How Do You Run Your Ground Balance? - or + ...

Hi Guy's just getting a grip on my v3i.

This is a question in general for anyone running a manual ground balance machine.

With my v3i I will have this in auto tracking but can adjust this to minus or positive.

How do you run your ground balance? A digit or 2 in the minus or positive range?

Is there any benefit one way or the other?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank You

A ground bal. is a mineral DISCRIMINATOR..

the more + you go to over come the mineral the more depth masking takes place...


If you have Higher Fe3o4 numbers and you ground bal to the positive you run a risk of masking a target in the soil...yet at times it takes a positve gorund bal to quiten the ground noise down ...if this is happening I try to run the snes back befroe I go higher than neccesary on the Ground bal...

to gain some depth in the mineral a negative ground bal can do wonders.. how low? 10 points is possible at times. with the right coils....

A DD coil helps run negative ground bal alot ....

now if you dont have mineral or low mineral you can set your ground bal dead on if you like or even plus or minus to achieve greater results on conductivity..


take your machine and a nickle and a dime run your ground bal low like 60 and test the nickle then run it up[ top like 90 and test it then dot he saem on the dime...watch the deppth change by setting and the conductanceof the target...


but if you have mineral and surely if you have alot of mineral try not to go positve..try a little negative if you can and you will see better depth in the dirt as you will be accpeting some of the dirt instead of rejecting it....if you have a filter option run it low in bad dirt and it will alsop help see through...


now some machines just wont settle down with a DD coil or not and even with a dead on ground bal in mineral..you actually have to run positve a little to quiten it down in disc mode....

Jsut becasue you have a correct ground bal on a machine in all metal mode dos not mean its right on in disc mode at time either...

I actually prefer to balance a machine in disc mode in my dirt...

How to do that is set it in all metal to get it about right then go to disc mode and start going negative till some noise creeps in to the detector as you bop the coil then back up a bit to silence it and it will be able to report deeper targets in bad soil..(Which I have)...now this will render your pinpoint about useless though as it will see the gorund as a target in pinpoint....so keep that in mind...I never use pinpoint anyway so no biggie...

Keith

As always Keith thank you.

Your always a great help.

I think your sitting on a Money Tree though with the amount of books and dvd's you can produce with your wealth of knowledge.

Thanks Again

The v3i really relies on accurate GB for good ID and stable operation. Right on or +1 to +3 with tracking is a good way to go or do manual. If you run it off set - you'll have to lower your sensitivity and up the gain or use tx boost to make up the depth otherwise it will be very erratic/chattery similar to negating EMI.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/11/2014 07:15PM by detectingMO.

As usual got some excellent advice....Personally if you have a new unit run it dead on until you get the feel...So much depends on the ground in your neck of your woods and the unit in question as what works with one unit might not with another make or model. Indeed Keith is a wealth of knowledge along with many forum members who are also and willing to share it...

Excellent advice by all. Thank you for taking the time out to reply to my question.

A wealth of knowledge is always discovered on this forum.