Etrac users interesting info

I've been using an etrac since July last year. I have a late 1700s-1800s site I've been searching. I have retrieved 5 good targets-1 silver ring and 5 silver coins that displayed interesting readings on the etrac screen. This site is heavily laden with iron with low ground mineralization. I try and run my discrimination with wide open screen all the way down to the 27 ferrous line. When I hit the 5 silver targets mentioned above 4 give solid 27 ferrous readings and one gave a solid 28 ferrous reading. All of the targets only produced high tones in one back and forth direction, turning 30,45,90 degrees no joy. Three of the silver after entering quick mask would only jump back into the normal 10-18 ferrous area only after sweeping numerous times-say maybe twice in 10-25 sweeps. The other 2 silver never did jump back up the screen and stayed at 27-28 but would never go any lower down into the iron range. I swept them 25 times. My settings were manual sens 24/25, fast recovery on, deep off ,high trash, difficult ground using a 10x12 sef coil. I have read on other forums and everyone has dug the higher than normal ferrous readings and only wind up with iron and many have stated they won't dig that signal. If it would have only happened to me once, I might consider it a fluke, but 5 times is a different story. Funny thing is, if I hadn't already dug some nice silver I probably wouldn't have bothered with these signals. I did remember reading in Andy's book about deep good targets could come in as low as 27 ferrous-uncommon but possible. Cheers

Thanks Tnsharpshooter. You stated you were in heavy iron litered site. Curious, were these targets co-located with iron objects close by?? I see you were using a large coil for a nasty?? spot. I only ask because, I have been using an E-Trac since December 2011, and have dug a lot of these signals, only to come up with nails,bolts or washers. Ive had those two way signals, but I am sure my coil was picking up a piece of close by iron. Like you turning and using quick mask with an open screen, difference, my readings would stay close to and on the 35 line.
Just curious what it would have read with a smaller coil, if that much iron is close by.
I also have to say, I use more disc than that, unless I am using TTF, then I use very little disc.
Thanks,
John

The giveaway to me was the high tone and the ferrous number hanging on the 27/28 line and not falling any further down. Also, I can't prove it but I suspect these targets would have been missed in 2-tone ferrous. I believe they would have gave low tones based on the etrac's internal setup in 2-tone ferrous. And yes, running that little disc in a trashy/iron laden site is a bit hard on the ears, but you get used to it with enough practice. To add, this particular site had been pounded by another detectorist using a white's XLT. He lives down the road from me. He doesn't know I recovered 25 coins, silver ring, locket, and a medallion with Andrew Jackson's pic and a pic of the Hermitage. Oldest coin was an 1845 seated libert dime. I believe the adjacent fields contain spanish silver and just maybe a half dime or three. I received a new f75 se today to play with. This should complement my 2 etracs and white's V3i just fine. Now if we could just get rid of this cold weather and away I will go.

Yes, you are correct, TTF would have given a low tone since line 17 is the cutoff. Sounds like you have a nice spot to hunt,that means a lot in itself.
Couple days ago, I got a soft high tone, with a 12/44 TID from one left to right swing, turned 90degrees and got another 12/44, depth guage was bottomed out. Got all excited because this was the first signal Ive gotten like this while using the E-Trac. Had my relic shovel with me, so I dug a 10 inch plug,ground was very soft and damp. Run my pinpointer around the hole,got nothing, so I swept again with the E-Trac and picked the signal up in the hole but, it had changed to a FE 35,lol. I went ahead and dug a few more inches, but I knew it was a waste, still got a high ferris signal. I swept the plug also, nothing there.
Ive used TTF a good bit over the last 3 weeks, think I like multi tones better. Maybe I need to reduce my disc. Guessing you just black out everything below line 27??? Do you black out the first line for wrap around??
Ive also just recently started using manual sensitivity.
Thanks again,
John

I have run 3 ways- open at the top and blacking out the 01 line say to 38/39 and blacking out both 01 and 02. Don't forget about the ole silver dollar thingy. It does quiet the machine down a bit around iron. The 10x12 sef is also quieter around iron versus the procoil even with the same sensivity over the same ground. I actually believe the little 8x6 coil is even better on the etrac on hotter ground. I struck a barber dime last week in some hot ground. E-trac was auto tracking at 17 in auto plus 3(so14). The dime was as square on edge as one could be at 5and 1/2 inches and the little 8x6 sef coil nailed it. I would venture a guess that my sunray x5 would be the best in even hotter ground. After pinpointing I took my relic shovel and cut a small plug. Scanned the plug no joy and bent down with pinpointer and noticed the dime glued to the side of the hole.
Something I failed to mention earlier. This one site is around 150 ft by 200 ft square. I would hunt and find 2-3 keepers in 2-4 hours. Go back in a few days and do the same thing again. I kept going back because I knew this place had only had a XLT machine over it. I figured what better way to learn a machine. I hunted that site from every conceivable angle. Sometimes I would run lower manual sensitivity,auto plus 3, auto, high manual sensitivity. On one coin I was running high manual sensitivity and got a high tone. Raised the coil 6 inches still getting a tone and almost walked, but before I did I swished the coil around the hit and it didn't seem to be big enough to be a can. I had done this just a week earler at a site with an old house. I remembered hitting that target too about 3 weeks earlier. Except this time I swished the coil around it and dug 3 cents stacked on top of one another 1902 IH,1910, and 1925 Abe. I have seen other folks explaining to folks new into detecting on how to tell a can from a coin and tell them to hold the coil 5-6 inches above the target and if you have a tone move on. That doesn't always work when your using a power house of a detector running high sensivity.

Regarding the good signal and thinking its a can -- I was relic hunting a site in Athens, TN where they were doing some heavy equipment grading. I had been finding some civil war bullets and such there but the work crew was real messy and had been throwing their trash out and it was on top of where I had been finding relics. Went thru the trashy stuff one day and got an overload signal and raised the coil a bit and figured it was shallow trash. Something said DIG...so I did and 2" in the ground was a drop bullet. I moved a bit further...same deal...another bullet. Five bullets later and I'm happy. Then get another signal and really thought it was a can...took my boot toe and kicked at the ground and see what I thought was a Mason jar lid kick up out of the dirt. Ended up being my first plate...an eagle breastplate and was shallow enough I kicked it up with my boot. This spot had been getting pounded by other hunters ever since they had started cutting trees and moving dirt. I ran into a few while hunting up there and noticed everybody would go through there and walk thru it fast or avoid it all together cause of the visible surface trash.

Daniel, I saw your comments earlier concerning the whites v3i while hunting in hot ground. I have had my v3i since 31 Jan last year and then purchased etrac in July and have since keyholed the V. I have a few questions for you. If one goes into the V3i menus and set all tones to zero except for the ones you want to hear and not reject any vdis using discrimination, will this scenario provide as much depth versus All Metal with all other settings the same?? I'm thinking no.
Also the ground balance offset setting, what do you recommend for a setting when hunting in moderate to severe mineralized ground?
I notice this particular setting has a huge span, is all that span actually useable at various places around the world?
And finally if you had to make a guess. Let's say I'm about to hunt some pretty warm ground. Is there a buried dime distance cutoff - a distance the V3i will struggle with or not detect per say that would encourage a user to switch to all metal to get better depth and not leave coins behind.

I can't answer all your questions...I've only got a few months use of the V3I under me and that has been a couple/few years ago.

I remember there were some instances in Culpeper, VA where it was very falsy and had to be dubbed down a bit. The prototype I had didn't come with any paperwork specifying what new modes were there. I had to just sit and play with the menu and guess/experiment with each setting so there's good chances we didn't have things configured to optimal settings. We stuck close to presets and just changed settings familiar to all detectors.

We tried 0 disc but using disc audio and that was a disaster lol way too much noise.

I'm not sure how the all metal audio setting differs as far as what filters or channels it uses when compared to disc mode...I'm not a techy but I do know it fared much better in all metal mode in the bad ground.

As with most VLFs, the IDs will always be off in bad ground. The e-Trac does have a better handle on it but in the worse ground it will do exactly what you are talking about in your iron laden site...good conducting targets will start to head towards reading as iron. I can't remember what the setting is called on the V3 but there is one mode that allows the machine to either show you real time raw data and another mode that averages the signal per each coil pass and gives an ID based on averages....in the bad dirt I found the averaging to be useful for non ferrous things that would normally read as iron upon the first sweep or two across them.

I don't recall a particular depth that the IDs start to be wrong on....in Culpeper I've had minie balls out of the hole and in my dirt pile that sometimes still read wrong just because it had the red dirt still on it...even if it was an inch in loose dirt. I never took the V3i to a real trash laden site so I have no idea how it would do in all metal in such a site for coins. My purpose was testing the added audio modes for relic hunting. It was great fun and I wish I could be a part of something like that again.

Regarding the E-Trac and deep coins giving higher Fe readings. Well, in my 1% (high) iron mineralized ground I see this to be the case, but so far they have been bouncy signals. (Fe bouncy, not CO) Here are some memorable quotes from Tom that we should all remember. It was hard to find them on Finds because they are once again removing the word "Dankowski" in posts and replacing it with "@#$%&22"! Now, Tom isn't selling anything here, so this is not because of that. Freedom of information is clearly a threat to many.

"Effect of iron on VDI readings - In general...........flecks of rust will cause a target to 'up-average'. . . . whereas... solid iron objects (like nails) will cause targets to 'down-average'. Mineralization adds to the equation also.
Mineralization is somewhat unique in the fact that it'll cause targets to up-average ... as long as the targets are shallow-to-medium depths. But..... when the target is fairly deep...... mineralization (in general) will cause a target to ID as 'iron'."

I have read from some very experienced detectorists that they have dug lots of high Fe readings and never found a coin. CLEARLY this is soil dependent. For me to get those 12" coins I think I will have to dig SOLID Fe 27 signals. This seems to be around the cutoff for coins on the E-Trac from everything I can gather. Generally iron is higher than that. Thanks tnsharpshooter for mentioning the high tone on those coins. I'll keep an eye out, I mean ear!

How deep were the coins? I see jumpy Fe VID's starting at around 7" or so.

I agree regarding the 6X8SEF coil. From my hunts it unequivocally does better in iron, both in seeing through it and correctly ID'ing it than the stock coil.

The real work is ahead for me as I've picked the cherry targets at the site I had been working and now will start digging higher Fe readings (up to 27 or so) to find those deeper coins.

EMS



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/14/2012 08:29AM by earthmansurfer.

earthmansurfer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Regarding the E-Trac and deep coins giving higher
> Fe readings. Well, in my 1% (high) iron
> mineralized ground I see this to be the case, but
> so far they have been bouncy signals. (Fe bouncy,
> not CO) Here are some memorable quotes from Tom
> that we should all remember. It was hard to find
> them on Finds because they are once again removing
> the word "Dankowski" in posts and replacing it
> with "@#$%&22"! Now, Tom isn't selling anything
> here, so this is not because of that. Freedom of
> information is clearly a threat to many.
>
> "Effect of iron on VDI readings - In
> general...........flecks of rust will cause a
> target to 'up-average'. . . . whereas... solid
> iron objects (like nails) will cause targets to
> 'down-average'. Mineralization adds to the
> equation also.
> Mineralization is somewhat unique in the fact that
> it'll cause targets to up-average ... as long as
> the targets are shallow-to-medium depths. But.....
> when the target is fairly deep......
> mineralization (in general) will cause a target to
> ID as 'iron'."
>
> I have read from some very experienced
> detectorists that they have dug lots of high Fe
> readings and never found a coin. CLEARLY this is
> soil dependent. For me to get those 12" coins I
> think I will have to dig SOLID Fe 27 signals. This
> seems to be around the cutoff for coins on the
> E-Trac from everything I can gather. Generally
> iron is higher than that. Thanks tnsharpshooter
> for mentioning the high tone on those coins. I'll
> keep an eye out, I mean ear!
>
> How deep were the coins? I see jumpy Fe VID's
> starting at around 7" or so.
>
> I agree regarding the 6X8SEF coil. From my hunts
> it unequivocally does better in iron, both in
> seeing through it and correctly ID'ing it than the
> stock coil.
>
> The real work is ahead for me as I've picked the
> cherry targets at the site I had been working and
> now will start digging higher Fe readings (up to
> 27 or so) to find those deeper coins.
>
> EMS


Not sure just how many good targets I've walked over the past year because of higher Fe numbers. Just been a few weeks now since I first started digging those higher Fe numbers with great success. Not 100% sure yet, but for my area Fe 27 seems to be the max on good targets.
My test garden, which is almost 5 years old now, has been very valuable in my learning process with the Etrac (instead of cleaning out the ground I left the iron in its place and buried my coins from 2-6" deep" More to come as I prove my findings.

Markg, reguarding your test garden; You would have to know where the iron is in order to understand 'why' your machine is giving you certain readings. Not knowing, will throw the results off, and leave you with false understanding.
If you were to sanitize the garden with a rare earth magnet and detector, then place the iron/coins etc and map it, now you know 'why' your detector gives certain readings/numbers.
Hence, more control more precise and accurate information. That's the only way that makes sense to me.

The advantage I have is, I know exactly where each coin is and the depth.

Mark - I have read from quite a few other hunters successful with the E-Trac that that Fe 27 number is key. Of course it depends on soil but that 24-27 range is key for me as well, at least on bouncy targets. I have to start digging consistent 27 signals and see what turns up. And I have walked over them as they weren't deep, that is my condition on digging them ;-)

Good for you Markg. I had quite a few people tell me I'm nuts for digging those signals. One other thing I remember is the target always seems to want to give a tone in the exact same spot. That could be one of the biggest giveaways; especially since iron hits tend to move around a bit.

tnsharpshooter Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Good for you Markg. I had quite a few people tell
> me I'm nuts for digging those signals. One other
> thing I remember is the target always seems to
> want to give a tone in the exact same spot. That
> could be one of the biggest giveaways; especially
> since iron hits tend to move around a bit.


You are exactly right on all points.
I have been very quiet here for several weeks. Reading, studying and pondering on the places I hunt (recorded in my journal), the things I've found and the unknown items I walked right over and on my way I went just because I didn't have a clue. But now I not only have a clue, but actually have something to work with.

You guys are saying that the 12+- line is not written in stone and a good target may be as high as 27 with a consistant high conductive number?
My buddy has an E-trac, I wonder if he knows that.

Yes, the Fe numbers have a very wide range when good targets are close to any kind of iron. I recently found wheat pennies where the Co number locked on at 40 (which is usually a piece of a can) and the Fe numbers would bounce from 9 to 25 while rotating around the target in question. One thing I can say, the Co numbers stay within a very tight range if the conductive target is by itself. By that I mean, if you have a pull tab very close to a coin and iron around too the Co numbers will not indicate a good target, but I've found when I see a strange Co number there is usually something to investigate, so I dig.

Well I learned something new about the Etrac at yesterdays hunt.
With the recent discussions of the breaking FE point of 27 on good targets I'd like to add something new.
Story:
Hunted at an old school yesterday. I really wanted to find out more about my machine and how it reacts between iron and good targets.
Studied each target (switched from conductive to ferrous sounds with different levels of discrimination) and found this to be true in each dig.
If the Co and Fe numbers are fairly constant there was no doubt as to the targets ID with the exception of beer and pop pull tabs, but.
When the Co number was constant and the Fe number bounced around I could switch to a wide open quick mask and re-sweep the target and the Fe numbers would settle to a very small range of numbers giving clues as to the actual target identification.
If Fe numbers locked on any number from 25-20 then it was a good target at depths greater than 7", but if the Fe was anywhere from 35 to 27 it was always an iron object of some sort.
I dug several wheat pennies that read Co 40 and Fe 20 at depths greater than 6". For some reason these pennies read lower than what I'm accustomed to.
TTF would have identified over half of these wheat pennies as iron, but 4 tone ferrous allowed them to give a higher tone and thus recovery.
Had a great time and ended up with a very nice sterling silver ring, one mercury dime, 6 wheat pennies, usual clad and a 1891 token of some sort.
Still learning, but having a great time in the process.

As a final thought, this is the most informative metal detecting forum on the planet.
Thanks to all that post their thoughts on what they see and hear, it really reduces the learning curve of this hobby.

Although I have only about 50 hrs on a borrowed Etrac, I see that one can have hundreds of hrs with, it and still discover little tricks (as with any detector). This brings up a question' Do the technicians/engineers at Minelab or Fisher or Tesoro or Whites, put enough hrs testing, to learn these tricks? Or do they leave most of it to the consumer?

Most Mfr's design engineers are not detectorists; yet, seem to have a fairly good handle of real-world dirt conditions........... especially as of lately.

markg -- excellent application of something you learned, and then took to the field and tried. Thanks MUCH for your thorough approach, and for posting the results. Very helpful.

Steve

Markg, your wheat coin signals that seem a bit low can be caused by a number of things. I recovered some with readings the same as yours a week ago. I was in some pretty warm ground with the etrac auto sensing at 14. So I think mineralization can be a cause. Something else I've noticed is if you are operating at say channel 11 or channel 1, it seems more times than not in channels 1,2 the penny will read a point less CO value as opposed to channels 10,11. It is splitting hairs but I can see it. Also, a cause is something Tom touched on ealier this week I believe, concerning small inconsistencies with the metal used in coins back then. And don't forget about coin wear too. Just a little thinner takes a slight amount of mass off the coin and damaged coins with small chips out of them will react this way Last, coins on edge can cause what you're seeing as well. Cheers.