Etrac setting that doubled my Depth

daddyflea

Senior Member
Joined
Jul 4, 2012
Messages
300
If I had not spent so much time with a V3i I might have never really tried this. V3i is a great Detector but it is by far the most complicated frustrating detector I have ever used. This is why I bought the Etrac. I have really been having depth problems. It is very dry and I am hunting Trashy old Houses. I have two that are right at 100 years old that I am hunting now and got so frustrated yesterday I vowed to quit hunting until after a rain.

Sounded good but they mowed one of the yards and I had nothing to do. I run my Etrac like 99% of most people I run Auto +3 Fast On Deep ON. Some say run Manual Sensitivity and run it high. If you run a V3i like this you find nothing and it sounds like a Pin Ball machine. I was running the Joey Coil on my Etrac and it was sounding like a Pin Ball machine.I was getting a lot of False signals and iron nails was killing me. I had already hunted this place twice removing many coins.

I noticed my Threshold was gone everytime I moved my Coil. This is always a bad sign. I decided that I needed to try something different since I was only getting a few inches of depth. Everybody is going to tell you to increase Sensitivity to get Depth. This is great advice in clean areas with good dirt. Not good around old houses where the dirt changes every swing.

I took a different route I used Auto but I backed off to +2. I got a better Threshold and I could swing faster. I backed off to Auto +1 and hit the Sweet Spot. My depth doubled. Now most are saying "Bull" right now but here is my explanation. My depth was the same but my ID was much better, so I got better ID at depth allowing my Discrimination to work much better. I always run fairly tight Discrimination.

I was able to get a good steady Threshold while swinging at a normal pace and my signals were stronger and louder with no where near the iron falsing.

I killed it today. Too tired to even count my coins but I know I dug at least 12-16 Wheat Pennies in a yard I had hunted twice before using a small Joey Coil. I had found no Nickles at all at this place before I found 4 today.

Can't wait to try this with the WOT (Wonderful Orange Thing) Coiltek 15", but it will have to rain first. Too hard to dig those holes.
 
This is where the high beams in the fog comes from to much and you can't see down the road same for detectors . sube
 
yea, pretty common.. Either do what you did or slow it way way down. With my CTX I usually run in combined mode but I find that a lot of places the threshold is really hard to maintain. This is when I put it into conductive mode and it seems to work much better. I use my quick Key to flop back and forth between programs as the soil changes.
 
Thanks Daddyflea! Had not heard of that coil before for the etrac. Ive only had my etrac for less then two years and ive had SEF, Detech and Nel drilled into my brain..lol...
 
Great to know. I'll have to give this a try.

I did a bit of testing myself this weekend with the E-Trac and the Manual vs Auto thing. Both have a place to be used but one thing I did notice is that in manual the target ID is far less reliable. Especially FE. Normally I can use the FE as somewhat of a reliable guide to tell iron from conductive target by how high it reads. If I gat a 09 to 16-42 there is a very good chance for a deep wheat. And FE above 18 and in the 20's is most likely a piece of deep rusted iron. In manual FE reads high on almost everything.

Guess that explains why when I try Manual all I do is dig a lot more rusted iron.
 
Thanks Daddyflea! Had not heard of that coil before for the etrac. Ive only had my etrac for less then two years and ive had SEF, Detech and Nel drilled into my brain..lol...

Coiltek actually made all the Minelab Coils at first so they know Minelab secrets. If you notice on the Minelab forum there is a Coiltek Section. One of the Dealers told me this and I checked it out to confirm it. I like the Coilteks better than the Stock Coil myself and the little Joey gets about the same depth as the Stock Coil with way better separation. I am not knocking the other Coils. I tried the bigger NEL and did not like it. I also had the SEF coils. Liked all of the SEF except the big one. It worked great but way too heavy for me. The 6X8 is a great coil. I did find that you must reduce Sensitivity when using the bigger SEF coils. They are pretty hot.

Reducing Sensitivity will sometimes increase your depth because it reduces interference and noise. The Key is listening to your Threshold. If your Threshold on an Etrac goes away every time you move the coil, either you are on iron, or your Sensitivity is too high. Your swing can be slowed to compensate but you are better off reducing Sensitivity and swinging normally. Your finds will go way up because any signal will draw your attention and ID will improve.
 
good tips for sure! especially when using the SEFs...will try to drop down from auto +3 when using my SEF 10x12...will try that also with my 6x8 and see what happens!! thanks!
 
I will agree with this notion 100%. Stability means different things to different people but it means one thing to the machine. If you're cranked wide open in a pile of garbage or thick iron all you're gonna dig is garbage and iron. Why drive around with the gas pedal on the floor everywhere? It doesn't make sense to do so.
I had the very thing happen that this is about a year ago with my Explorer....move coil AT ALL,lose threshold. Rest coil,threshold returns. With the Explorer,I run it in Ferrous at these places and use the "bum bum bum" of the iron as the threshold. Conductive targets stick out like two sore thumbs. No matter how it's done,having one huge null usually isn't the best way to go IMHO.
 
Thanks guys this is all good info for me as I e only had the etrac for about 7 months, it it reminds me of the NASCAR adage, " slow down and go faster"
 
Went hunting today with my Coiltek 15" WOT coil. I had to back off Sensitivity all the way to 0 on Auto to get the good steady Threshold. After that I was killing it. Dug a ton of targets that I had missed hunting this area in the past. The targets just seem to hit twice as hard making them impossible to miss. I also found that Deep ON causes too much Iron falses. Not sure what depth I was getting but most of my targets were 6" or deeper and I was swinging over an area that was mowed with a Shredder instead of a Lawn Mower.
 
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