What is the % of targets being masked?

I have a class...a few students that want to learn the G2 and I wonder if they will take to it like I did. And I wonder if they will understand that metal deteciting is not easy. It is not easy finding history and using a machine that talks to you. I know when you start out you get a tone and you dig and you may get lucky or not...but now there is the science behind what the tones are telling you. And after years of detecting we still get fooled but it is those little masked targets with iron that you have to really think about and know what your machine is trying to tell you...So I thought I would talk about masking and how many targets are in the ground being hid by masking and I forgot what Tom said the % is?

LowBoy

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If you don’t dig it, then how are you going to know what you’re missing!
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It would be safe to say from lot's of sifting that in an iron littered area the non-ferrous objects have just been scratched.....maybe 10% has been removed with detector's? I would bet there's at least 90% of the non-ferrous targets being masked....

say 10 nails for every good target...All targets wont be keeper's but they will be non-ferrous...


I adhere to the belief that there is more in the ground right now than has ever been found..Bad dirt mask target's and iron and trash mask target's.....put them all together and you might be down to less than 5% of the non-ferrous targets being found in a particular site....

I know Charles Garret believes that only 5% of valuable lost item's have been recovered..Of course he is trying to sell detector's ...But in reality it is true.....

Keith

Of course I agree with Keith.
Remember the fellow that was testing a detector with a nail I think
4" above a coin.
That is a simple scenario, then think of the many other situations
we are all likely to encounter with multiple nails in close with non-ferrous items.
We are fortunate to have the technology we presently have yet more advancements
need to be discovered to deal with these nail rich areas.

While this is easy to speculate by virtue of a somewhat educated guess, it's virtually impossible to know for sure. It would be very site specific also.

"Well over 90% of the items (total averaging)
we seek to find, still remain in the
ground. There are many reasons, but the
two primary reasons are due to masking/
target separation failure and inaccessible
depths." - Unmasking Beginnings, Fisher Intelligence 5th Ed.

Home-page articles:

Beneath The Mask
The Painful Truth

Extensive aggregate/comprehensive testing............presents a "greater-than 95%" of targets are masked (or too deep).

This is the "WHY"......it is paramount for Mfr's to focus on this problem/phenomenon. ANY type of unmasking capability ...... is a leap in technoligical advancement.

Just to satisfy my curiosity. Do you have any ideas/theory's for better unmasking that could realistically be incorporated in current detectors. Things that mfg's could be using but are not.......or existing tech that should be developed further but isn't.

Yes, albeit expensive...............a paradigm shift away from electromagnetic-principle operating detectors .......(highly subject to ferromagnetic masking)..... that operate on a magnetic-core Earth.

And it could be expensive in more ways than the obvious. One should wonder if they would break away from electro-magnetic principles/methods, would it potentially represent the veritable semi-final nails in the coffin of the hobby? In other words, would there then be a new and another level of objects of interest and enough of them to keep at least a critical mass of hobbyists opening their wallets for a substantial period of time? I don't know that answer but it would concern me. Besides jewelry, clad/modern coins, and meteorites, most everything else of interest we search for here in the U.S. has been a finite resource from day one.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/01/2011 04:23PM by BuckeyeBrad.

Not another finite resource!!!! Did Garrett get it right with their "Green" machines? ROFL

Sorry.... couldn't resist!

Thanks Tom: I reread your artical! Wow I thought I had dug everything...hahaha. Well back to the I thought were hunted out sights...Well if we have the big one and the earth moves enough maybe some of the iron will move out of the way...

LowBoy

TAKE A LITTLE TIME KICKBACK AND WATCH SOME OF MY DETECTING VIDEO'S BELOW ON YouTube

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If you don’t dig it, then how are you going to know what you’re missing!
How can you have your pudding if you don’t eat your meat!

TerraDigger Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Just to satisfy my curiosity. Do you have any
> ideas/theory's for better unmasking that could
> realistically be incorporated in current
> detectors. Things that mfg's could be using but
> are not.......or existing tech that should be
> developed further but isn't.

ummm, yes....but not sure if it can be expanded upon.
Those old 100 KHZ TRs can beat any modern motion detector but they have
no ground balnance and no ID or discrimination for large iron or junk non-ferrous.
Since they have no GB their depth is not very good at all. maybe 2 or 3" realistically.
They don't seem to be bothered by what the angle of sweep is like DDs on modern units.
I have one but rarely use it because mineral content here seems too high for
it to be effective.
They must have a natural built in discrimination of nails as they tend to lower
the threshold. (Audio is strictly rise/fall of threshold)
Talk about fast effective unmasking response, they have that.
They are very insensitive to say a dime and seem to get better
depth the larger the target.
It will hit nickels fairly hard.
Too bad one of the modern engineers hasn't taken one apart to see if any of this old
technology could be incorporated into a super unmasking machine.
If they could update it and give some more depth, add disc control and GB,
it would make us trashpickers very happy.
Don't think it will happen though since it may be considered a niche market.
Or the case may be that it cannot be incorporated with the above features.

NASA-Tom Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yes, albeit expensive...............a paradigm
> shift away from electromagnetic-principle
> operating detectors .......(highly subject to
> ferromagnetic masking)..... that operate on a
> magnetic-core Earth.



So what is left?? Radar, sonar, some kind of light or laser technology?? How does a fish finder go down 100 ft and our detectors can't go 2 feet?

if you guys knew what was below your coil, lets say 2 feet down, it would take all the fun out of detecting, am I right or wrong??

Just this weekend, I was standing next to a friend who thought he was digging a crushed soda can because a target read like a clad dime in one spot but either side it tapered off to a low tone. He recovered a clad dime, pull tab, and then two silver quarters 6" below. They were being masked by what appeared to be shallow junk. Iron isn't the only culprit

Steve(MS)......you spit truth!

The mfg's better warm up to us "trashpickers" as that is really what a majority of detecting areas are turning into with the massive influx of aluminum based litter in the last 25 years.....and then the usual other junk. I love your idea of trying to modernize/expand the TR capabilities.

I follow the theory that most of the older coins I find are masked by junk. I purposely take the "latest and greatest" detectors on the market to the junkiest places I know. I prefer a very slow sweep detector and I hunt with little disc. Since I use tone id detectors, I don't pay much attention to the screen. I have hit places where I find my oldest coins with every new detector at different angles and I still pull out old coins. I would say 19 out 20 old coins I find are masked. I am a firm believer that the "dd " coils and their narrow hot spot will almost always outperform a concentric coil in trashy sites. I recently bought an AT Pro and I have several areas that are highly littered with rusty iron nails. Last year I gridded a 40 foot by 100 foot area with what I thought was the best detector made for this type of trash, the Etrac. I found 5 barbers, 10 indians, and many wheat pennies by hitting it from three angles or more. The Etrac was in an almost constant null because of the rusty nails every 6 inches or so. I watched the many videos of the AT Pro and it's iron handiling ability and these were the first two places I took the AT. In three hunts, I have found 13 indian head pennies(two 1864's and one 1865), one barber dime, 12 wheats, and 2 V nickles from this exact same spot. EVERY single coin had a rusty nail in the same plug. I don't think there are too many more coins left within the depth range of any detector made up to this date, but it does prove that some detectors are capable of finding coins next to junk. I have read many reports of the G2 having the same ability, but I can't confirm their abilities. I can confirm the AT Pro's ability to operate in rusty iron. I have never been more impressed with any detector period! I know this is a bold statement, but what and where I am finding coins is nothing short of amazing. I believe the clean ground has been cleared of 99% of the old coins. I could not put a % of what is left that is being hidden by junk, but I do know one concrete fact. I find 99% of my old coins in trash infested areas. R.L.

Have you worked with a standard T2 using this technique?........which I have also used for many years like others have (3 angle grid plots). If you have, would love to know coils used and how the T2 compared.

TerraDigger, I had the original T2 when it first came out, but did not use it at any of the places I have hunted with the Etrac and AT Pro. I should have been more specific about the kind of junk the AT Pro handles best. In my opinion, it does not handle aluminum slaw, folded tabs, and beaver tails nearly as well as it does with iron. With that said, the place where I am having my greatest success is the 160 year old county fairgrounds. Since I have been hunting this place, I have used 5 detectors with moderate success. In rough order, starting from worst to best they are: CZ70, DFX, Coinstrike, Etrac, and AT Pro. The small area I gridded and hunted was not truely discovered until I used the Etrac. One day, I was hunting through this area when I hit a Indian, with same exact numbers as a zinc. That woke me up and I made thorough passes going the long way of the rectangle. I found two barbers and four more Indians that day. I went back several days later and used the Etrac with the 11 inch pro coil, but ran my passes at 90 degree angles. That day I found three Indians and two V nickels, but no silver. The last day with my experiment was using a 4.5x7 excelerator coil on the Etrac. This area has water stand pipes every 40 feet or so and the ground is void of any vegitation around them. I did not find any old coins except for two Indians and a bunch of wheat pennies that were real close to the pipes. Weird thing, the Indians were less than 1 inch deep. I would venture to guess they were up rooted when the water pipes were dug. When I left that area with the Etrac I truely believed that it was close to hunted out, but I know the old saying well. Over the winter while researching the old fairgrounds, I found that the original wooden bleachers for the race track stood directly over this little honey hole. I believe the staggering number of rusty nails are from these bleachers. Enter the AT Pro. The first time out, I hunted my way to this spot from my car which is about a hundred yards. Again this is by no means virgin territory. I found a couple of deep wheats along with the now desirable "iron grunt" I knew then and there this was a special detector. The first pass was long way, exactly the same direction I started out with the Etrac. I am going by memory so my facts might not be 100%, but I do know I found two Indians in the first two passes and they were both 1864's. Every single signal I dug in the first three times I hunted this small area had a rusty nail within two or three inches. The second hunt with the AT provided me with my most memorable and impressive display of the AT. I was hunting at a 90 degree angle and it was the first or second pass when I got a quick high blip. The AT has a 40 segment iron disc capability and I run mine at 30 which knocks almost all of the iron signals out. When I get a good signal like this quick, repeatable blib, which I knew was deep, I turn on the iron audio. If there is iron present, it will give an iron "grunt". I quickly figured out that if there was still a good tone mixed in with this "grunt" when I walked around the target, it means something good was about to happen. The first thing out of the hole on this particular signal was a folded up rusty nail. I pulled one more rusty nail out of the hole and using my pinpointer I carefully scooped out the lose dirt with my hand. 1900 barber dime from about 8 inches or so. Rechecked with pinpointer and got another rusty nail, but in the same handfull was an Indian. The places I hunt are regularly cleaned of most recent clad coins so I am not finding much newer stuff. My old coins are out numbering the clad. Sorry for the ramble, but as you can see, I really like this detector. I have no doubt the T2 would have done well here. It is strange how my hunting styles are changing. Three or four years ago, I would purposely avoid these trash hole spots, but since I have slowed down and taken my time in these spots, I am finding my oldest coins ever. To be honest, I could have found these same coins with just about any of the previous detectors I mentioned. But, the AT amazed me at how easy it found them. I think it might be the easiest high performing detector I have ever used and I have used them all.

Good write-up RLOH! Thanks for taking the time.

Yes, RLOH. GREAT write-up. I'd LOVE to see what would happen, in an apples-to-apples comparison, using a G2/Gold Bug Pro.

Steve

RL = I validate your write-up(s). Very exacting.

Yes, the more nails.......(usually) the more coins and good targets. It is MOST common practice....to avoid these 'nail-pit'.......'nail-infested' sites. DON'T!

Your order-of-detectors..........you can see a common theme. The concentric coil equipped detectors are last.......and the tighter the DD coil.....the more it will lead-the-pack.

Now...........try a F75 LTD/SE with a 5" DD coil in these 'beaten' sites.

You (most probably) have only recovered (at best) ..... 10% of the coins.

Tom said:

"Yes, the more nails.......(usually) the more coins and good targets. It is MOST common practice....to avoid these 'nail-pit'.......'nail-infested' sites. DON'T!
Now...........try a F75 LTD/SE with a 5" DD coil in these 'beaten' sites."

I have just the place, and have found lots of old silver and relics there...not that deep either. Theres just lots of iron, nails, bent, square and straight. All I need is some good weather and I'm out there.

Like the others......thanks for taking the time to answer my question and for providing a excellent write-up. Plus you gave alot of good info on the AT which I had asked other users for, in a earlier posting of mine.

Now if Fisher only made a decent small coil to match the sensitive electronics within the AT-Pro.

??? Fisher make coil for Garrett?????

Oops! Garrett