tied directly to what you see on the screen), and them maybe try 1 monotone next which is a favorite of mine hunting here in my iron infested dirt.
Monotone especially, not 1F or 2F, seems to have some of the best unmasking abilities I have experienced so far when you are hunting in heavy trash or iron infested sites.
You can set the disc anywhere you want but Tom Dankowski recommends going to 6 for high performance.

COMPILATION #1

Here he mentions that 0-4 disc is just too much for most to deal with in most iron infested sites but after a lot of practice I got pretty good at it.
Tom - Disc 6 and the F75 LTD

I use disc 6 sometimes but I usually go down to 1 and even 0 when I can and if you learn to do that you would not believe how complete of a picture of all that is happening below you that you will get when you listen and watch the screen doing it this way.
It takes a bit of practice to remember to watch that screen and to get good at processing what you are listening to and seeing on the screen because there is a ton of information coming at you and it comes fast but if you like doing this and you get good at it that is a skill that will serve you well even if you switch to other tone choices and settings.
I was hunting with a friend that used an E Trac once and let him listen to the monotone and he watched the screen as I swung around a small area.
He couldn't make sense of any of it and couldn't believe I could either but he knows I could because I hunted behind him and I kept finding targets he missed in that mineralized iron infested site we were hunting.
I told him it just took a lot of practice to understand it all.

Or, just stick to the settings you are using if you like them because they seem to be working for you.
That's the beauty of this thing, so many totally different settings you can use that all seem to work so well.



Great hunt...you are rocking!

Thanks Dave. Yes, it did seem to make the big coil feel smaller and more precise! I was thinking about trying DP next time, I used to use the 19 tones option on my X-Terra and it helped me once I got a feel for it, as you said it was more 'tied in' to the numbers. I have been running disc on 1, I do get a bit of ear fatigue after awhile, but i always ran zero disc on my other machines (except Vaquero and Compadre), I always feel I will mask good targets along with the iron, but that's probably not the case with the Patriot/F70. I will try disc at 6 and see how I fare, that will really help calm things down in all the iron at this site. I was very impressed with the depth on the sens setting of 15! After watching the vid you attached of sens set on 1, and the 8" nickel, I figure 15 would be enough to try the concept. The Corvette analogy is spot on. Why would we need a sensitivity control, if there was no reason to turn it down, it could just be fixed at max? I could not believe I found a coin sized target at 12-13"! ! Granted, it was a just flattened aluminum pepsi bottle cap, but it proved the concept and made me a believer! I have never dug a coin sized object at those depths with any of my previous detectors! My F2 found quite a few dimes and quarters at 9-10 inches, albeit in moist ground at a relatively new school, but still impressive for a $200 machine. Thanks again for the tips, I really appreciate you sharing your many hours of experience. Scott

 

[digger27]

In better soil out west one of the first deep targets I dug with mine was a target that was a solid hit that came in high at dime numbers on every swing and I believe I was using the 10" elliptical concentric coil.
The depth numbers said 10" and I rarely dig that deep in parks but that one I did.
At 10" deep there was a target, it was just a beaver tail tab but I was thrilled there was something at that level to recover at all for all that effort.
That is something good to know BTW, for some reason tabs will change into dime signals when they are that deep on the units built on this platform but don't ask me why.

You mentioned mental fatigue listening to a million signals at very low disc.
This is another big reason I use monotone.
Fatigue is a big problem for me too especially using multi tones in these settings but I found using monotone it is nonexistent.
With a little time spent doing it more and more on every hunt I guess I just got used to it and now I can hunt for many hours with no issues at all.
It's the up and down bouncing around that made me tired, listening to just one even tone is way different for me...and better.

DP took some practice to get used to also but lately that is all I have been using and I don't seem to get anywhere near as tired out as when I use multi tones but I don't know why because it doesn't make all that much sense that it wouldn't.
Could be because when you get down to the nickel area and below the tone is more like a bit higher iron buzz than those sharper higher normal tones which I think is what makes us tired.
Whatever...try them all, some pick one tone and stay with it, others use a couple and me I use them all or I spent hours using all of them trying to understand each one plus all metal just in case I needed to pull them out for one site or another.