Video 2-28-2012: CoinStrike & eTrac on relics

First all I apologize for the quality of this video. My video editing software lets me do it really good, but in order to have very good video quality the file is huge and takes FOREVER to upload on YouTube. I only have WiFi internet available here and don't want to spend 3+ hrs waiting on a video to upload while at a WiFi spot. So I made it a small file for faster uploading purposes. You can still hear everything and get the picture.

Now for some video background info. This particular site is a skirmish site from the Civil War. We find everything from bullets to cannon ball fragments and such. It just so happens to be in a section of some of the most horrible dirt I've found in Tennessee....and is loaded with relics....probably due to the folks not taking into account just how bad the soil is and if they ever walked over it with a detector, they either didn't hear the signals or thought they were junk when they did hear them. I found this site back around 2001 and it has been the ultimate testing ground for detectors, and that is all I use it for now days...is testing new machines, and for taking newbies that have never dug a civil war relic, to let them get a few bullets after a training session on what to listen for to get them. Since 2001 I dare say there has been over 2,000 bullets come out of there. I know most of my shot bullets that I had dug, had came from this site, and when I sold my collection last year, I got over $1000 for shot bullets and sold them for .50 cents a piece....so it's been a lot of bullets.

To my knowledge, we have had at least one of every major manufacturer's top of the line machines on this site. Some have been surprising...as for being total flops. Others have come out packing quite a punch. One thing ALL of the VLFs have had in common....they wont work here unless they have motion all metal mode. Stuff reads as iron in the ground. And this is one site that the single frequency machines trump the FBS ones....although the PIs will trump anything else in it.

My camera battery was fully charged but only lasted a few minutes past my second video setup...I didn't get to film much of anything. The camera battery is not lasting as long as it once did, but I put together a bit of a collage of different things on the eTrac. One of them is a silver dime I buried in my yard at 7 inches...you'll see me setting the eTrac up in different modes and trying them on the dime...hearing the responses, and then I dig it up to show that's what was actually down there....and as a bonus I added a video showing how a pulse machine can handle the same target in the same dirt...in this case it is a Whites TDI with 5.25 inch coil. Then the last two clips are of the CoinStrike and eTrac down in the red dirt skirmish site.

The eTrac had an 11" DD coil and it's FBS reputation for being the best in mineralized soil vs the CoinStrike with the stock 8" concentric coil and low-mid single frequency. I would love to see what this thing could do with a DD coil but that was always what people wanted with it and the CZs that we never got. I will hopefully be getting an Omega 8000 which is also a single freq machine close to the CoinStrike's operating freq...and it DOES have DD coils available for it. So I'll be looking forward to that.

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Hope this works...haven't tried to post a vid link here.

I have heard the E-Trac has problems in that dirt you are talking about. Then others with similar but not identical dirt it works the best (out of VLF machines) - perhaps yours is at the extreme end? Clearly the pulse machine is the best of the lot. Nice to see they have come as far as they have. Interesting that the coinstrike works in your ground. I really thought only multi frequencies or pulse induction were the only way to go.

I love my E-Trac but the weight gets to me, so I hope that new Fisher CZ can do what it does at a lighter weight. When the Pluse's come down in weight I think I will look at them as here in Germany there must be some really deep coins that the VLF just can't hit. I sold my Omega and V3i and only have the E-Trac right now. That will change later this year I hope.

It's nice that you found what works the best for you in your ground. It took me 8 years to do that! Keep it up.

Good job,
EMS

ps - you are brave with no pinpointer! I am addicted to using that Garrett Pro Pointer.

I am looking foward to you working that Omega to the bone. I think it totally underrated in comparision to the AT Pro & other high mineralization performers. Most comparison videos I have seen I don't think they have it set up to its potential. IMHO

I will say one thing you sure do have some hot ground down there. In my ground my E-trac at auto+3 runs at 26 sens. I always heard the coinstrike was a underated machine. Maybe it is mors suited as a relic hunter than a coinhunter as it has a reputation for loving steel bottle caps. One thing the E-trac ignores and find silver coins in the same hole with.

Harold -- Agreed!! I had a CoinStrike years ago when they were still making them and there were 3 things people hated about it:

1. Bottlecaps!! The steel rusty ones will ID as a coin every time...and you are correct, I took the eTrac to a site littered with them and didn't find a single one.

2. Sluggish buttons. The menu system to change the simplest of settings often requires several presses of the buttons just to engage them.

3. EMI....if you thought the F75 was bad, the C$ is way worse.

It does make for an interesting relic machine though because for whatever reason, it handles the red dirt reasonably well...one of the few that will detect a civil war bullet beyond 6" in disc mode and still give positive ID numbers.