CZ-7a Quicksilver air tests

[gibsondan]

The ground is frozen solid here in Ohio. I just got this Fisher CZ-7a Quicksilver this week and can't take it out until the weather permits. So I decided to do some air tests with coins. Here are the results:

Penny - 7 to 8 inches
Nickel - 7 to 8 inches
Dime - 6 to 7 inches
Quarter - 8 to 9 inches
Half Dollar - 9 to 10 inches

Don't know how much soil conditions will affect those numbers.

By the way, does anybody know when Fisher made CZ-7's? I'm trying to figure out how old this detector is.

 

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[SaginawIan]

The CZ's are very nice. I'm sure your detector does better than that. What settings did you have it on? Are you talking loud repeatable? Headphones? I'm pretty sure that thing will hit 10.5" on a dime in an air test. Check it out again and play with the settings. Good luck - people seem to hang on the those CZ's.

Ian

 

[Sky Pilot]

Gibsondan, Ian is correct in what he said, I'm sure once you have a chance to ground balance the CZ, and get in some dirt, you'll hear that familiar, faint, zzziiiippp-zzziiippp of a nearly 11" dime!! I bought a CZ-7, the first version, as soon as any came to TN. As best as I remember, this was in winter of 1997. They only made the CZ-7 for a very short while, (the designer was forced to release it before it was finished to his liking), and was quickly replaced with the CZ-7a. Hope this helps!! Great hunting and good luck!!! Regards, Richard.

 

[gibsondan]

You guys are right. The air tests were done indoors and the detector was not ground balanced. Those numbers are not accurate.

I will be primarily hunting for coins after Ohio thaws. This detector has notch discrimination. You can notch out iron, round pulltabs, square pulltabs and foil. I'm thinking of just notching out iron and listening to the tones. Is that a good idea?

One more question...how high should I set the sensitivity?

 

[SaginawIan]

With the CZ's the sensitivity can't be set that high - even though it's tempting to crank it up! If I remember right, 4 was about as high as I needed to go to get the best depth on a coin.

The tone thing is great if you can get used to it - I've never been a tone ID guy, but that's just me - others love it. You will get great depth with that low discrimination.

Ian

 

[Lowbatts]

Hey Richard,
Got mine in September, '97 almost as soon as they came out also. First find, a nice looking '23 buff at 8 inches even. Signal was loud abd clear and I was on my way home from picking it up.

It found barbers/seated and others for me at the the following depth:
quarters to 12" clearly repeatable for some
dimes to 10" exception, not rule, I had some trouble getting most dimes past 8" w/o auto tune
nickels to 10" similar to dimes but fainter at depth
wheaties to 11" exception moreso than rule but there were a few clearly repeatable

Haven't owner or used a CZ-7A Dan but if it works as the CZ-7 then dig all clear foil signals deeper than 4", if you want to get the buffs left by others as well the occasional gold item.

Hey Ian, on those occasions where I found the deepest good targets, I had sense to 8 or 10. The coil would not find those targets at sense 4.

Remember that iron that sounds off high coin can often be determined with PP. PP most often will not center at the same point under the coil where the iron target sounds off as high coin. Be sure to check in auto and PP with such signals to be sure you don't have a good target close to the junk!

 

[gibsondan]

Ohio got hit with more snow today. After work I got out the CZ-7a and did another air test - this time in the factory preset mode with the ground balance on 5 instead of 10. Sensitivity is preset at 4. I was happier with the depth readings. These numbers represent solid repeatable signals. I still got intermittent signals at about an inch deeper:

Penny - 8 inches
Nickel - 8 inches
Dime - 8 inches
Quarter - 9 inches
Half Dollar - 10 inches
Eisenhower Dollar - 11 inches

By merely increasing the sensitivity to 6 I got better depth:

Penny - 10 inches
Nickel - 10 inches
Dime - 9.5 inches
Quarter - 11 inches
Half Dollar - 12 inches
Eisenhower Dollar - 13.5 inches

If I notched out everything (iron, pulltabs, foil) but coins I still got about the same solid, repeatable signals at those improved depths. Iron was ignored or gave the bell tone if it was a large piece of iron (jar lid). I still got high tones (coin signals) on wadded aluminum foil which registered as a nickel. Didn't have any pulltabs so I don't know what kind of grief they will give me yet. When I take this baby out for the first time, I'm going to ground balance it and hunt with the sensitivity on 6. I did crank the sensitivity up to 10 and found the numbers were about the same. Here's something weird. With the sensitivity on 8 I got better depth than on 10! I sure don't understand that. Here are the numbers:

Penny - 10.5 inches
Nickel - 11 inches
Dime - 10 inches
Quarter - 11 inches
Half Dollar - 12.5 inches
Eisenhower Dollar - 14 inches

Again, these are solid, repeatable signals. I got intermittent signals at about a half inch to an inch deeper. I'm happy with the depth...but these are only air tests. These tests were done without headphones. Got to get out and hunt for some real world experience.

 

[gibsondan]

Remember that iron that sounds off high coin can often be determined with PP. PP most often will not center at the same point under the coil where the iron target sounds off as high coin. Be sure to check in auto and PP with such signals to be sure you don't have a good target close to the junk!

That's a great tip, Lowbatts.

 

[gibsondan]

I have the standard 8" spider coil. About how much more depth would I get with a 10 1/2" coil?

 

[ParkHunter61]

Doing air tests inside your house could be the
reason you didn't get more depth with more sens.
The more you turn up disc the less depth you get..
That's a good machine.
HH
Bill.

 

[Sky Pilot]

Gibsondan, Glad we could help!!! Those are really great machines, but as stated, are verry picky one some settings! Lowbatts! Great to hear from you! Sorry I haven't replied sooner, I had to disassemble my computer for maintenance, and have had a lot going down. That's cool, you and I received our CZ's almost exactly at the same time!! Yes, indeed, I still have mine, and all the other upgraded models, and love them all! If there is a coin present, the CZ will find it, for sure!! Great hunting and good luck all!! Regards, Richard. P.S, Great tips all!!

 

[Lowbatts]

Thanks Rich, must be in a Skypilot vortex or something. You got the CZ-7 when I got mine, your 'puter had issues also! I just fired up a replacement HP P4 as my main box went busto. First the CD goes bad, then the NIC, then the display. Gotta figure CMOS is pukin' or the motherboard but turns out the CPU went bad.

Well it was old anyhow. But better still I dropped the HD while breaking it down and killed it and there goes about a million e-mails and pics. Gotta find my backups one of these days. Never do backups on the same drive you need to restore... Got a couple other oldies here like my old NT machine but I like keeping that dedicated to the lab bench.

But back to Giibsondan, yes, the 10.5" coil actually scrubs another couple inches of solid performance for me. In clean environments, you really notice the difference between clear signals and iffy signals when you're checking out the deeper coins. Never got to liking the hockey puck, that tendency to overload and the misidentification problems I had with mine kept getting it put back in the trunk. It really liked to call every target foil for some reason.

 

[Sky Pilot]

Lowbatts, That is too much! I agree, we're caught in the dreaded skypilot vortex!! LOL!! Sorry to hear your CPU bit the dust! That really stinks! I pulled mine down to replace the heat sink compound and added another blower fan, but the difference it made was negligible. I brought a new m9552p Pavilion the other day, figured I'd give this one to my oldest son. The new one should really get it, as it has a quad duo Pentium set with 8 gigs of RAM, and a 750 MB hard drive. It's the new "Elite" series, with the TV tuner and wireless card, radio receiver and remote and all. We'll see!! Great to hear from you "batts! Gibsondan, I've had the same experience as Lowbatts, as far as coil sizes go!! Great hunting and good luck all!! Regards, Richard.

 

[marky1016]

I got my first detector last year it is a CZ7a..bought it from a friend...I love it..I run mine at 4 to 6 sens..with iron foil and pull tabs notched seems to work the best for me..Second time out with it I found a 1829 LC couldnt beleive my eyes..Deepest coin found was a merc at 9"...Great machine you will enjoy it..

 

[RLOH]

Your CZ will find dimes and pennies at 8 plus inches once you get the hang of it. That 7a is a deep detector. I only notched iron . Try the sens at 6, but you might have to lower it to 4. Use a slow to moderately slow sweep. The eight inch coil is plenty deep. The 10.5 is very heavy, or at least it was for me. Learn to get a good ground balance as it is crucial for the extreme depths these detectors are capable of. Good luck and keep us posted. R.L.

 

[TXDIRTFISHER]

I bought mine new in the late 90's but I don't remember exactly when. I set my SENS at 8 most of the time. I've got some coins buried pretty deep in my test bed and my CZ-7 finds them better than my DFX! So...I sold my DFX!

 

[LX Kid]

Did the CZ-7a have a speaker or headphones only? I know the CZ-7a Pro had a speaker & headphones. Thanks

 

[Sky Pilot]

LX, The CZ-7a had both, also! That, and the fact that the memory was volatile, well, it would not drain the batteries in order to hold preset programs, as the CZ-7 would, are the major differences. Regards, Richard