Tactics you employ with an Eagle Spectrum.

[Coinstriking Michigan]

Hey all, been using a Whites Eagle Spectrum for about a month now. I have found more old coins with it than any detector I ever had..and I've had many. I notice a lot of times I'll get 90's signals that when I dig them I never find anything. Just curious what you guys have learned about different kinds of signals on the SPectrum. I've learned that wheat pennies sometimes bounce down into the zinc range. I've learned that silver dimes can bounce from 70ish to 90ish when they're a little deeper. I like to run in the jewelry/beach mode then bump up the Ac Sens to about 72 and the Preamp gain to about 4. VCO on...that's the only adjustments I usually make. How do you guys run yours.

Jason Bernard

 

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[Oldhunter67]

Hey Jason,
Alot of the times when you dig, the coin might be at an angle and on either side of the hole..try holding your loop at the sides of the hole..When you dig do you find any iron colored soil in the hole..might be a totally rusted out iron piece your detector reacted to and you have broken the halo by digging it. One other reason could be that you should move your coil away from the hole and retune your dectector then go back over the hole. Anyway a really good book on the spectrum you might want to buy, from Whites, is Vincent C. Pascucci's "Metal Detecting Previously Hunted Sites". Its an excellent book and he uses the Whites Spectrum himself. You will learn alot about your detector. Good Luck..Keep digging!! Oh and by the way..get yourself a pinpointer..Garrett makes an excellent one and it will cut your search time looking in the dirt in half.

 

[Coinstriking Michigan]

Actually, I notice this happens the most when the sand is black mixed with a bright orange colored sand/dirt. I think I will see if I can get a copy of that book. Thanks for responding

 

[Coinstriking Michigan]

One thing I have noticed lately is I am starting to rely to much on the VDI numbers. I use to dig a lot of tokens and such with other machines. I have to start digging numbers other than coin numbers.

 

[scaupus]

When it comes to the eagle spectrum, i feel i may have something worthwhile to contribute.

That "90's" signal is White's way of telling you that it cannot decipher a signal - see the manual: http://media.whiteselectronics.com/manuals/Eagle Manuals/Eagle spectrum instruction manual.pdf

Studying the manual was an important step for me in getting to know the eagle spectrum a lot better.

The pre-programs are limited. Try the one I posted in this thread: In need for programs for eagle spectrum
I'd say it is very much enhanced beyond what you get with the pre-programs. And if you are digging signals other than coins, you may find it particularly helpful. (The ring you see as my avatar, is a collectible nickel and brass ring I sold for over $250; it read as screw-cap/zinc). I should add that in a test on a buried quarter, it responded much deeper than the standard coin program.

Btw, speeding up your swing can pick up deep signals better. Conversely, it seems to me that slowing down helps pick up small shallow signals, those little low tones that might be sterling studs, or very fine anklet chains, etc. These can read like 5" deep foil, for instance, but are really only an inch or two. With a fast swing, I think maybe they might not register (tho changing the recovery rate could help that), or maybe it's me that's not registering, in either case, I miss them when swinging fast. To get everything that the eagle is capable of getting I sometimes go over an area once fast, once slow, depending on what I am hunting for. If I'm in an area where there may be deep old targets, and also good shallow targets, that's what I do. But if I'm in a post 60's park in an area that is filled-in Everglades, then I know the deep signals are almost always trash in the fill, and I just swing at a normal rate of speed looking for more recent, shallower drops.

 

[Coinstriking Michigan]

Thank you Scaupus, I appreciate the info.

 

[Coinstriking Michigan]

I can't figure out how do the disc edit at all....not very user friendly or maybe I'm just dumb.

 

[kayden]

He had a garret pinpointer...ask him he threw it away...lol said it was junk....In another note what do you guys do when it rains?sit in the car?

 

[Coinstriking Michigan]

He had a garret pinpointer...ask him he threw it away...lol said it was junk....In another note what do you guys do when it rains?sit in the car?

I sure did throw it away after smashing it on a tree. What about when it rains??

 

[Coinstriking Michigan]

Your haul of coins this year must be vast using the Ace 250!

 

[scaupus]

did u get the disc edit yet? I just use the block edit. it says something like accept or reject when you hit enter, so set it to accept, then go up or down and all the numbers that appear on the screen will be accepted. Switch to reject, and then go up or down, and all the numbers that appear will be rejected. Just do that - accept or reject for the whole scale. I usually set it to reject only below -40. You will miss reads when you set it to discriminate anything much higher than that. I don't know exactly where or how many signals you lose, but I found when i set it high enough to discriminate out everything below coins, I missed good signals. I think, if I remember right, that even rejecting everything below foil, say around 8, made me miss signals I wanted to dig. I went over the same ground with it set at -40 and then picked up good signals I had missed earlier.

I see you have a ton of sophisticated detectors now, so u probably don't need this info anymore.