Park hunter detector

I use to hunt parks and schools but after reading all the info on crown caps and such I wonder if it is really worth the effort? Speaking with Cal the Etrac seems to give info on how to pass up crown caps...but it is too heavy for me. The light weight detectors seem to have a problems. I don't think you can get away from pulltabs on any machine? So what do you park/school hunters do to avoid so much trash?

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!

Low Boy,
You have the G2 if I am correct. Most crown caps will have a jumpy VDI it is a little time consuming but if you pin point and then check with the front or back edge of you coil it will give a very accurate iron reading and low grunt. some times you have to back off two or three inches to get a accurate Id but it works. The only Crown caps I dig any more are the ones that hit in the quarter range steady and I do not take the time to double check them thinking I have a quarter. Since starting to hunt this way I might come home with two or three crown caps but hands full of pull tabs as Im out for lost gold jewelry and dig everything in the 40 to 70 range as well as the higher range.
Dave J has a sticky on the finds forum under The Gb G2 forum that discusses this.
Hope this helps.

I have tried the tricks and they don't seem to help much the G2 on gold range 45-58 you dig a lot of junk but I have been lucky to find three gold diamond rings in three weeks the odds were on my side it is the parks and schools that are full of crown caps that take the fun out of detecting. Relics are always fun just dig it all.

LowBoy

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

[www.youtube.com]

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!

I like using the 10" concentric coil on the F 75 and Omega when crown caps are a problem.

That's one target I seldom dig with the CZ-3D.

Cal why you like the other coil on crown caps...

LowBoy

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

[www.youtube.com]

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!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/26/2011 12:21AM by Lawrenzo.

Best unit I ever used to eliminate/ID crown caps is my Baron Millenium CoinTrax II. I use that machine in parks and in the dry sand on beaches and hardly ever dig a cap, yet can dig quarters, nickels, silver and gold jewelry.

The discrimination level to eliminate them is pretty low on the CT II, so I still can get the gold, and the caps that are not discriminated out totally sound broken or clippy. The audio on that unit is awesome. Gold, nickels, pull tabs, foil, clad, and silver sound crisp and sharp.

Problem is, the darn stock configuration is brutal, so I ended up mounting the control box on a Whites shaft, under the cuff, so I can't see the LED lights for visual ID.

Never the less, hunting with that unit long enough, you begin to understand the audio and it tells a lot . Not sure if the lighter models like the SST have the same results on crown caps though.

I was told that DD coils always have a harder time ID'ing caps and that they sound good using these coils. I do know I have a problem with caps when using my Gold Bug SE, and that has a DD coil. Lots of em ID and sound just like a quarter.

If the etrac was too heavy, then I would get a Swingy thingy. Harness.... They are just too good to not use one. I have two parks here and with other detectors I found plenty of stuff, $261 clad, rings, some silver. But when I got the Etrac
it was like hunting the parks for the first time. Only the coins were older and deeper.

Tom in SC

Lawrenzo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Crosby why you like the other coil on crown
> caps...


It just seems to ID them better, both with the tone and VDI #s. You give up some depth and the target seperation you get with the big DD.

Lowboy, been thinking about you , how are you doing?

Tom in SC

I have finished my last chemo in a month I get my bone marrow checked to see if I am in remission then we try a maintence drug every three months and see how long we can fight it..I have a lot of detecting to do so I have to go into remission and I have a lot of videos to make and I am waiting to see what Fisher and Tek come out with...So I am going to get through and keep fighting

LowBoy

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

[www.youtube.com]

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!

There are certain aluminum screwcaps that 'conductively' ID exactly in the 'coin' range...............on ANY detector. . . and there is nothing that can be done (at this technoligical point in time) to eliminate them.

It seems the aluminum wine bottle screw tops are especially hard to tell the difference between coins.

By crown caps are we talking steel pressed bottle caps or screw on aluminum caps. If the latter then void my first post because I was thinking the steel ones. If were talking steel ones then give the method a try I think you will be surprised. You can not disc them out but sure can id them. Maybe I will make a video when the weather clears nothing but rain for days.

LowBoy.....I hope you get to see 1000 new generations of detectors. Keep up the fight and I look forward to all your forthcoming videos.

I have to disagree with the theory of a Etrac finding older coins...... Again I had the opportunity to follow behind a Etrac at a hunt a few months back... My CZ-3D picked up the targets he got and some even sounded better on my machine... the only thing is his machine was S.........L........O........W! Try a Fisher CZ-3D you may see what your missing. : )

Lawrenzo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have finished my last chemo in a month I get my
> bone marrow checked to see if I am in remission
> then we try a maintenance drug every three months
> and see how long we can fight it..I have a lot of
> detecting to do so I have to go into remission and
> I have a lot of videos to make and I am waiting to
> see what Fisher and Tek come out with...So I am
> going to get through and keep fighting



Good luck LowBoy, I wish you all the best!

Don't know you lowboy, but, enjoy your posts and comments. Also just want to wish you the best Cancer struck close to home, so, I have empathy for you. Keep up the good fight & most importantly, don't stop swinging

Tom...excellent point on stating some caps will be a bugger no matter what.

What I was trying to state on my post about the CTII was that it was the best I have used for eliminating MOST caps. It still hits some caps just like quarters too !

I have found that the CTII on the rusty ones is by far the best unit I have used in eliminating them or ID'ing them via the audio and sweep speed. I can't vouch too much for a CZ since I don't use them in the dry sand much and where I land hunt with them, there aren't many caps.

Here are some bottlecap tips from various posters. Anyone's names I missed on their posting, my apologies:

The F75 will show 'quarter' on a quarter............and 'quarter' on a steel bottlecap.....but the "Conf" bar-graph will indicate very low.
NASA Tom

DD Coil Bottlecaps
The beer caps may drive you a little nuts until you figure them out. Drag the coil toe or heel lengthwise over the target and if it's a bottlecap it will generally give you an iron tone.
Jimbog

Steel Bottlecaps F-75

With my F-75 I just look at the Fe3O4 graph as I continue to sweep over the target whenever I have a high coin reading.
If the graph shoots up, it's a bottle cap. If it remains where it was, it's not. Most of the bottle caps (real old) and highly corroded gave sort of a squawk with the high tone but I dug a few anyway. Once the ground was disturbed, the F-75 would not detect the cap.
SoCal Bob

With bottlecaps, on my F75, the FeO4 iron meter will spike way up when multiple sweeps are done.
Tommy

Steel Bottlecaps
The T2 responding to steel bottle caps like high coins is really the only wart the T2 has. Yes....there are a couple of unsightly moles but this is the only wart. Really been bothering me but I hadn't time to do anything about it between work, chores and church activities.
But tonight I sat down and started air testing. Those of you that know me know that I really get into my air testing nerd. I went through the tub I keep all the junk in that I keep just for testing purposes and found a steel bottle cap and started testing. I left the disc setting at the preset level of 10, raised the sensitivity to 80. I had taped the bottle cap onto the two foot wooden ruler I use just for air testing to make sure I can replicate sweep speeds and began sweeping the cap over the coil. I oriented the bottle cap both right side up and up side down. In every mode the cap would read in the zinc range with bounces up into the dime or higher range, or if I stayed close enough to the coil to stay within the large signal range, it would stay up in the dime range.
I tried various sweep speeds, edge pass sweeps etc. with out any repeatable success. Then I tried bobbing the cap over the coil. That made a significant change. While sweeping can cause the cap to read as anywhere from zinc to high coin, bobbing move the id down into the nickel and tab range. Whats this? Both right side up and upside down, bobbing the bottlecap reduced the reading down into the tab and nickel range.
Well....put the cap on the floor and bobbed the coil over the cap with the same results. Is this significant or is this normal? So I took a dime. Sweeping the dime accross the coil gives a 82 reading. Bobbing the coil over the dime resulted in different readings depending upon the distance from the coil. Within close to medium proximity to the coil, the dime stayed in the 80s. Decreasing the signal strength with distance resulted in the id dropping down to 79-78-77 readings. The dime dropped a max of 5 numbers. Bobbing the coil over the bottlecap resulted in readings down into the mid 50s to mid 60s. Consistently. The cap dropped a max of 25 numbers.All audio modes worked the same. The secret to identifying steel bottle caps is to simply take a moment to center the coil and bob the coil a time or two over the target and see how far the number drops. If it stays in the zinc range or higher...its a coin. If it drops down into the tab range, its a steel bottle cap. Do you have to do this on every high coin signal? No way... just when you are hunting in a steel bottle cap infested area.

another user states 'Many times a badly corroded bottlecap will null-out when you go to pin point'.

Aluminum screwcaps will always look like a good coin to a detector. Steel bottlecaps are a different story...... especially with a DD configuration coil. Try manually dropping your Grnd Bal 10 to 30 points BELOW where the unit will actually Grnd Bal. I remember Itasca/Chicago Grnd Bal was around 45 to 62. If this is the case for you...... drop your Grnd Bal down to around 32..... and see if this gives you better resolution with these steel bottlecaps. Try this before investing in a new coil.
NASA Tom

Your understanding of:"bottlecap will give a different tone vs. a high coin even if the ID numbers are the same" is not correct.The tones are based upon the numbers so it is still possible for a bottle cap and a dime to share the same tone, but since the bottle caps are typically more jumpy, especially as the coil is raised a bit higher, the thought is, they will be easier to ID by the tone bounces in the DP mode.
Mike Hillis

The T2 wont lie to you I dug many of the “dodgy” signals and found winners and yes some large pieces of iron because the electric conductivity is higher. But when the signal bounces, meaning movement between high and low signals never giving the same reading twice on the meter then it is iron or rubbish. Dig a few convince yourself.
Silvermann



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/26/2011 08:51PM by TerraDigger.

Lawrenzo,
Go for the GUSTO !!.........Get an E Trac and enjoy yourself !!...... crown caps disapear !!.....They are a non issue ...

Here is a link .....Scroll down and you will see the Swingy Thingy .....They work GREAT !!....It takes all the stress of the machine off of you ......The geometry of the E Trac is not that bad ...especially with the Swingy Thingy .....


[www.docsdetecting.com]

while hitting both low and high conductors with ease.I have dug quite a few old rusted caps but only because they were in same 6" or smaller plug with old coins.No need to learn any tricks,quirks or voodoo rituals to totaly ignore them and does so with a top notch DD coil.
Oh and the E-Trac is not very slow when I use it.No need to move at a snails pace at all.A lot of the old time Explorer hunters have promoted this snail pace myth towards the E-Trac.
I do not swing it quite as fast as my F75 but consider it every bit as fast as the CZ-3D with vastly better IDing and discriminating abilities than either of the afore mentioned machines.
The E-Trac is a tad on the heavy side but much better ballanced than the CZ3D.And as mentioned ,if weight is a factor the swingy thingy bungee harness allows you to swing easily with two fingers and thumb if you wish.
For trashy,older city parks the E-Trac is the absolute go to machine for me and I have used many top line machines over the last 35 years and was a Fisher "die hard" for a great many of those years.

So I guess I will have to be a voodoo practitioner.
Although my first choice would have been to find a patron saint of electro-magnetic emanations.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/27/2011 02:07AM by TerraDigger.

synthnut Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Lawrenzo,
> Go for the GUSTO !!.........Get an E Trac and
> enjoy yourself !!...... crown caps disapear
> !!.....They are a non issue ...
>
> Here is a link .....Scroll down and you will see
> the Swingy Thingy .....They work GREAT !!....It
> takes all the stress of the machine off of you
> ......The geometry of the E Trac is not that bad
> ...especially with the Swingy Thingy .....
>
>
> [www.docsdetecting.com]

I have to disagree here. I have a Etrac and found several different crowncaps/screwcaps that sound off very well.

((( Me too )))

I have Doc's Swingy Thingy....it works............but I find it to be uncomfortable......and gets in the way.........kinda like wearing a chest mounted leash for a dog.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/27/2011 02:52AM by TerraDigger.

Ha ha---Yeah it is kinda like that!----That's a pretty good description! grin------I got one for my Etrac & use it sometimes when I'm using the 10X12 SEF coil.----Using one of those vehicle seat belt pads on the shoulder strap helps from discomfort.----I still don't like being strapped up like a dog on a leash though!!!!-------Del



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/27/2011 03:35AM by D&P-OR.

ruff ruff..................

I guess I'm just an ole dog then ......I would rather have a little inconvienience than have an aching back and end up cutting my hunt short because of back pain ...... Its the lesser of 2 evils for me ..... I have enough back problems with my muscular ( FAT ) stomach being in the way, that for me the Swingy Thingy is a God send !!... .....I don't need more back pain ....I don't leave home without it .....

SS and Tom,
If you guys spend a little more time with the E Trac , and zero in on the Crown Caps numbers , you can notch them right out of the equation .....There is ONE gold colored Wine screw cap that has me fooled ......and that is only because it comes in as a high tone coin and it is DEEEP when I am digging it ....I have dug a few at over 8" deep .... THESE are the only caps that fool me with my E Trac and I have EVERY CONCIEVEABLE type of cap , pull tab , iron , aluminum , trash that has ever been on Gods green earth in these NYC parks !!!..... Crown caps are the easiest to scrim out !!...... You can do it right in place !!....Check the manual ......You won't know the numbers until you hit them in the area's that you hunt .....This is another feature that I LOVE on my E Trac ....I have programs all set up for Parks , Beaches, Schools , etc .....I already know the numbers of the problematic targets ......If they don't interfere with GOOD Targets , I notch out a little square at a time in the matrix ...... Everything is ready to go ....I load my program do my Noise Cancel , and I'm off to the races .....You guys can run wide open , and you will be missing targets with the E Trac ....You can't run it like the old Explorers ....It's a different machine !!......You're only hurting yourself running too far open ..... I haven't got time for the noise !!..... The way my machine is set up , I can tell you what I'm going to be digging and do so with pretty good accuracy ..... Jim

I know this is not a popular option on this site, but what follows is true.

The Garrett GTI series is very effective IDing the aluminum screw caps...The imaging reports them as "C" size...coins are "B" size ("A" size for dimes on edge or half dimes), so if you're coin shooting, you never have to dig those targets. Also, I have never dug a steel bottle cap with mine. Imaging is not a gimmick...it actually works very well.

The GTI's are actually good coin hunters...they may lack the depth of other machines, but they report a lot of good information. Unfortunately, they are quite heavy, which is why I use the Tek Omega on long hunts. The GTI is not a machine for use in nail or iron infested sites...although that may have changed a bit, since they have now added a 11" DD to the line up (non-imaging coil), same design as the stock coil on the AT Pro...they may have breathed a bit of new life into the series. Given what has been written about the AT Pro, the next Garrett high end offering (if and when it comes) should be interesting.

Of course, a new high end coin shooter from First Texas would also be very interesting. An Omega/F5 with boost process and better EMI handling would be a very good place to start.

HH, Eric (NH)