ETRAC FE/CO questions VDI

[Jason in Enid]

Look for the earthmansurfer videos. He does a great job showing the numbers and the resulting target(s) with the E-Trac.

 

[TheCoilist]

Yes I have watched and subscribed to his videos. Watched all like 38 of his Etrac videos today. But he too is just beginning and his videos tend to come in the form of questions more than answers. But good vids nonetheless.

 

[stewart73]

I think the tough fact his that there is only so much that people/videos/books can tell you. Of course information from others is useful but you just really have to put in the hours and dig lots of targets and one day (month, year, century) it will click. Well to be honest it's more of a progression...the more you swing and listen and dig the more you'll figure the Etrac out. I personally think it's counter-productive to have set numbers in your head that are "non diggers", especially at first. I have honestly been fooled so many times (both ways). I mean banging 12-45 signals that I would have bet my life were silver and turned out to be a tin can....or distorted signals with bad numbers that turned out to be a really deep silver. Every piece of gold I've run under the coil of my Etrac has sounded 'bad' too.

 

[Kansas Dave]

First off, the emulator is pretty worthless compared to real hunting. It give you "air test" numbers. The numbers you see in the field will be off based on ground minerals, EMI, ground moisture, an co-located targets and probably a hlaf dozen other things I haven't realized yet.

The Etrac looks at targets responses differently than any other brand on the market. Coppers get funky repsonses some times. Amount of corrosion (theres one more I forgot) combined with depth and moisture can make them read anywhere from CO 36 to CO 47. Silver coins typically read as CO 45 and higher unless other factors bring it down, but every one I have found so far has been CO 42 and higher. I have found lower reading silver, but it was cut dime pieces, not a whole coin.

Co-located iron can really mess with your FE numbers. the 12 line is the "perfect case" number. The number can be as high (lower on the screen) as mid 20s on a coin. This is where quick mask comes in. Open it up and check the target. If you get mostly high 20's and 30's then it's iron. If it stay above that level with only an occasional bounce down to the 30's then it may be a coin or token.

It may also be a rusty nail. The more you open up your personal acceptance range of targets, the more junk you will dig. But you will also dig old coins that others walked past for decades.

I think the tough fact his that there is only so much that people/videos/books can tell you. Of course information from others is useful but you just really have to put in the hours and dig lots of targets and one day (month, year, century) it will click. Well to be honest it's more of a progression...the more you swing and listen and dig the more you'll figure the Etrac out. I personally think it's counter-productive to have set numbers in your head that are "non diggers", especially at first. I have honestly been fooled so many times (both ways). I mean banging 12-45 signals that I would have bet my life were silver and turned out to be a tin can....or distorted signals with bad numbers that turned out to be a really deep silver. Every piece of gold I've run under the coil of my Etrac has sounded 'bad' too.

I think both of you have done a great job of describing not only look for or listen for but what to expect or learn from the e-trac. I dug a ton of iffy signals this past weekend in hopes of digging masked coins and dug a bunch of trash. Your description of when to use QM is dead on and I have found if you find those targets that are at FE 27 or below they are more likely to turn out to be a good target and when FE is above 28 forget about it.

 

[RyanChappell]

What kind of hunting do you intend to do? Coinshooting and Relic? More one than the other.

Either way I would recommend that you Coinshoot in a clean modern park or school, to learn the machine. You need some success to learn, and clad coins are very similar to silver coins.

If you are afraid to be seen in a public detecting go at dusk one morning, or go between light rains.

I would recommend using the coin pattern and modifying it to open up the upper right part of the screen from FE 1 - 18, and CO 41 - 49, so that halves and dollars will show up. Or setup a quick mask blacking out only FE 25 and higher, then press the button with the detector coil on it to load it into a pattern. Just use Auto Sens +3 for this park.

Starting out primarily dig these targets. Look for FE of 12ish or lower. Look for the following COs, skip gold targets for now. (we want to get used to successfully digging coins, and later apply that to finding these things in junk)

CO 13 - Nickel, 41 to 44 Penny, 43 to 45 dime, 46-47 Quarter.

If it comes in 1-13, 12-13, 6-42, 15-44, 18-47 dig it. Most coins will settle in at or near a 12 FE, as you close in on them back and forth. Some coins will come in 20-46 if a nail is nearby or the coin is at the edge of its detection depth.

Keep in mind that the detector has a DD coil, and only the center 1 inch swath cross-section from front to back has a detection field, so when you swing back and forth narrow your swing and pull back. You can pretty much pinpoint with the front tip of the DD coil. If you have never used a DD coil, it takes some getting used to, and there is plenty of advice on here. DD coils are the best.

I would get 30-100 hours of shooting fish in a barrel out of the way, and then try the junky silver holes you bought this machine for. You might want to consider a sniper or a 8x6 DD coil if the junk is pretty bad. In bad junk you will need to slow way down. You will notice that the humming sound or threshold will come back, if you slow down enough, this means you are giving the machine enough time to recover and detect the next target, after nulling or going silent on a discriminated target like a nail.

Very rusty buried nails sometimes will come up 12-46, ect like a coin, but they usually do not sound as good as a coin, and who knows it could be sounding off because there is a coin next to it. Experience will assist with these situations.

 

[Nic_West_Texas]

You gotta go slow.. most of the silvers I dig are deep.. 7-9 inches... which is about max for my soil and the etrac. They often give !!!! signals.. jumping around... but they do give a high pitch, which is what makes me stop to investigate.

The etrac can tell you alot before you dig it.. just listen to it and ask yourself questions. Examine it well.. then dig it.. the more you examine your targets.. the quicker you will learn.

How deep is it?
What does quickmask tell me?
How big is it? (using pinpoint mode)
Is there trash near it, throwing off the signal?

Sensativity is all based on your location.. if I can run in Auto +3 and get a good high setting... like 25+ I prefer auto. If it's running low in auto.. I will switch to manual and turn it up to 25 or higher.. depending on how much interferance I'm getting. Now this may just be a mental thing.. but I personally think that an auto sensativity of 25 runs with less falsing than a manual setting of 25.. that's why I prefer auto...

 

[RyanChappell]

You gotta go slow.. most of the silvers I dig are deep.. 7-9 inches... which is about max for my soil and the etrac. They often give !!!! signals.. jumping around... but they do give a high pitch, which is what makes me stop to investigate.

The etrac can tell you alot before you dig it.. just listen to it and ask yourself questions. Examine it well.. then dig it.. the more you examine your targets.. the quicker you will learn.

How deep is it?
What does quickmask tell me?
How big is it? (using pinpoint mode)
Is there trash near it, throwing off the signal?

Sensativity is all based on your location.. if I can run in Auto +3 and get a good high setting... like 25+ I prefer auto. If it's running low in auto.. I will switch to manual and turn it up to 25 or higher.. depending on how much interferance I'm getting. Now this may just be a mental thing.. but I personally think that an auto sensativity of 25 runs with less falsing than a manual setting of 25.. that's why I prefer auto...

Lucky dog! When I run Auto 3+ I get 18-21 sensitivity, and only find coins up to 3 inches deep! In a lot of areas I can push that up to 25-27 manual some and find coins 5 inches deep. I would say that 25 out of my 30 silver coins were found at 2.5 inches deep or less. Well it is the iron ore capital of the south...

 

[Bell-Two]

Dont get married to just the numbers, while much of what was posted is very good advice listen to what the sound tells you. A good number such as 12-38 to 12-41 that has a "scratchy" edge to the tone will very often be a screw top or crown cap. You need to try different angles around target. Good advice was given go to a park that has a lot of traffic and dig anything that sounds good and has reasonable numbers, will you dig a lot of trash, sure but use that as a learning experience. You will soon learn that sound that indicates a good coin target from the trash that emulates those numbers. Especially at first if in doubt "dig it!" Nothing beats practice and experience. We all have those days when nothing good seems to come but the more you use your machine the less those days will be. The decision on what to dig and the "acceptable" numbers to dig varies from site to site. A questionable number is a park may well be a must dig at an old house site. And in field hunting you should dig every number above iron.

 

[gunwolf]

yes being a newb to the E-trac myself I have learned ALOT from the Guru's here!
I mainly listen to tones now, if I get that high tone then I glance at the numbers.
but the numbers can lie! I hit a park yesterday that was giving me clad dimes at 12-43(44) and copper memorials at 12-45. I am still digging high tones that read a constant 12-45 to 12-46 and getting rusty nails with nothing else in the hole, and no null what so ever. but as I sweep I will get a what I call a high pitch "silver" scream in my ear but it is right on the edge of a null and bounces numbers all over from12-46 to 26-45 I hit quick mask and the FE numbers jump right up in the 30's b ut the high pitch scream remains...I have dug about 50 of these now and they are ALL rusty iron.

Yes I do know certain numbers now for certain trash items...but they all fall into the good range. Today I had a beautiful solid 12-45 at 6" from all directions...no jump, dig hole recover twist top. this just totally baffles me. my ACE250 can do that! I do really like the E-trac, but have yet to pull silver at the depth I was doing with the ACE250 with 10x14 DD coil. I pulled silver last summer at 10" to 12" My deepest this year has been 8" to 10" with most being in the 6" range

 

[Jason in Enid]

Today I had a beautiful solid 12-45 at 6" from all directions...no jump, dig hole recover twist top. this just totally baffles me. my ACE250 can do that! I do really like the E-trac, but have yet to pull silver at the depth I was doing with the ACE250 with 10x14 DD coil. I pulled silver last summer at 10" to 12" My deepest this year has been 8" to 10" with most being in the 6" range

Sometimes targets lie, thats a fact of using ANY detector. Talk to other E-Trac users in your area to make sure you have the best settings possible for YOUR AREA. Second, if you haven't already, get away from the auto sens. Put it on manual and as high as possible until it starts to false just a little.

Just because you found deep coins with a different machine doesn't mean the E-Trac won't, it just means you haven't swung across them yet.

E-Trac basics can learned in a few minutes. Learning the finest points of recovering hidden coins with the E-trac can take a lot of hours (hundreds) of use.

 

[gunwolf]

Sometimes targets lie, thats a fact of using ANY detector. Talk to other E-Trac users in your area to make sure you have the best settings possible for YOUR AREA. Second, if you haven't already, get away from the auto sens. Put it on manual and as high as possible until it starts to false just a little.

Just because you found deep coins with a different machine doesn't mean the E-Trac won't, it just means you haven't swung across them yet.

E-Trac basics can learned in a few minutes. Learning the finest points of recovering hidden coins with the E-trac can take a lot of hours (hundreds) of use.

yeh the auto sens has to go...it usually runs about 16 here. I went top a park with another E-trac user yesterday, thier settings were different and running on manual sens. we were getting two totally different readings from the same targets...I was pulling clad dimes at 12-43(44) and memorials at 12-45-(46)??? this is only a few miles in either direction that I have been hunting, and those numbers were way different from my 12-44 memorials and 12-45 dimes I have been pulling.

 

[RyanChappell]

Definitely go by sound if you can, but the E-Trac is a VDI machine and not looking at that is a mistake, especially if you don't have an ear for all the intricacies.

Wolf, if you are digging too many nails, I want to say there are some settings to change. Threshold? Review the target with lower sensitivity, especially if it isn't extremely deep. I do that I compare the same target at auto +3 19 sens, manual 25, and even manual 10 sometimes. Sometimes the higher sens makes it false in to the lower FEs more, but there could always be a coin there too. I know one merc I dug was near a nail and a screw, and never sounded great, I still think was just lucky, and I detected the junk and not the merc.

Good advice was given go to a park that has a lot of traffic and dig anything that sounds good and has reasonable numbers, will you dig a lot of trash, sure but use that as a learning experience. You will soon learn that sound that indicates a good coin target from the trash that emulates those numbers. Especially at first if in doubt "dig it!" Nothing beats practice and experience. We all have those days when nothing good seems to come but the more you use your machine the less those days will be. The decision on what to dig and the "acceptable" numbers to dig varies from site to site. A questionable number is a park may well be a must dig at an old house site. And in field hunting you should dig every number above iron.

Definitely helps you learn, if you have an ear for the sounds, but on your first hunt I recommend shooting fish in a barrel at a park with plenty of clad.

Too many people take the detector to that promising junk ridden site the first day to see if they can pull more silver than their last detector, on the first day. That would be fine if it wasn't so junky.

 

[Jason in Enid]

yeh the auto sens has to go...it usually runs about 16 here. I went top a park with another E-trac user yesterday, thier settings were different and running on manual sens. we were getting two totally different readings from the same targets...I was pulling clad dimes at 12-43(44) and memorials at 12-45-(46)??? this is only a few miles in either direction that I have been hunting, and those numbers were way different from my 12-44 memorials and 12-45 dimes I have been pulling.

One thing I have learned in the past 3 years with my E-Trac is that coppers can be very wierd! I think it just has to do with how the E-Trac analyzes the target signal, but there are LOTS of factors that can squew the numbers slightly but copper cents seem to be affected the most. I have dug wheats and memorials as low at CO 36 and at high as CO 47. Most of the times they come in at the expected area, but once in a while they can be way off.

It used to bug me when I dug "quarters" that turned out to be copper memorials, but I'm used to it. I know that if I am over something good, the detector will let me know.

 

[evan9r]

Use your ears and don't worry too much about the numbers. The numbers are a very general guide at best. As you dig more and more targets you'll start to unconsciously make connections between certain types of signals and certain types of targets...then just when you think you've got it figured out you'll dig up something totally unexpected.

I just bought an E-trac and this is what I have been doing. Not paying any mind to the numbers. Coming from a Tesoro I have always relied on my ears to tell me something was good in the ground.

I have been using the TTF mode that alot of people seem to be using and it has been turning up alot of stuff at my already hunted out by Tesoros sites.

My question is for those who use the TTF mode; Do you always dig the consistent high tones ? What do the low tones followed by a blip of a high tone at the end mean? I found that digging the consistent high tones that are blipped at the end of a low tone were usually nails. Sometimes they were good things to though. The consistent high tones that screamed for a half a second or so were always good objects, but the fact that it screamed so hard on it, almost made me think it was a large aluminum object or can, etc.

 

[Ferrous Bueller]

Ah ha! See I found a thread (i love this forum!) about sensitivity. I am running auto +3, apparently that is no bueno for deeper targets. I took the suggestion of the "out of the box" settings and they weren't suffice for my area. I will be trying to manual sensitivity soon to see if there is a difference!

Knowing the VDI structure may not have been my problem. It may have been the limitation of targets. My targets were mostly less than 6 inches and most of which was trash. The wheatie and older dime were the deepest targets. So it may just be the depth that I need.

Does everyone agree that multi tone/conduct is still one of the better settings to be on vs TTF?

Auto +3 is perfectly fine for deep targets. If you try to run the Etrac in manual and very hot, all the falsing could get a bit frustrating, especially for a new user. When I run in manual sensitivity I usually only go about 1 or 2 points higher than what auto+3 would be at anyways.

IMHO for a new user go Auto +3 and run stable-- Trust me the depth is already there! Get used to the sounds. Learn the nuances and the etrac will bring you all the deep targets whether in auto or manual.

 

[TheCoilist]

Auto +3 is perfectly fine for deep targets. If you try to run the Etrac in manual and very hot, all the falsing could get a bit frustrating, especially for a new user. When I run in manual sensitivity I usually only go about 1 or 2 points higher than what auto+3 would be at anyways.

IMHO for a new user go Auto +3 and run stable-- Trust me the depth is already there! Get used to the sounds. Learn the nuances and the etrac will bring you all the deep targets whether in auto or manual.

For the 10 minutes or so I had to test manual sens vs auto +3 this is what I have taken away from it thus far. Being a new user to the Etrac I made some interesting discoveries.

Went out in Auto +3 booted the machine, moved it around my ground a bit. It was reading 19. I rebooted the machine, did a noise cancel first thing, and noticed that it is either channel 6 or channel 9 that it selects. Auto+3 still read at 19.

I went to manual sensitivity bumped it as high as I think 25. BUT before I went to manual, I went through one section of my yard (house built in early 30's and clothes line was) with Auto+3. I was getting some hits, etc. But I noticed when I put it on Manual 25 I was getting a LOT more hits and falsing wasn't necessarily an issue. The chatter didn't bother me too much really.

BUT manual sens 25 was picking up some DEEP targets 8-10" and some were in the 12 FE range or slightly off from 12 but most were in the 40 CO range. The tones were high squeakers. I only had time to dig one target and it was a rusty nail, but upon rescanning the hole the target was still in it. Then of course it started pouring. This was Thursday night... and it is STILL raining!

I know there is silver in my yard, just under all the fill dirt. With the old bottles I have found under the house, the Wheaties in the yard, I know there is silver... Just going to get the Sampson out there and start digging before we sell the house! LOL