DIGGER27
In Memory Of
A few hunts under my belt since last weekend.
Some highlights...
I turned the sense way down to 50, 40 and even 30 a few times.
I also lowered the thresh to several levels ranging from -3 to 1 most of the time at these lower sense levels.
Remember, the F70 powers up at factory settings when reset at 60 and goes up to 99.
At these low settings mudbuppy, IBdiggin and others said the scanning field narrows down considerably and they were correct.
I did this in very trashy areas around picnic pavilions and it changed the F70 into a precise surgical instrument, even using the big DD coil.
Almost like the coil changes and shrinks from the 11" size to a small sniper coil.
Crazy, I know, but it sure seemed that way.
And you want to talk about quiet, it seemed like no extra noise or signals coming though in the tones or the screen info, just targets under the coil made the thing react even though I didn't dig all of them I dug plenty so I am pretty confident every number and tone was a target under the coil.
I was able to pick out all targets by sound using AT and especially 4H and DP tones and the numbers were many and flew by as I moved that coil because of the volume of trash and disc set on 4 but each one seemed recognizable if I slowed down to the right speed.
I was able to hear, recognize, see numbers on the screen and dig some good coin targets easily in this trash pit and didn't find anything super deep but IBdiggin says even at 30 sense and -3 thresh he can find coins at 6" minimum.
I think I remember I did dig one nickel not super close to this pavilion that was a solid repeatable tone with stable numbers at the 5-6" level with the sense at 40 and the thresh was in the negative numbers and DE speed.
I still have the mindset that the more wide open and hotter the settings the deeper I will get but in the back of my mind after reading tons of owner's posts about settings I know this is not true but it is still difficult to wrap my head around this...so far.
As I dig some deeper targets at lower settings I will become more comfortable with this as time goes on I am sure.
The big thing I discovered, and still am on the fence about because I still can't believe how well this is working for me or even know how much I might be missing. (but not much, I hope!), is hunting with these settings...
AT all metal, Sense at 99, Thresh at 9 SL speed.
It is not possible to get this thing any hotter unless I figure out how to install a turbocharger on it.
The bad...signals like you wouldn't believe, good bad and ugly, from not only targets shallow and deep but falsing from EMI even in the middle of a big park where I don't get a lot of that on lower settings.
At the edge of a park where there is a problem with a huge amount of EMI because of a big power line and several homes in the area with wifi and who knows what else that caused me problems every time I wandered over here even on much lower settings, the noise and jumping behavior was incredible
It was especially bad at one specific area where I even got that rapid machine gun pulsing that my F2 is known to do in the same situations.
However, and this is the cool thing...even through all of this wall of noise and numbers jumping at light speed on the screen when I ran over a target, both trash and good like a coin, the thing stopped jumping and I was able to get numbers to stay within 2 or 3 and pretty much stay there when I passed the coil over the spot with short, quick swipes.
It wasn't easy at first but in a short time I began to see these more stable numbers and hear the repeatable tones even though there was still a bunch of jumpy behavior all around it.
Every time I got some interesting numbers I stopped and dug a real target and not one empty hole due to a false signal so I was happy.
Very tiring doing this for a long time for me, very mentally fatiguing, so I would switch back to disc at lower settings and much less noise from time to time to get a break, but it is good to know I can do this and I am pretty sure if I am in this situation and come across something great and really deep I might be able to recognize it and dig it.
I still have much more experimenting to do and target digging to see if I am right about this and practice to get better, but confidence grows with every target dug under these conditions.
Another thing I discovered is from time to time in AT and those high settings, and once in awhile at hot settings in disc, numbers showed up on the screen and stayed there for a few seconds and did not flash, move or change even after moving the coil away from an area.
It took me 2 mid 90 numbers and really deep holes dug with nothing in them to figure out these were some sort of false signals.
After that I saw not only high numbers but lower numbers do this same thing in AT and in disc from time to time mostly on hot settings but sometimes even on lower power sense and thresh, but they won't fool me anymore and I will not dig these signals ever again.
These All Metal hot settings were my check for better clearer signals when I hunted in disc, but after switching to this to check a signal at the perimeter of that park with the heavy interference I noticed that for some reason I could pick out the real signals better using this than the jumping I saw in disc so for now this is my hunting setting when at sites with possible deep targets and I use the disc setting with also max out settings on the sense and thresh and 4 down to 0 on the disc as a check.
I totally flipped using program 1 in disc to hunt and program 2 in maxed out AT to check and we will see how long this will last but I and doing this a lot and getting more used to it as I do.
Still nowhere near figuring out what my normal settings should be with the highest confidence but that's fine...I didn't expect that to happen overnight or even quickly.
Still having a lot of fun changing and experimenting with all sorts of settings anyway, and I might be missing some good targets due to these settings and unfamiliarity using them, but I still found a few nice targets along the way and I go back and hunt sites a lot so if I miss something good this time I might find it the next time as far as I am concerned.
Below are the results of my last few hunts.
Among the clad and other objects in areas I have heavily hunted in the past and many other hunters, too, is a Loony that I thought was a dime in the ground and a gold coin when I opened a hole...but it wasn't, a silver Merk in the area of extreme EMI and and an unbelievable amount of trash at the entrance of this same well hunted park that was easily heard and plucked clean using DP tones and thresh at -1, sense at about 40 and disc at 25 because of all the low end garbage.
Still and a million tab and other trash signals at this spot but a clad dime and this one still popped up and was easily recognized and dug.
Also cool was this Ike dollar coin, my second, that was found in a coin spill using AT and those other maxed out settings more toward the middle of this park.
Oh yea, my second Monopoly race car piece, a junk but still pretty cool looking junk ring, too, and a cent sized coin that I suspect is a steel war penny but I won't know till I figure out a way to de-rust it without destroying it.
Can't get across exactly how much fun I am still having doing all this experimenting and setting changing.
Some day I will settle down and just set the thing and hunt and my volume of targets should grow if I quit messing around examining targets so thoroughly and just get a signal and dig like the old days, but till then as long as a few good targets pop up I am happy.
HH
I also noticed in 3 and 4 tones the audio isn't modulated as well as on the F2--couldn't tell if it was a deep coin or a shallow one, but 5" was as deep as I went today so maybe it's more modulated on deeper coin-size targets?
