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Quote:"I cannot understand why detector companies off-weight and off-center coils."
Offsetting the coil ears is part of the solution to 'handgrip twist' , along with S-bend shafts. It's the reason people like the 'swing feel' of machines like the Tek T2. Another advantage is related to packing the machine. If ( like just about everyone ) you're not going t
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
"It is a link that is both secure and mysterious, and it's mystery is only exceeded by it's security"
Well .. after I'd stopped sniggering at your misfortunes, I thought about why this would happen. You'll be disappointed to learn that I have no idea. But both my link and ChrisMD's appear as https links as I'm viewing the forum.. but seemingly not for ev
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
Tom : If you're wanting to point Walter in the right direction, suggest he reads the thread ChrisMD mentioned above, and the earlier thread:
where I had an attempt at tracking down all the 'mixed content' errors.
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
Seeing as no-one's provided the link, here's the long Tarsacci thread:
And there's also the Tarsacci sub-forum on Steve H.'s Detector Prospector site:
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
Assuming FT did a good job of making the modifications to give 'digital ground balance' rather than 'multi-turn pot analogue gb' , the performance should be exactly the same.
The LCD screen version has a few other differences - the headphone socket is on the side, which may be inconvenient, depending on whether you're right-handed / lefty.
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
Quote 'glasartisan':
"From the videos I have seen, the VDI screen seems to lack in resolution on upper end. A lot of the high conductors seem to be jammed up there in the 94-99 VDI. It would be nice to see the screen resolution opened up some."
I think this is one of those situations where you can't please everyone, all the time. The Equinox has this type of target ID
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
He did state that this was 'inbetween an air-test and an in-ground test' -- and he's right, though it's biased towards the air-test.
The soil in the container will still distort the coils magnetic field, and reduce depth. But as the coil isn't being swept over the soil, it's not seeing the variation in ground signal, which is ultimately the thing that limits real-wo
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
The target is still the same, so it has the same ID. All that changes is its signal strength drops, while the ground's signal strength remains unchanged. This is what makes it hard for the detector to give the accurate ID, giving it's 'best estimate' , which is normally between 'tiny iron' ( the ground ) and 'silver coin' ( the target )
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
It's definitely site-specific.
Here in the U.K, our parks are usually created on what was previously agricultural land, so there's plenty of iron there from the start, before the modern-day deposition of loads of aluminium foil, ringpulls, cans, canslaw, bottle-tops. ( and steel cans/canslaw, steel bottle-tops ). Not to mention the low-value nickel-plated steel coins, that read as stee
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
"YouTube is set up to where a person doesn't start receiving $ until the channel receives 1,000 subscribers. The more likes, subs, etc a video gets ... etc etc .."
That's how it was until 1 year ago. But now, they smother adverts on EVERY video, regardless of how popular it or it's creator is, and the creator doesn't get any revenue from those adverts, unless they m
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
I thought that Youtube didn't place adverts on little-watched videos/users , only adding them on the content that gets a decent viewing audience, and thus rewarding creators with some revenue if they make good popular videos ... seems reasonably fair, I suppose.
Well not any more. A policy change means they're adding adverts everywhere, like it or not ( my vote = NOT ) , see these news
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
VLC ( VideoLan Codec ) , the free, and rather good, open-source media player program, can play Youtube videos directly. It knows how to decipher Youtube's webpage functions/encoding/obfuscation etc because it has what's effectively an 'add-on' called a lua file. Then by simply selecting 'play online source' , with the Youtube video address as the source, it will play
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
I guess these things may depend on where in the world you are watching, but that was unwatchable. 10 seconds of adverts before the start, fair enough, I can handle that. Then 1/3rd the way through, a three minute advert about toilet training my dog. I don't have a dog. Followed by some Alexa internet-connected coffee machine something-or-other ad. Then some more ringpulls off the beach and
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
When I said it matters if the machine is multi-freq, I should've elaborated a bit:
Using multi-frequencies allows the machine to work out the ground signal level much better than a single-freq machine, which lets it 'eliminate' ground signal much more effectively. A large coil will pick up a stronger ground signal - this would normally be detrimental to performance on a single-fre
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
Smaller coils are best for smaller targets, larger coils are best for larger targets.
So if manufacturers want a machine to have 'all-round, general purpose' performance, an intermediate-sized coil of 8"-11" is the choice. Then the option of a smaller and a larger coil for you to purchase later are provided.
The physics of why small coils suit small targets etc is partly i
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
Regarding coil weight:
There is a modest amount of copper in a search-coil, but it's not a major part of the total weight. The plastic body needs to be pretty stiff, so isn't made with a thin-walled structure. It's also generally a fair bit larger than the wire bundle. This is partly related to increasing the stiffness, but I understand the shielding ( often graphite paint on th
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
I personally would have preferred the small coil to have been smaller, approx 5 inch / 125mm round, and solid, rather than the open spider style. Basically the same as the 5 inch coil that Fisher/Teknetics make for many of their machines.
As this seems unlikely now, one product that would be useful is a 'solid' coil cover for the 6 inch open coil. Small coils are often used on farmla
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
Dilek, thank you for giving us the opportunity to ask questions.
I think Ghound's question is perfectly reasonable and valid, I was wondering much the same thing.
As the two Equinox models so far released have obvious features missing, and its flaws have been dissected publicly, it seems that an opportunity exists to better Minelab's machines.
Obvious missing Eqx features include
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
"She didn't mention where single frequency would be better"
Echo the previous post. If you use 5kHz, don't forget you're NOT getting the high-frequency targets so well, like foil, whereas a Multi-freq mode is likely ( depending on how the designers made it ) to still respond to foil .
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
Quote:"Direct sampling detectors I know of are Minelab X-Terra, Go-Find, Equinox, Vanquish; XP Deus; and White's Prizm 6T/Coin GT"
Others that could probably be added to that list :
XP Orx and Deus 2, (seems pretty obvious)
Rutus Alter71; the selectable freq choices make direct-sampling highly likely.
NokMak's other models with selectable freq: Anfibio, Kruzer & multi,
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
I suspect most users of it don't really understand it, but they have enough faith in it to use it. Plus, in the past 18 months, Government fiscal policy has caused many to lose faith in their own national currency. This applies especially to the US Dollar, but here in Europe, the Euro, and British Pound have all seen 'money printing' in some form or other. So inflation at 5%, but b
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
A check on Youtube will guarantee to find some 'depth tests' on the popular pinpointers, either individually or as a 'head-to-head' comparison.
Obviously, you didn't say what target(s) you're testing it with, but I would expect a medium-sized coin to be detectable at 2" for any modern pointer. One inch is the performance that older ones may have got , but custo
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
It's not the SMF alone that makes a good detector, it's how you do it. Modern electronics, combined with clever engineering, have resulted in the Eqx being a success. Earlier attempts at SMF were simpler, and had to make design choices/compromises that limited their capability.
It's a complicated question, with complicated answers. And don't forget that much of the engineerin
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
Regarding how to define 'iron trash density' , there's the 'Trash Density' scale that I proposed some years ago, which could equally be applied to iron:
Level 5 = 4 targets per 10"
Level 4 = 2 targets per 10"
Level 3 = 1 target per 10" (the medium level)
Level 2 = 1 target per 20"
Level 1 = 1 target per 40" (= about 1 sweep length)
Level 0
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
"Why not just get a 2-box machine ? Like a Whites TM-808 or similar ?"
A few reasons:
*I don't want to spend much money, so would prefer to use what equipment i already own.
*Based on info generally gleaned from the web, they aren't that good on caches; for example when Carl Moreland recreated the 'Gary's Hoard Test' , he tried many machines/coils, includ
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
Thank you, J&D for taking the time to reply.
I never did get a Fisher 15" coil, they rarely came up for sale, and the prices did not seem attractive ( I wanted it cheap ).
I now also have the Equinox, and have tried this technique out, using the stock 11" coil. It has promising performance, and I did recover a couple more deep non-ferrous items that would possibly have been miss
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
It shouldn't have trouble detecting the 5c coin, it's a very close match to 4kHz.
I have a modest selection of US coins, but the silver 5c is one I don't have. However .. we do have similar coins to the 10c and 5c, namely the sixpence and threepence, respectively, so some estimates can be made. I think the 5c will be a 4 - 5 kHz coin.
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
The performance of VLF detectors is not strongly related to the operating frequency, and I think the difference between 5kHz and 4Khz is quite subtle. The extra 'processing' applied to the 4kHz option is what sets it apart - if they had done the same to the 5kHz freq, the results would be much the same. By choosing a new lower freq, they have drawn more attention to the new mode, which
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum
Hmm, probably was something like that. I played around with quite a few things, but it was a link from Google that worked, then it seemed to stay working after that. I logged out, and logged in again, that all seemed to be trouble-free, too.
Fingers crossed .
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Thomas Dankowski Metal Detecting Forum