Some more on the learning curve with the E Trac........

Several of you know I've had an E Trac for almost two years. I've gotten pretty dang efficient with it, I thought. You can hunt like most do and seperate out the good easy targets and a few of the harder to get ones. I've hunted a bunch of places and found a lot of good targets since that ML box arrived. I got very comfortable doing that and well just knew I was good with the machine myself. Comfortable being the key word here. I started hunting different places more and more expanding out from home. (I really should have looked closer to home) more on that later. My comfortable self was very happy and excited to get all those perfect hits, classic hits might I say that kept me very satisfied. Now, I falsely claimed, from what I knew that evidently there just wasn't near the older coins in these parts as up north I guess. After all I was wearing em out and they still seemed to elude me except the occasional silver or wheat. I was using an E Trac so they had to be jumping up and surrendering as the magnetic field passed over them. As the months have passed by I've been back to quite a few of the spots I hunted and still dug good targets. Lots of them! Lets back up 1 day to yesterday and our seeded club hunt. Good turnout and looked like 2500 or more targets in the ground. I had to cook lunch for all of us so I was cooking while the hunt was taking place and watching. At least 90% of the people who hunt are very comfortable with the way they hunt even if there is a known amount of stuff in the ground. There's still at least 1500 pieces still in the ground today I'll guess. Back to the analogy somewhat. Let's say most are very comfortable from what I've seen in the three years I've been enjoying this great lifestyle., metal detecting. Somewhere about a year or so with the E Trac I allowed the machine to teach me more, like that huh! I was comfortable...... I ran across some pretty deep stuff that did not sound like my good stuff I dig but did get me a decent at times TID. Puzzle falling together but still missing a couple hundred pieces lets say to complete it. I dug them and had some great finds. They weren't what I thought they should be but never the less good. When I could along the way of digging those good signals, they are overwhelming you know, stumble across an older target laying flat without any other metal within a half mile I'd say there's another one! I'm getting good! What I really didn't realize is that there's a lot of coins in places I and my hunting clan have pounded! We all hunt with Minelabs so there just cannot be anything between here and 180 degrees the other side of the earth, I again allowed my machine to teach me a little more. Along came a book by Andy, The Treasure Hunters Guide that I have read over and over. It opened my eye's a good bit, we can say it's all about location location location. I had been driving away from the oldest part of my area in search of the greatest place in the world to detect! Well with my new found ideas in my head started hunting about 10 minutes or so from the house. Location location, the quality of the finds soared. However there were a lot of good classic signals showing me the older coins. Three Minelabs and quite a bit of hours with my hunting buddies and myself. We found a good bit. I had still yet to conquer the machine and allow it teach me. As the older places in town dried up somewhat we were hunting and I asked one of my buddies to check this target. She ran over it quite a few times and said trash. I moved the coil very slowly across it and the machine said no, a quarter. I dug about two inches and hit something metal feeling and out popped a piece of metal about 3X4, about half inch above it was a quarter. I knew it was supposed to be able to do that but you know I hadn't allowed it to by sweeping a little faster than I should I guess. Now we know the E Trac is supposed to work a lot better ran slower across the ground. Several days later I decided to run it slooooooowwww in a place I had pounded with it and my buddies had been all over it too. I allowed the machine to work at it's fullest capabilities let's say. A very small spot I had got a lot of wheats and some silver out of. As I was sweeping this same little area actually yesterday afternoon standstill slow. I discovered, and imagined, letting the machine do the work, an ant could outrun the coil movement no joke. I allowed the machine to detect the silver and wheats that had iron laying on them or all over them. I had missed 14 coins! Only one was deep, all the rest were within two inches of the surface. A Rosie was within half and inch of the surface with a small piece of metal covering half of it. I had not allowed the machine to teach me what it could do. Now enough of my rambling and I hope this is of some use to someone. To me there are some very key points here that I know will help increase your finds in number and quality. I'm headed out right now to let some ants win the race. HH
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I agree with you 110 %. I cherry pick an area with a normal swing speed and have noticed that if I go back over the same area with a snail pace swing speed that I've picked up a lot that was left behind. :thinkingabout:

It's great to really start to learn your machine. thumbsup01 I have to confess I probably run too fast at times. I do find that iron falses sound really good when you move over them at a normal for other machine speed. Slowing down, it disappears and breaks up.

We need to keep telling ourselves: slow down, slow down, slow down.

It helps me go slower if I keep my head down. I hunt some BIG areas. If I look around too much while I am swinging, I think I subliminally tell myself to cover more ground. If I keep looking down at each clump of grass and looking at blips then I tend to go much more slow and thorough. Maybe too slow. Still learning this Etrac and hear different definitions of slow. Some say 4-5 seconds each way. Videos I see people rarely go that slow. After I get a tiny/tight hit, maybe I take the snails pace too literally. Oh well... Off to watch more videos! Good post!

I'm moving the coil in the next speed above stopped not moving at all. Unreal slow, the E Trac will pick through the discriminated targets and find what you are looking for, the accepted target. You read all about this kind of stuff in the manuals but, at least I, find it hard to beleive until my face is smashed in the dirt with my own findings. You know the really cool thing about it is, it is not so much about depth as most tend to assume but finding the shallow targets that are there but cannot be found for some reason or another.

I see that you guys are applying the points I made HERE. This is what I have been advocating ever since I first got a hold of the E-Trac. I always felt many were neglecting the machine's main strength, its ability to help the user to pull good targets from trashy sites. Too often there is an obsession with achieving depth when in actuality many of the desirable targets at trashy sites are well within the reach of most detectors. It's just that the E-Trac simply does a great job at locating those desirable targets hidden amongst the trash.

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Originally Posted by angellionel

I always felt many were neglecting the machine's main strength, its ability to help the user to pull good targets from trashy sites. Too often there is an obsession with achieving depth when in actuality many of the desirable targets at trashy sites are well within the reach of most detectors. It's just that the E-Trac simply does a great job at locating those desirable targets hidden amongst the trash.

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Words of great wisdom. If you take anything from this thread take this one paragraph. :yes: Thank you Angel for this sage advice.

Jack

I've learned to change my swing speed from about 4 seconds to complete a pass in one direction, (crusin' speed) in open areas, to a snails pace (dead speed lol) in iron or junk patches. Just follow the threshold. If it's blanking out a lot, slow it down, if it's constant then speed up a little. So far it has worked for me. We never really learn our machines completely. At best we find settings and techniques that find targets, and we assume this is the best we can run it at. The hardest thing to do is change settings when things are going great.

I did about a seven minute video this afternoon hunting a very trashy bunch of nulled out areas in a small area, watch the footsteps. I wish I had audio of the tones the E Trac was making while doing this, just I cannot tell in trash like that when I get that tiniest blip tone that tells me to stop and investigate with out my headphones on. Towards the end of the detecting segment of it is CLASSIC nulled out spot and locating the target amongst the trash.Several times checking the ferrous reading if I am hitting on the tip or edge of something. Hunting by sound then doing a double check with the TID. I'll try and get it off my Droid X and on to here. The great thing about the video is it will show in trash once it latches on to an accepted target it just about won't let go............Cool!

I agree. Angel has been posting for the past two years on this forum how the key of finding silver with the E-Trac is to learn to find it among trash. He has given very detailed instructions as to how to take best advantage of it. It's tough to do a good video of it as it is very dependent on settings, and also hard to interpret just in an isolated sense. But I am glad you have found that advice to be useful! thumbsup01

While out hunting today, I kept this thread in mind and played with the signals. I found that it really takes almost NO movement to get a signal from a real target. Every time I got a signal I would snail-crawl the coil over the spot and just listen. The signal may have given a little more wobble due to the slowness, but it was always a solid signal. When I got those blips and chirps that are typically iron falses, the snail-crawl would just give a null. If it gave a signal, it always resulted in a coin regardless of the iron in the spot.

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Originally Posted by Jason in Enid

While out hunting today, I kept this thread in mind and played with the signals. I found that it really takes almost NO movement to get a signal from a real target. Every time I got a signal I would snail-crawl the coil over the spot and just listen. The signal may have given a little more wobble due to the slowness, but it was always a solid signal. When I got those blips and chirps that are typically iron falses, the snail-crawl would just give a null. If it gave a signal, it always resulted in a coin regardless of the iron in the spot.

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lol You have no idea how many of them chirps I dwell on lol Trying to make them solid enough. I have to agree with you that every signal that seems to want to stick, is usually a non ferrous target. Every chirp I make repeat (sometimes), is always me locating just the right part of the nail to get a reading rofl I never learn. :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by coinnut

lol You have no idea how many of them chirps I dwell on lol Trying to make them solid enough. I have to agree with you that every signal that seems to want to stick, is usually a non ferrous target. Every chirp I make repeat (sometimes), is always me locating just the right part of the nail to get a reading rofl I never learn. :rolleyes:

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Yah that is me to a T... Even becomes harder to match the good signal while in pinpoint. Which is a good thing... Sometimes it is faster to give that swinging arm a rest and dig it even though you know it is trash!

What you will notice when you go into pinpoint though is that it is reading the metal along the detection strip for what it really is. If it stayed the desired TID in pinpoint then you can reast assured there is no other metal around it. I have lost a great repeatable signal and just could not get back to the correct angle to make it do it again to confirm a dig. Then put it in all metal and it's like a metal scrap yard from the sounds and numbers giving me feedback.

I learned early to ignore the reading during pinpoint. I have seen good targets, including silver, show everything including 35-45 during pinpoint. They were all repeatable signals in regular hunting mode.

As long as you are happy with the target in disc mode, and it pinpoints where it signals, dig it.

One more observation from hunting....

I have discovered that a coin on-edge doesn't respond well to the hover method. It will blank out or sputter. If you give the coil a little (VERY little) wiggle you can get the signal to come back. It won't have pretty numbers, but the sound will be good. If the coin (edge or angled) is next to iron, you probably wont be able to isolate it in pinpoint. The iron will usually always pull the pinpoint to itself. But if you can get a decently repeatable signal with the wiggle you should dig. I have found it to be a good target more than a dry hole.

Also... If you get nice signal with a deep pinpoint, check the surrounding zone before you dig! I have been fooled several times by this. The outside edge of your coil will pick up a nearby, close-to-surface target. You will get a good read and solid pinpoint even though nothing is there. If you have a surface target close by, dig it out first.

Dang, wish I could spend this much time with my E-Trac back at home. Always a honey-do or errand or boyscouts, or something else to take priority!

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Originally Posted by Jason in Enid

One more observation from hunting....

I have discovered that a coin on-edge doesn't respond well to the hover method. It will blank out or sputter. If you give the coil a little (VERY little) wiggle you can get the signal to come back. It won't have pretty numbers, but the sound will be good. If the coin (edge or angled) is next to iron, you probably wont be able to isolate it in pinpoint. The iron will usually always pull the pinpoint to itself. But if you can get a decently repeatable signal with the wiggle you should dig. I have found it to be a good target more than a dry hole.

Also... If you get nice signal with a deep pinpoint, check the surrounding zone before you dig! I have been fooled several times by this. The outside edge of your coil will pick up a nearby, close-to-surface target. You will get a good read and solid pinpoint even though nothing is there. If you have a surface target close by, dig it out first.

Dang, wish I could spend this much time with my E-Trac back at home. Always a honey-do or errand or boyscouts, or something else to take priority!

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I recently learned that lesson after digging a crater! Hope to avoid next time...

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Originally Posted by Diggler

I recently learned that lesson after digging a crater! Hope to avoid next time...

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Yep, me too lol I noticed an aluminum can burried just beneath some leaves, makes you dig real deep just ahead of it :ticked: Not only did I waste a lot of time digging, but I only get a junk can for a reward rofl

Here's a bit of advice i got from a dear friend in penn. that has been detecting for 35 years , he said , when you have a good area with good potential try walking backwards and detect , it really slows you down.

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Originally Posted by dave in iowa

Here's a bit of advice i got from a dear friend in penn. that has been detecting for 35 years , he said , when you have a good area with good potential try walking backwards and detect , it really slows you down.

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Most people already think we are crazies, walking backwards while detecting will just prove it to them! lol lol