4 hour relic hunt using Equinox Firmware 2.0 Iron Bias F2 the Good and the Bad

Let me first outline the conditions of the area which could easily change the outcome for others. Area I hunted last night has had activity from 1854 to the present, but most between 1854-1940. The field I choose to hunt was plowed 3 days ago and the soil is moderately meneralized which makes it difficult for anything but a PI. This will still be relevant as far as the Equinox upgrade goes and you'll see why later.

I started out in a clean area of the field with the following settings, Park 1, Recovery 4, sensitivity 24, ground balance 0, iron volume 10, 50 tones, Iron Bias F2 set at 4, horseshoe button ON. So the first thing I noticed was all the chatter I was getting from the ground, did a ground balance and that all went away. But I could now run the sensitivity up to 25 which I have never been able to do before, 24 had been the limit in the past.

After I got my settings adjusted I headed straight for a carpet of nails area in the vicinity of an old homestead where I spent about 2 hours. This particular section is full of both square and more modern nails, pieces of farm equipment, chain, horseshoes, etc. etc. In the past large pieces of iron have registered in the positive numbers, I could always tell it was large iron but with the new F2 settings there's no mistaking it's large iron as the ID is now negative numbers. One particular piece of chain that I often see at the edge of the field that always registered as a very harsh 7-9 was now flat out -3 when I pasted the coil over it. BIG improvement in regards to large iron. The other thing I noticed is that I was able to move more quickly through the area as the falsing was not as bad as in the past. Before the F2 setting was available I would have to work this area very slow and hit targets from multiple directions to confirm whether they were good or bad. Also the falsing I did get, could usually be confirmed it was iron with a second pass of the coil rather than multiple passes in different directions. In this area I found 2 shotgun shells, part of a pocket knife and a rivet with leather still attached.

So overall I'm happy with the improvements in carpet of nails scenarios.

However, here comes the BAD, at least for me and my moderately mineralized soil (and the freshly plowed ground doesn't help). I left the homestead area and headed for a part of the field that has had some military activity and not as much iron, setting were left the same. After about 30 minutes of hunting all the signals I got sounded like iron, which I thought was odd because I can almost always pick up a few percussion caps if nothing else. So I changed the IRON BIAS back to FE setting of 0 and within 4 feet had a solid 9-10 signal. At this point it was time to do some testing. Changed the IRON BIAS back to F2 setting of 4 and the target sounded like flat out iron. The target turned out to be a percussion cap about 3 inches deep. So at this point I started hunting with the IRON BIAS at FE setting 0 with the intention of testing all future targets.

Moving on I got two good targets next to each other, one registering 24-26 and the other 18-19. Switched to F2 setting 4 and the 24-26 target was now all over the place from negative numbers all the way to mid 30's, turned out to be a modern copper penny at about 6 inches. The 18-19 target was the same but mostly negative numbers and turned out to be a large lead or aluminum hose end looking thing probably off a farm tractor. I continued doing this with a few more items that turned out to be 2 more p-caps, another rivet with leather attached, a couple of pieces of camp lead, .69 cal minie and a .44 cal round ball.

The last 2 targets I dug I decided to extend the testing and include F2 setting of 0. First target found IRON BIAS FE setting 0 read 13-15, change to F2 setting 4 all negative numbers and an occasional 14 flashing up. change to F2 setting 0, better but still not as good as FE setting 0. turns out to be camp lead at about 5 inches.

Last target setting FE-0 signal is a 12-13 with negative numbers but good consistency at the center of the target, experience tells me it deep and small. Change to F2-4 all negative numbers and low ones -8 and -9 almost like ground noise. Change to F2-0 better but still not something I think I would dig. So I switch back to F2-4 and start removing dirt 2 inches at a time to see when the signal gets better. First 2 inches, same but negative numbers are now getting higher -5 and -6. Next 2 inches. still not a good signal, change back to FE-0 and signal is a no brainer dig me signal. Next 2 inches and I'm now down to solid dirt below the plow line. F2-4 is finally starting to see the target as good mixed with a lot of negative numbers, F2-0 is much better but FE-0 is by far the best signal. Turns out it's a small pewter button at 7 inches.

So for me what I found (remember this could change for your soil conditions) is F2-4 is absolutely the way to go in thick iron where depth is not an issue. I really don't think your masking anything at these settings as I've hunted this patch over and over and to be able to pull anything from it is impressive. But, and remember I have moderate mineralization, I have to ground balance every hunt for best performance. I will still be using FE-0 as my setting in my soil, if not my minerals are masking targets. The next time I'm out I will try F2-0 and raise the recovery speed to 5 and see if that helps I already know anything below 4 and I'm losing depth in my soil.

I would love to hear what other people are experiencing with the new F2 feature.

Great report Abenson!

Nice report, bet that penny was a heart stopper for a moment

Excellent write-up. You covered all the potential ups and downs. Looking for any potential "gotchas".

I had read several posts by others in the discussion of the2.0, and had wondered myself if : Any attempt to improve iron ID , might "soften" the "crispness" of deep whispers.

This was, for example, the downside of the old school whites (XLT, etc...that were prone to false positives on rusty shallow bottle caps): If the user elected to implement the bottle cap reject program options, he risked that it muffled the crispness of some deeper smaller conductive items. The trick in those days was to NOT use their bottle cap reject settings. And ... instead ... to simply : Vary swing speeds over suspected rusty bottle caps . Ie.: Momentarily speed up the clip over a suspected cap. And the reactions would be different @ cap vs conductor. Not sure if this trick will work on the Nox or not, as an alternative way to improve iron ID.

Terrific report!

Thanks for taking the time to share, good work!
Paul

got out today to a park that is known (by me) to still have copper pennies. good for testing the 2.0 update (F2=4 is all I used). they id in the 30's now (mid though some rang up to high 30's!. pretty interesting. these were up to say, 7, 8, 9 inches and pretty toasty, mostly from the 50's 60's, dirt pretty moist (easy digging). then I got a pretty solid 27 (in drier dirt) and dug a large cent (Cdn) 1918 with vertigris, ie pretty toasty. pretty high ID also as they usually show up as 20-21 or so as I recall (1st good find with my brand new EQ (last year) was an 1890's LC (Vicky) that rang up as a solid 18, early ones are a bit bronzy). later, after more 30's (ID) pennies got a pretty solid 31 and it was a 'flat', ie no tilt at all 1940 dime at about 8, 9", a bit worn but decent. pretty high ID, eh. lots of negative numbers bouncing around in the trashy area I was hunting 'constantly'. ground balancing isn't possible here so always use 0. I do noise cancel every once in a while. pinpointing was a bit problematic also, due to the crapulence factor, cheers

Thanks for the info....

Andrew...… good report! Wow..... your dirt does weird things to the MDT..... and weird things to the EQX! This is full justification 'why' any particular unit needs to be tested in specific locales.

All good info on this Thread thus far.

Good Report Mr.Ab...kinda like the stuff I used do day in day out. Well detailed, described and written. Difficult to 'encapsulate in words', Well done.

I have to ask..... is GBing with such a high sensitivity having an affect? How does the machine distinguish between EMI and minerals? So......to me running to much IB is going to affect those even deeper non-ferr targets. Sounds like your testing is sound using both modes. The question would be..... was there any changes to the program algorithm that might have affected other modes? Ive just not had the time to test my 3 gram ring yet for depth and response. We used it for testing between the MDT and Nox.

More testing.........

My soil is just a little weird when it comes to the update. I have a 6 inch silver dime buried in my yard, probably more like 7 with the grass. The only metal detectors I have or have had in the past that could pick it up with any degree of accuracy is the Equinox and Explorer. Some may laugh as I see others testing 10 plus inch dimes and picking them up no problem. Goes to show how bad my soil is.

FE-0 recovery 2 nothing, R3-can get it if you know where it is and use a controlled sweep speed, R4-the best sometimes a one way signal but most times 24-28 numbers both ways and occasional negative number or a mid 30's, R5-very clipped audio but still better than 3 as it'snot as dependent on sweep speed. R6-nothing

F2-0 I'll just focus on R4 much the same data as FE but in this case I'm getting mostly 31-38 numbers with an occasional mid 20's number or a negative number, much like the penny I dug in the field. I've read on a couple of other forums that others are experiencing numbers being higher than normal for coins as well, not sure of their soil though.

Anyone else experiencing this, I can live with it. The Tarsacci I had did the same thing in my soil, up the ID for everything.

Abenson Wrote:
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> F2-0 I'll just focus on R4 much the same data as F
> E but in this case I'm getting mostly 31-38 number
> s with an occasional mid 20's number or a negative
> number, much like the penny I dug in the field. I'
> ve read on a couple of other forums that others ar
> e experiencing numbers being higher than normal fo
> r coins as well, not sure of their soil though.
>
> Anyone else experiencing this, I can live with it.
> The Tarsacci I had did the same thing in my soil,
> up the ID for everything.

my post back a few here reported the same thing....

Awesome information right there_thank you

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