Keep That Coil CLEAN

Nicholas West said:

I began to notice, after a few afternoons detecting on semi-muddy, iron rich trashy soil, that my Fisher F44 wasn't quite as zippy and precise as usual, and was very unstable.

I suddenly realized that my coil was quite dirty and caked here and there with dried soil. I went home and cleaned it completely back to shiny like-new. Next time I went out with it there was a marked difference and huge improvement in its performance, back to what it was when I bought it.

The moral is, keep that coil clean. If it has dirt, especially iron-rich dirt, stuck to it this will blunt the sensitivity and confuse the discrimination circuits. If your detector seems jumpy or dull witted, take a look at the coil.

The nearest analogy I can make is trying to see precisely with a dirty pair of glasses. The coil is the "lens" of your detector, so it must be treated with that kind of care. If you don't have a coil cover, definitely get one.

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RayK said:

I look at the coil cover as a sacrificial piece that can get beat to hell and back with all of the scrapes from sand and rocks. Just strip it off and put a new one back on, this way the coil never gets all scratched up. In my mind much cheaper than wrecking a coil.

Ray

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Gauntlet said:

So you're saying the coil can't see through the dirt on it, to find the targets in the dirt?

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RayK said:

I look at the coil cover as a sacrificial piece that can get beat to hell and back with all of the scrapes from sand and rocks. Just strip it off and put a new one back on, this way the coil never gets all scratched up. In my mind much cheaper than wrecking a coil.

Ray

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Nicholas West said:

That's exactly what I'm saying.....any iron-laden dirt stuck to your coil is picked up by your detector and interferes with the focus of the coil and muddies the ground balance of the detector. It's not that it can't see through it, but it biases the sensitivity your detector. You wouldn't want a dirty windshield while driving either.

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