How to hunt deeper finds with the ETrac?

[cambria09]

Hello All. I have been hunting a site that is pretty trash free and have come upon an area that holds older deeper finds. I got an ETrac for Christmas and have put in many hours in the default preset "Coin Mode".

This method has been working well but now that I in an area with deeper signals I am afraid that I missing targets.

What settings should I use to go deeper? Turn up the sensitivity? Use my headphones?

LMK if you have any ETrac tips for this site. Thanks and HHTA.

C9

 

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[cudamark]

Definitely use the headphones. A lot will depend on your soil conditions but you want to run it as hot as you can without falsing. Try using an all metal mode and dig some of the borderline signals to see what turns up. I've had some older coins that have been in mineralized ground read in the junk range.....not way in it but just enough to be disco'd out of some coin programs.

 

[OldNBroken]

Larger coil??

 

[Jason in Enid]

One, if you aren't using headphones you are missing targets, plain and simple.
Two, If you are comfortable with the operation of the detector, get out from the stock program. Open that FE line down to 25, all the way across.
Three, get out of auto sensitivity and pump the manual sens as high as you can go and still be "basically" stable. You want it on the edge. A little falsing is OK.
Four, try using TTF setting from G4E.

 

[Bart@Big Boys Hobbies]

One, if you aren't using headphones you are missing targets, plain and simple.
Two, If you are comfortable with the operation of the detector, get out from the stock program. Open that FE line down to 25, all the way across.
Three, get out of auto sensitivity and pump the manual sens as high as you can go and still be "basically" stable. You want it on the edge. A little falsing is OK.
Four, try using TTF setting from G4E.

AWESOME post but he forgot to tell you to go SLOWWWWWW. Sens is a good place to start but less discrimination and SLOWWWW will help more than anything!

 

[liftloop]

See you have to look at it this way
any rise in a balance threshold while
being moved slowly other than being ground
need to be investigated
you go no faster than what your threshold alouds



liftloop

 

[Jason in Enid]

See you have to look at it this way
any rise in a balance threshold while
being moved slowly other than being ground
need to be investigated
you go no faster than what your threshold alouds



liftloop

That's not how the E-Trac operates. You either have a signal or your don't. At the extreme limits of depth, the response is very jumpy and erratic but you still have a signal. There is no "rise in threshold" with this.

 

[Jackalope]

Yep, Jason about covered it. To increase depth use Manual sens as high as it can go without falsing/chattering excessively. Rid the screen of as much unneeded DISC as you can - the sensitivity to targets decreases as you add DISC which will effectively loose depth. Use headphones. Go slow. Expect deep target signals to be pulled toward higher iron values. The penny at 12-44 near the surface will be 27-44 at 6-7" in magnetite laden soil or decayed iron-ridden soil. It is also more likely to be masked by iron flakes above it and near it, the deeper the target. Which means you have to go slow and circle around to try and get an angle that gives at least a one-way repeatable audio. The TID becomes less reliable as targets get deeper so concentrate on the audio. Which is why two-tone anything will be fine for all but the deepest targets but for the deepest you need 4-tone or Multi, which allows you to hear the variations in audio that two-tone wont. Lastly, you'll need to be patient and expect to dig deep holes that reveal iron junk instead of non-ferrous coins. The ratio of junk to good is going to rise exponentially the deeper your targets get, especially at the fringe depth. Its more work to dig deep and get nothing - so be patient. The oldest coins are more likely to be deep if the soil is subject to liquefaction (rain water filtering) or years of overburden padding that buries them out of reach of other detectors. Lastly, it is likely that you are going to have to remove the nearer surface falsing iron junk in a gridded area first before anything deep will reveal itself. The shallower targets are going to overpower that feint deep coin so they must be removed first. Did I mention it is a lot of work to intentionally seek out those deep targets? Even if you don't, probability has it you will occasionally dig a deep target even if you didn't intend to and it will be an old coin, happens all the time. But it takes more effort to go looking for them.

 

[Jason in Enid]

Boy Jackalope, you don't post often, but you make one heck of a post when you do!

 

[halfstep]

Yep, Jason about covered it. To increase depth use Manual sens as high as it can go without falsing/chattering excessively. Rid the screen of as much unneeded DISC as you can - the sensitivity to targets decreases as you add DISC which will effectively loose depth. Use headphones. Go slow. Expect deep target signals to be pulled toward higher iron values. The penny at 12-44 near the surface will be 27-44 at 6-7" in magnetite laden soil or decayed iron-ridden soil. It is also more likely to be masked by iron flakes above it and near it, the deeper the target. Which means you have to go slow and circle around to try and get an angle that gives at least a one-way repeatable audio. The TID becomes less reliable as targets get deeper so concentrate on the audio. Which is why two-tone anything will be fine for all but the deepest targets but for the deepest you need 4-tone or Multi, which allows you to hear the variations in audio that two-tone wont. Lastly, you'll need to be patient and expect to dig deep holes that reveal iron junk instead of non-ferrous coins. The ratio of junk to good is going to rise exponentially the deeper your targets get, especially at the fringe depth. Its more work to dig deep and get nothing - so be patient. The oldest coins are more likely to be deep if the soil is subject to liquefaction (rain water filtering) or years of overburden padding that buries them out of reach of other detectors. Lastly, it is likely that you are going to have to remove the nearer surface falsing iron junk in a gridded area first before anything deep will reveal itself. The shallower targets are going to overpower that feint deep coin so they must be removed first. Did I mention it is a lot of work to intentionally seek out those deep targets? Even if you don't, probability has it you will occasionally dig a deep target even if you didn't intend to and it will be an old coin, happens all the time. But it takes more effort to go looking for them.

Did you learn all that by watching diggers?

That's good info and will help those who want to get the most out of their etrac detectors.

 

[Jackalope]

Did you learn all that by watching diggers?

Nope. But by digging, digging, and digging.

 

[dougofpa]

Now these types of posts are the ones I enjoy on T-NET...AWESOME Info. guys

These types of threads are what it's all about.

 

[cosmic]

There is one thing i disagree with.. Discrimination does not affect the depth of the Etrac.. The soil minerals do that.. Deeper the signal the more the readings a askewed from the ground matrix......

 

[Jason in Enid]

There is one thing i disagree with.. Discrimination does not affect the depth of the Etrac.. The soil minerals do that.. Deeper the signal the more the readings a askewed from the ground matrix......

It "kind of" does. I have gotten some very choppy, crappy signals that when I switched to a fully open screen it suddenly got much cleaner and stable.

 

[Longhair]

It "kind of" does. I have gotten some very choppy, crappy signals that when I switched to a fully open screen it suddenly got much cleaner and stable.

I personally think that it has more to do with whether or not a target IDs squarely in a bin segment or not.

 

[Jason in Enid]

I personally think that it has more to do with whether or not a target IDs squarely in a bin segment or not.

No it's not. It's something I have ZERO explanation for. With my normal rejection pattern, I have the reject line straight across the 25 line. It's a mostly open screen. I have had some targets that a re very choppy in their response. IT will only slightly jump above the rejection line, just like you get from rusty iron. But when you put it into quickmask with a full open screen, it suddenly becomes a very solid coin signal with FE numbers in teens. I've been detecting for 30+ years and swinging the E-Trac for almost 5 so I know I'm not making some kind of mistake in what I'm doing.

From my personal experience described above, using discrimation on an E-Trac CAN negatively impact SOME conductive targets.

 

[Longhair]

I'm not questioning your ability or observations Jason, nor am I claiming any sort of mistake. I'm just trying to hypothisize possible reasons for the behavior. I've seen it before in other machines, working both directions, where one machine clarifies targets switching from All Metal to Disc mode with zero discrimination, and where switching from Disc mode to All metal clears up iffy signals. On machines that have more digital circuitry, values are assigned to generate tones and IDs, and when a target crosses the assignment bin's parameters things can get a little strange, particularly if one of the bins is disc'd out.

 

[Sailorman]

I've been running an Etrac for about 2 years so while I'm no expert I'm hunting with it two days a week seeking deeper stuff. I'm with Jason on disc sometimes losing deeper targets. My soil is pretty mild and if I use more then very minimal disc with my sens cranked high I start losing stuff at about a foot. Even with minimal disc when I get a possible fringe target I switch to open screen to get a little better "feel" for whether it's one to dig or not.

 

[LuckyThirteen08]

Ive researched the e trac an a trillion diff threads about it,This is a decent thread for us interested in going down the minelab path but in all seriousness,In your guys opinion,Is the e trac better than the f 75 limited or the Teknetics T 2 Special Edition for the extra 400 or so bucks?? Well , not neccesarily better but does it have something the other two do not that could justify the price difference?


HH John
(not trying to hi jack a thread,Im interested in the e trac and this seems to be the place to get honest opinions from the e trac owners)

 

[Jason in Enid]

Ive researched the e trac an a trillion diff threads about it,This is a decent thread for us interested in going down the minelab path but in all seriousness,In your guys opinion,Is the e trac better than the f 75 limited or the Teknetics T 2 Special Edition for the extra 400 or so bucks?? Well , not neccesarily better but does it have something the other two do not that could justify the price difference?


HH John
(not trying to hi jack a thread,Im interested in the e trac and this seems to be the place to get honest opinions from the e trac owners)

Better? I have never used the others you listed so I can't comment on how they compare to each other. I will tell you from MY personal experience, and witnessed experiences of other E-Trac owners, the E-Trac WILL boost your silver take. It is simply a silver killer. I find more per month than I used to find in a year with my White's 6000 ProSL. I have a local buddy who had found zero silvers with his previous detector, and is competing with me for silver totals since he bought an E-Trac. I had read accounts of many others on this very forum with the same experiences.