Re: Ric's post 2002,if you want to see the screen I will have to Email it. Art
My thoughts on Explorer patterns....The Explorer can really set some tight patterns to cherry pick wanted targets from unwanted ones. But, it can make you miss some finds you might want. I use Iron mask -10. This screen I made up is where quite a few of my silver dimes have hit (top middle left side). The far left crosshair I dug a barber dime that locked solid there, but screamed silver and had a beautiful sound. When I dug the dime and rechecked the hole, it was a solid null, so there had to be iron in the hole with it. A tight pattern would miss a target like that. These that hit to the left of where a dime would normally hit come from highly mineralized soils or places that have a lot of iron trash. Also some coins on edge will bounce around on the screen and not lock in to one particular spot like you would think they should. It is targets like these that the audio is your best friend.
My suggestion is that if you want to use a tight pattern in discrimination mode, that you have your iron mask set to -10 or lower(-11,-12,-13,>) and then when you get a target that won't lock on in your pattern, but does hit good once in a while, you can switch to iron mask to investigate that target. Then you can switch back to your pattern screen. There are alot of neat tricks you can do with an Explorer that will give you multiple ways of helping you tell if a target is one you want to dig or not.
Ric (IL) posted on the Coinist's Metal Detecting Forum Jan 24, 2002