Living on the edge…… of detection

[Jeff H]

It’s been said many times before; deep nonferrous targets at the edge of a detector’s range can sound like iron. I was reminded of that bit of wisdom this weekend. Hiked out to one of my old colonial era sites. I’ve pounded this site to death and haven’t found any large non-ferrous targets in a couple of years. But it is just a nice secluded site to spend a few hours of relaxed detecting. My plan was to hunt for deep small buttons and maybe a coin on edge if very lucky. I had the X35 11” and the 9” HF coils with me. Started with the 11” coil. Set the frequency to 25 kHz, Disc at -6, Sense 95, Reactivity 1, TX 3. Eventually went to Reactivity = 2 when I "thought" I was in a bit of iron. The plan was to go deep and small. Wasn’t long before I got an iffy signal mix of iron and possible mid conductor tone. Dug it and pulled out a small deep pewter fragment. Rescanned the hole, nothing, not even the iron tones. Sure enough, that target was at the edge of detection and the Deus could only “guess” with little certainty what the TID really was.

The same thing happened three more times in the next hour. I got very mixed signals of mostly iron and some mid conductor tones on three deep small cuff buttons. When I rescanned the holes, no iron tones at all. The fact that I was hunting with a Disc of -6 and no iron volume control, really amplified the iron tone I am assuming. What was really informative was on one the the signals, I switched to a program that had a Disc of 8 and I got NO signal. It wasn't the exact same program as the one I was running but suspect if I had jacked up the Disc to 8 in the same program, that I would have not got a mid tone that would have made me dig. I'll definitely do that next time.

I’d like to say that I eventually sniffed out a half disme but that was not the case. But I was satisfied pulling a few more early buttons from a very worn out site.

 

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[ANTIQUARIAN]

Thanks very much for posting your experience detecting with this modified program Jeff.
I've been debating about buying the X35 13’’x11’’ Coil and whether the I'd actually get any more depth from it.

I currently use the 9 & 11" coil with #2 GM Power Program, I then set the discrim. @0, the sensitivity @93 and the frequency @12kz.
I primarily hunt old settlement sites and the amount of iron I have to listen through can be overwhelming at times.

Hope you're having a good year so far, the black flies are just coming out here in Ontario.
Dave

 

[pepperj]

It’s been said many times before; deep nonferrous targets at the edge of a detector’s range can sound like iron. I was reminded of that bit of wisdom this weekend. Hiked out to one of my old colonial era sites. I’ve pounded this site to death and haven’t found any large non-ferrous targets in a couple of years. But it is just a nice secluded site to spend a few hours of relaxed detecting. My plan was to hunt for deep small buttons and maybe a coin on edge if very lucky. I had the X35 11” and the 9” HF coils with me. Started with the 11” coil. Set the frequency to 25 kHz, Disc at -6, Sense 95, Reactivity 1, TX 3. Eventually went to Reactivity = 2 when I "thought" I was in a bit of iron. The plan was to go deep and small. Wasn’t long before I got an iffy signal mix of iron and possible mid conductor tone. Dug it and pulled out a small deep pewter fragment. Rescanned the hole, nothing, not even the iron tones. Sure enough, that target was at the edge of detection and the Deus could only “guess” with little certainty what the TID really was.

The same thing happened three more times in the next hour. I got very mixed signals of mostly iron and some mid conductor tones on three deep small cuff buttons. When I rescanned the holes, no iron tones at all. The fact that I was hunting with a Disc of -6 and no iron volume control, really amplified the iron tone I am assuming. What was really informative was on one the the signals, I switched to a program that had a Disc of 8 and I got NO signal. It wasn't the exact same program as the one I was running but suspect if I had jacked up the Disc to 8 in the same program, that I would have not got a mid tone that would have made me dig. I'll definitely do that next time.

I’d like to say that I eventually sniffed out a half disme but that was not the case. But I was satisfied pulling a few more early buttons from a very worn out site.

9" HF elliptical
-6.4 disc
96 sensitivity (chatter/noisy)
74 kHz
Deus fast

I have done the same iron site now for many years, gone over it multiple times with the Minelabs, and the with the Deus 11" and with 9" HF coils.
The one strip 100' x 25' is a challenge for the Morris code sounding of iron.(much wider site-but this where I challenge the abilities of pulling out a target)
I got to the point where I could go through the strip and maybe pull 1 item out of the iron.

Now running the new program I have gone over 1/2 of the strip and pulled:

3 buttons, 1/2" D buckle, a flattened lead musket ball, a 3/8" piece of a pewter button, and 20 misc pieces of brass/copper/lead finds.

After an hour I have to take a walk about as the amount of sounds/digging is a tad much.

Granted I'm digging more iffy which brings more sq.nails and many of them hooked bent.
I have only hunted 3-4 short hunts in this program, yet I can pull 6 nails/wire out of a hole and one small non-ferrous target I'm thinking it's working.

When I get a half day out I will try to change up the disc/freq. on a target to see if it will notch it out, or still hit it.
For years I stopped at 0 Disc. always scared to venture below.
Though it seems that the freq. setting will alter the # on the display.

 

[Jeff H]

Thanks very much for posting your experience detecting with this modified program Jeff.
I've been debating about buying the X35 13’’x11’’ Coil and whether the I'd actually get any more depth from it.

I currently use the 9 & 11" coil with #2 GM Power Program, I then set the discrim. @0, the sensitivity @93 and the frequency @12kz.
I primarily hunt old settlement sites and the amount of iron I have to listen through can be overwhelming at times.

Hope you're having a good year so far, the black flies are just coming out here in Ontario.
Dave

Hi Dave,

Those black flies are starting to show their annoying selves around here too. Hopefully it is a short season for them. From everything I have read, the 11X13 will give you a little bit of extra depth, and it will certainly give you extra coverage, which is OK in clean ground. But at busy sites you can have just too many targets under the coil at once. So I have shied away from that big coil for that reason.

I often use settings similar to yours. One thing the Deus has shown me Dave is that no one approach will get you all the targets at any given site. You really need to hit it using no Disc, some Disc, low frequencies, high frequencies, low R, high R, etc. That is one of the reasons I love the Deus. It is easily tweakable to sniff out those challenging targets.

Keep those finds coming!

Jeff

 

[relicmeister]

Interesting discussion, I hope it will help me recover some deep finds alsi

 

[signal_line]

GOLD FIELD program goes way deep but deep iron will be detected. While this video is not a Deus it has he same Gold FIeld program mius a couple fetures. But this is a great tuning video.