Big Boys Hobbies

Does frozen ground affect MD's?

It has a effect on digging:lol:...I've seen no loss in performance in the snow with my md, just a tendency for snow to build up on the coil. A plastic bag should solve that. Severe cold, like zero degrees? I'm not even going out if it's that cold...
 
It shouldnt have any effect on the md's performance but it can have an effect on any target in the ground and its location. Because of whats called "frost heave" its possible for a target to be at a slightly different depth or sitting at a slightly different angle in frozen ground. But it probably wouldnt make any difference at all unless the target was at or very near the depth limit of the detector.
 
diggerTmole said:
Does the ground being frozen have any affect on the MD's performance?
Click to expand...

i'm going to say yes. i don't know the exact reason, but when the ground is frozen and crystallized i seem to get a lot of falsing with my 250.
i remember one of the first times that happened to me, i was detecting at an old house in a heavily wooded area and the machine went crazy when i was under the bigger trees.
i thought i hit one huge pocket spill, but... after getting down a few inches through the moss and leaves, i hit solid, frozen ground. that same thing happened a couple of times in that same general area. once i got back into a more open area, no problems with ice/frozen ground.

Pete
 
Well mine seems to find targets well enough in the frozen ground but getting to the deeper ones is near impossible here, between the the icy soil and the rocks I dont bother.
 
One winter I found two Barber dimes in a row. I got a third identical signal but it was in a shadow and the ground was frozen. After chipping away for half an hour, I gave up. I never could get a reading there when the ground finally thawed.
 
i will say no,
but as everyone has said it sure does to the detectorist, i was hunting frozen ground at an abandoned house a coupe of weeks back, when i found a decent target that i simply could not dig i marked it with a gas line flag the little yellow ones, so come spring, providing they are still there, i will cash in on all those flagged bottle tops, :).
Dan
 
Hunting the bitter cold I noticed my Etrac battery life is much shorter than the when hunting in warm weather. That's about it though.
 
mrdjfeltimo said:
i will say no,
but as everyone has said it sure does to the detectorist, i was hunting frozen ground at an abandoned house a coupe of weeks back, when i found a decent target that i simply could not dig i marked it with a gas line flag the little yellow ones, so come spring, providing they are still there, i will cash in on all those flagged bottle tops, :).
Dan
Click to expand...
I bought a bag of cheap wooden golf tees I pound into the ground with my masonry hammer to mark the spot for later.
 
007tallguy said:
i'm going to say yes. i don't know the exact reason, but when the ground is frozen and crystallized i seem to get a lot of falsing with my 250.
i remember one of the first times that happened to me, i was detecting at an old house in a heavily wooded area and the machine went crazy when i was under the bigger trees.
i thought i hit one huge pocket spill, but... after getting down a few inches through the moss and leaves, i hit solid, frozen ground. that same thing happened a couple of times in that same general area. once i got back into a more open area, no problems with ice/frozen ground.

Pete
Click to expand...
That's exactly what my Garrett GTAx400 does, too. When the weather goes below the freezing point, the machine goes berserk, falsing like a maniac. I find that I have to reduce my sensitivity to almost nothing to get it to respond without false signals driving me insane. My hunting partner swings a 250, and his machine also reacts this way.
 
If you check out detector specifications at Tesoro's web site, you might see something like this:

Optimum Temp. Range 30° to 100° F

Why would it be the same for all their detectors?

Well, they expect you to put batteries in them. And the performance of batteries alters enough when outside of these boundaries to potentially start causing problems with the detector.

Stolen from the internets:

All normal batteries depend on a chemical reaction to push electrons and most of these chemical reactions happen faster and freer at warm temperatures (perhaps between 60F and 100F) so a really cold battery won't deliver the current or life of a moderately warm battery. Cold enough and it won't work at all. Usually it will be fine when thawed again.


Top
 
Topdecker said:
All normal batteries depend on a chemical reaction to push electrons and most of these chemical reactions happen faster and freer at warm temperatures (perhaps between 60F and 100F) so a really cold battery won't deliver the current or life of a moderately warm battery. Cold enough and it won't work at all. Usually it will be fine when thawed again.
Top
Click to expand...

I wonder if you bought one of those cheap $1 disposable handwarmers and taped it to the outside cover of the Ace and maybe insulated it with cloth or something. Or better yet, stuff it under the cover that Garrett sells for the Ace models. Would it keep the batteries warm enough to keep the detector working properly in cold conditions? :hmmm:
 
Lithium batteries reportedly are much less effected by the cold. It would be an expensive but pretty interesting experiment.

Top
 
Metal conducts better in the wet, not sure about the frozen......I don't dig that !!!!...
 
frozen falsing n such

I have tried digging at old sites in the woods several times during winter months, I have encountered some really nice signals which I chase and chase and chase and never find. nada, zilch, zero. go back when thawed and still nothing, not even a blip. I have come to the conclusion that frozen ground does indeed induce falsing although maybe it doesnt necessarily create a false signal so much as channel or enhance a signal which is already there. Beaches also do similar things, especiall beaches that have sediment layers. once you break that layer the signal changes or dissappears drastically. It will not stop be from digging in the frozen wasteland of the northeast however it does change how much energy I expend trying to recover a signal.

I was on a large cent signal for over 1/2 hour last year, huge crater of a hole and I kept hitting this ice layer. After removing probably 1/2 cubic yard of dirt and rocks the signal dissipated and never returned. Pinpointer interestingly enough never picked it up either. I was (and still) swing the AT Pro, wide open, sens 1 below max. I did notice that if I was off of a path, or worn area where there was more leaf littler and the ground was a little better protected then I didn't have that problem, only on trails or around places where the ground was compacted did I encounter the falsing signals like on the beaches in CT. DAMN YOUR MINERALIZED BEACHES CONNECTICUT!

beautiful rocks though....

tah tah for now, HH hunting everyone.

Chef
 
If there is a water + ice then ground is conductive
If there is just ice then ground is not conductive.

Liquids is what makes ground conductive
 
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