Discrimination vs. Notching

[Dave Rishar]

I find the Deus a very frustrating machine, one that likes coke very much it also has the same trates as the Xp gmp...coil to headphones lapse, and target loss.

I just caught this; my apologies.

Can you explain this further? I haven't observed any detectable lapse during air testing and pinpointing has been no problem at all, so I wouldn't expect it to be an issue in the ground either. In the interests of full disclosure, I rarely use any of the Deus's pinpointing features and often don't even "X" the target, but merely "wiggle off" after I've determined that it's not on edge and throwing a weird signal. This of course requires GB in manual or pumping; in tracking, it quickly does funny things, probably due to seeing too much of the target. I like the concept of tracking but it doesn't work well with my style of detecting, as if the signal isn't a repeatable "gimmee," I'll quickly hit it from a few different angles to evaluate its size and composition and then wiggle off as previously described to pinpoint.

 

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[U.K. Brian]

There's not many that cherry pick in Europe as anything/any metal can still be worth digging. See if you can borrow a Whites TDI. By adjusting ground balance and delay much ferrous can be ignored and foil ceases to mask surrounding good targets that VLF's are blinded by. Thats what I'll be doing this week on a Roman site that was covered with modern rubbish years ago.

 

[Dave Rishar]

There's not many that cherry pick in Europe as anything/any metal can still be worth digging. See if you can borrow a Whites TDI. By adjusting ground balance and delay much ferrous can be ignored and foil ceases to mask surrounding good targets that VLF's are blinded by. Thats what I'll be doing this week on a Roman site that was covered with modern rubbish years ago.

I've been researching this for the past few days and it's very interesting stuff. I know nothing about PI detectors, so this is good stuff to know. I may even buy one at some point in the future. I can see one being a good investment around here, even on turf. I have one site that will drive an E-Trac down to 10 or less on sensitivity in auto, and a Propointer will chirp continuously on the soil, the soil is so ferrous...and there may be deep targets. A good PI machine may be just the thing that's needed here.

As for hobbyists though, I think that one could do far worse than a Deus. Having run the "Big Notch" program a bit, I don't think that it's costing me much (if any) depth. As I've hit some areas that I'd worked earlier with the E-Trac, it would only be fair to check the Deus areas with the E-Trac to see what I'd missed with that, so I will do this sometime in the next few weeks/months. I suspect that the E-Trac is far more hampered by the soil around here than some (or even most) believe that it is, but we'll know for sure when I check my areas again. What's really struck me as different between the E-Trac and the Deus (besides the weight, and the balance, and the resistance to rain, and the convenience, and the fast reaction, and the upgradeable software, and the intuitive menu, and all the other stuff really) is that it handles ferrous soil uncommonly well, and our red dirt is just nasty in that regard.

It may have been that a PI was the best choice in the first place. However, I've got a lot money into my VLFs, there's a lot of trash in the ground, and I'm just not ready to learn yet a new set of skills when I haven't mastered my current machines. But you've got me thinking.

With regards to cherry picking, I do it as much as I can in parks. Even the old parks around here are probably not harboring large amounts of great targets, but I like to work in them with a new detector because it's nearly a worst case scenario - bad soil, lots of trash, curious people stopping by, unleashed dogs growling and barking, etc. If I can have a good hunt in a local park, I can have a great hunt anlywhere else. This is what gets me ready for the permission sites where I truly want to just cherry pick.

There will be nothing older than about 1850 around here, and that would be quite uncommon. There is little around here older than about 1890. I'm not looking for that, as it's either been graded off, buried under fill, or somebody got it back in the eighties and nineties. In public places, I'm only hunting clad from the last thirty years and jewelry that's been lost in the last twenty, as anything older would have been dug already by people with the older machines that couldn't ignore trash signals.

It's hard hunting, but I don't mind. It's still fun, and I'd like to think that working in these conditions is forcing me to improve my skills at a fairly fast rate. Guys like me are happy to find a wheatie; imagine my joy at finding gold!

Keep the info coming, Brian. I'm always happy to see more information.