Learning your Equinox 800

maxxkatt

Forum Supporter
Joined
Sep 20, 2015
Messages
3,485
Location
North Atlanta, GA
on one posts or reply to a post I pointed out that air test were worthless in comparing different detectors.

Now I have to correct myself. It depends on the type of air test. If you are just doing depth air test, I still agree they are not of much value.

However other air test are very valuable for a newbie trying to learn the Equinox 800.

This is where you have a mixture of iron and good targets close together and especially bottle caps.

This is where you experiment with recovery speed, FE and F2 settings. Plus learning to hear silver mixed in with other iron targets.

Play around with these settings and you will soon be able to totally eliminate bottle caps and learn the effects of fast and slow recovery speed and low and high Iron Bias settings especially the new one added F2.

You can not visualize what is happening underground where you can only hear and see the TID display in real life. But on such an air test as in the picture you can really connect in your brain what you actually see in the air test on the board with the audio and TID display. It simulates what is in the underground mixture of iron and good targets.

Unfortunately in real life in a trashy area you hear a mixture of signals, not a separate silver tone and separate iron tone. Often a blended tone and blended average on the display. This is called masking when iron or other trash garbles the signal of the target signal. These are often called iffy signals.

hunting in a field or beach with no trash is somewhat easy compared to real life hunting around trash. Humans drop valuable coins, rings etc, but even more trash. This is reality.

On wet ocean beach hunting, you have a helper in the tide, wind and currents and gravity which will separate targets by weight. So you will find coins and rings among the lead weights and typically not among the lighter trash such as pop tops, pull tabs, bottle caps. If all you are finding is the latter then move til you start finding the former.
 

Attachments

  • airtestsmaller.jpg
    airtestsmaller.jpg
    121.7 KB · Views: 1,347
Got my nox 800 saturday morning. Depressing just a little bit to be way back down on the learning curve again but should progress quicker since at least now I have some detector experience.

Air testing targets thrown on the ground really helped initially, I am going to go further like your post suggests.

Deep aluminum cans ate my lunch yesterday in a school yard, wow some of them are china deep! Amazing! How does a can get that friggin deep? I was getting clad quarter signal on them--- I really need to figure out how to NOT go after those deep cans...
 
Did you try lifting your coil a few inches? If it's a large target it will still signal. Also large targets signal longer in a sweep.
 
Yes I did lift the coil to do the can check but only a couple times. I thought I had coin signal, I still have yet to learn the audio like I know the ATPRO audio but cans were still a problem with that one too. The few times I did lift the coil signal dropped of right away I assume because the cans were really deep.
I'm kinda digging everything too to try to figure out what this machine is trying to tell me.
Throughout my first experience with the nox 800 one thing kept coming to my attention. Deep. This thing is deep! I had to refresh my skills cutting deep plugs with my root slayer nomad. I'm really pleased as that was something I had been looking for and right out of the box it seems to have the depth I want. Am I imagining this?
I was running park 1, noise canceled, ground balanced and default settings on everything except sensitivity as high as it would go without getting noisy, around 20 or so, never higher and certainly lower for sure.
I don't think this one has the update with the new iron bias, at least I was not able to toggle that function up.
 
Yes I did lift the coil to do the can check but only a couple times. I thought I had coin signal, I still have yet to learn the audio like I know the ATPRO audio but cans were still a problem with that one too. The few times I did lift the coil signal dropped of right away I assume because the cans were really deep.

I'm kinda digging everything too to try to figure out what this machine is trying to tell me.

Throughout my first experience with the nox 800 one thing kept coming to my attention. Deep. This thing is deep! I had to refresh my skills cutting deep plugs with my root slayer nomad. I'm really pleased as that was something I had been looking for and right out of the box it seems to have the depth I want. Am I imagining this?
I was running park 1, noise canceled, ground balanced and default settings on everything except sensitivity as high as it would go without getting noisy, around 20 or so, never higher and certainly lower for sure.
I don't think this one has the update with the new iron bias, at least I was not able to toggle that function up.

That's what I did also, would dig up every signal/TID number for many of my initial hunts getting used to the Nox 800, then after a while you get an idea what signals/TID numbers to focus more on, especially if you're doing a quick hunt and want to try to limit your trash digging :lol:

(even though I did have some digs where after removing trash I was able to get a good find in the same area !)
 
That's what I did also, would dig up every signal/TID number for many of my initial hunts getting used to the Nox 800, then after a while you get an idea what signals/TID numbers to focus more on, especially if you're doing a quick hunt and want to try to limit your trash digging :lol:

(even though I did have some digs where after removing trash I was able to get a good find in the same area !)

I snuck out yesterday morning and was in my honey hole right after the rain bands left the area. No one around, super deserted. All the sane peoples are home in bed. Been over this place several times with the ATPRO and cleaned up lots of clad and one silver quarter with it. Was itching to go over the same spot with the nox to see how she would do. Things are making more sense now. I ran a coin program i found in the Nox book I bought. Seemed to work pretty well and I am getting more used to the tones/VDI scale. I pulled more clad and some bling bracelet jewelry but dug a 1944 Mercury S dime ( my first merc) and a really toasted war nickel (another first) for a two silver hunt less than a week after getting my 800. Whoo hooo!
My pace slowed down and I only got a small area done less than a fourth of the whole place. The pace was slower because I was digging deeper holes having to use my big shovel to recover the targets the nox identifies and I was digging all targets, not cherry picking. No one around either which is another reason the big shovel came out. Looks like I had done a ok job cleaning out the shallow stuff there with the ATPRO but still missed some. I know for a fact I had gone over the spot I pulled the Merc and the war nickel out of with the ATPRO and missed them. The nox gave me a jumpy 27 on the merc, I forget what on the nickel but it was different. I'll try to get some pics up. Can't wait to get back out with the nox.
Oh yeah the aluminum still kicks my ass! Aluminum cans and aluminum screw tops. Arrggghhhh! Rusty bottlecaps not so much but one will get me every once and a while.
 
I snuck out yesterday morning and was in my honey hole right after the rain bands left the area. No one around, super deserted. All the sane peoples are home in bed. Been over this place several times with the ATPRO and cleaned up lots of clad and one silver quarter with it. Was itching to go over the same spot with the nox to see how she would do. Things are making more sense now. I ran a coin program i found in the Nox book I bought. Seemed to work pretty well and I am getting more used to the tones/VDI scale. I pulled more clad and some bling bracelet jewelry but dug a 1944 Mercury S dime ( my first merc) and a really toasted war nickel (another first) for a two silver hunt less than a week after getting my 800. Whoo hooo!
My pace slowed down and I only got a small area done less than a fourth of the whole place. The pace was slower because I was digging deeper holes having to use my big shovel to recover the targets the nox identifies and I was digging all targets, not cherry picking. No one around either which is another reason the big shovel came out. Looks like I had done a ok job cleaning out the shallow stuff there with the ATPRO but still missed some. I know for a fact I had gone over the spot I pulled the Merc and the war nickel out of with the ATPRO and missed them. The nox gave me a jumpy 27 on the merc, I forget what on the nickel but it was different. I'll try to get some pics up. Can't wait to get back out with the nox.
Oh yeah the aluminum still kicks my ass! Aluminum cans and aluminum screw tops. Arrggghhhh! Rusty bottlecaps not so much but one will get me every once and a while.

Congrats on the merc and the nickel !!!! :thumbsup:

Yep, the Nox can have you finding some deeper targets and we hope that means older coins when we start digging that deep :lol:

(I know what you mean about the aluminum :lol:)
 
Congrats on the merc and the nickel !!!! :thumbsup:

Yep, the Nox can have you finding some deeper targets and we hope that means older coins when we start digging that deep :lol:

(I know what you mean about the aluminum :lol:)

Thank you Gary! I was pretty happy about recovering two since my silver for the year was only four :no: Now six and three from that one spot--I plan to pound the snot out of the rest of it and see what comes up while learning the nox better.

Edit to add: Forgot to mention I am pulling nails out of holes with targets with the nox. That almost never happened with the ATPRO. Just an observation.
 
Last edited:
Got my nox 800 saturday morning. Depressing just a little bit to be way back down on the learning curve again but should progress quicker since at least now I have some detector experience.

Air testing targets thrown on the ground really helped initially, I am going to go further like your post suggests.

Deep aluminum cans ate my lunch yesterday in a school yard, wow some of them are china deep! Amazing! How does a can get that friggin deep? I was getting clad quarter signal on them--- I really need to figure out how to NOT go after those deep cans...

I encourage you to experiment using pinpoint on coin sized targets and cans.
Lift coil above them and use pinpoint.
Doing this in the field won’t keep you from digging all bigger things, but will definitely cut down on them.
Listen closely to the audio using pinpoint.
 
Thank you Gary! I was pretty happy about recovering two since my silver for the year was only four :no: Now six and three from that one spot--I plan to pound the snot out of the rest of it and see what comes up while learning the nox better.

Edit to add: Forgot to mention I am pulling nails out of holes with targets with the nox. That almost never happened with the ATPRO. Just an observation.

Yep that Nox will pull silver near iron!!!👍
 
This photo is especially bad but let me just say I will try to do better in the future. This nickel is really toasted. I had to use my zeiss loupe to try to figure a date, It is 194-something so am thinking war nickel.
 

Attachments

  • warnic_merc_sized - Copy.jpg
    warnic_merc_sized - Copy.jpg
    29.6 KB · Views: 875
I encourage you to experiment using pinpoint on coin sized targets and cans.
Lift coil above them and use pinpoint.
Doing this in the field won’t keep you from digging all bigger things, but will definitely cut down on them.
Listen closely to the audio using pinpoint.

I like the nox pinpoint, it works very well, never thought to lift the coil! Will try this for sure, thanks.
 
I like the nox pinpoint, it works very well, never thought to lift the coil! Will try this for sure, thanks.

What I was talking about is when testing with say a coin and a can on top of the ground, raise coil to simulate depth and notice pinpoint behavior/sound.
Squeal equals shallow or bigger deeper target usually.
 
What I was talking about is when testing with say a coin and a can on top of the ground, raise coil to simulate depth and notice pinpoint behavior/sound.
Squeal equals shallow or bigger deeper target usually.

Thanks tnsharpshooter, I need all the help I can get!

Here is a pic of that toasted war nickel.
toastednickel.jpg
 

Attachments

  • warnic_merc_sized - Copy.jpg
    warnic_merc_sized - Copy.jpg
    29.6 KB · Views: 845
Davedude learnng his new machine

Thank you Gary! I was pretty happy about recovering two since my silver for the year was only four :no: Now six and three from that one spot--I plan to pound the snot out of the rest of it and see what comes up while learning the nox better.

Edit to add: Forgot to mention I am pulling nails out of holes with targets with the nox. That almost never happened with the ATPRO. Just an observation.

With the way you are learning that machine would love to see what you could pull out of the ground and beaches on your next trip to the Philippines .
 
This photo is especially bad but let me just say I will try to do better in the future. This nickel is really toasted. I had to use my zeiss loupe to try to figure a date, It is 194-something so am thinking war nickel.

Thanks tnsharpshooter, I need all the help I can get!

Here is a pic of that toasted war nickel.
View attachment 454449

Nice merc !!!! …..as far as the toasted nickel, still better than Zincoln any day ! :lol:
 
Yepper just got mine and went out after work yesterday so almost dark and I will say hell of a back light. But ran it in park 1 and 2 for about 30 min. and dug the most deepest and smallest can slaw I have every seen. FB field pounded with my atpro and eTrac. Let the learning curve start but should be short with what I've seen with a few tweaks here and there.
Big dif between dealing with a can and slaw the size of a ring or even a earring.
 
Back
Top Bottom