E-Trac: On channels, auto/manual, and mineralization

This is not a complete article, but just some long-winded thoughts from today's hunt.

First, as I have previously posted (I hope on this forum lol), I've found channels 2, 6, 9. and 10 are the best for deep silver (I did a test on a target I was certain was a very deep silver before digging, and those are the only 4 channels that saw it cleanly). (For E-Trac newbies, channel ranges from 1-11 and is what is assigned when you hit the Noise Cancel button. It can also be assigned manually under Expert Menu).

Given that each channel supposedly generates a different set of frequencies, it stands to reason that some would be better than others for particular targets. I understand, for example, that 4 may be better for small gold. I stated the ones I think are best for silver. I've read that 2 is best for the UK folks hunting hammered silver. You get the idea.

Anyway, I always hunt on channel 9, as that is what I've identified as a good channel for silver, and it is usually the channel the machine assigns me anyway. I don't remember the last time I did a noise cancel; I just lock in on 9 and go, and have been content with my silver finds on channel 9.

Today was no different, and I had 5 silvers quite early in the hunt happydance02 All were what I'd call E-Trac silvers, which means they were sort of hard, or at least I felt the E-Trac technology gave me an advantage over those who had come before.

And I'm simply gridding a zone, doing rank after rank of grid, and after those 5 silvers, nada. And hour and half goes by, and not even a deep wheatie. I struggled to get a clad Q at 4 inches, and wrote it off as tons of trash in the hole. But something was wrong.

Here's what I observed. First of all, I always run manual (man 26 usually), tho I keep a constant tab on auto. During the hot zone where I was pulling the silvers, auto was tracking at 20-22 (For E-Trac newbies running manual, just click the right arrow button to see where auto is tracking, then click it again to get back to manual). In the dead zone, auto was tracking 17-18. That shouldn't matter if running in manual, but it appeared to, unless, of course, for some reason this next section of grid were completely hunted out. I wasn't willing to believe that, as, given the layout of the site, there was no real reason to.

The other observation was that the dirt in the hot zone was some sort of orange dirt, while the dirt in the dead zone was the traditional brown kind. I'm no soil scientist, but at least I noticed this.

While in the dead zone, I noticed the machine was really noisy, but I'm used to this in manual. Its always really noisy. You learn to hear the silver over the noise. But, since something was wrong, I decided to do a noise cancel. It assigned me channel 10.

I pressed on, and immediately hit a deep wheatie signal in this dead zone of the grid. At that point, I checked every channel on the target before digging, and channel 9 was the only channel that could not see it. Weird, Teach me to try to outsmart the machine, except I had already found 5 difficult silvers 20 feet away on channel 9. Moreover, channel 10 gave me an auto tracking of 22-23, while channel 9 was 17-18. Since I was running manual, this shouldn't matter, but apparently it did; I could see no deep targets on channel 9 in this brown dirt, even on man 26.

So, I had to regrid the dead zone section on channel 10, and sure enough, I found plenty of deep targets I missed the first time on channel 9 (and I'm a meticulous gridder). Eventually I made it back to the hot zone; I'm not exactly sure where it began, but there came a point were no deep targets were being found.

So, what is going on? I'm not sure, but I tend to believe that there is an interaction between mineralization, channel, and auto/manual. Even tho channel is related to EMI noise reduction, it seems clear that it is also related to mineralization, given my observation that the hot zone where channel 9 was effective had some sort of orange dirt (and likely a different mineralization and auto tracking) from the dead zone where channel 10 was effective had brown dirt, and a better auto tracking on channel 10.

So, my new rule is this. Hunt channel 9 at man 26 or so. However, if auto tracking drops below 20, noise cancel and look for a new channel with better auto tracking. Hopefully it will be channel 2, 6, or 10. If not, try one of those channels, and see if it has good auto tracking and otherwise performs well.

I hope this makes sense. lol My guess is that this doesn't apply at all to those fortunate enough to be in locales with low mineralization, where it probably doesn't much matter. We have high, and extremely variable mineralization, and I think today's observations may help those in similar situations. At least I hope they do.

What it comes down to -- there are times to run channel 9 no matter what, and times to listen to the machine. My tests verify this. The trick is to learn when. Hope these thoughts help.

BTW, after the 5 silvers, got 2 more at the very end of the hunt for a total of 7 (on channel 10 in the brown dirt). Also, from early in the hunt. the silver Q was at only 4 inches, but I pulled that awkward looking ferrous target out of the hole first. The E-Trac knew it was a silver down there; I would have loved to hear how that target sounded on other machines. That would be very interesting to me.

Again, hope this long post helps someone. Thinking about these issues on the E-Trac certainly helps me.

great post.

It makes sense to me. I'll have to pay more attention to the auto-track :thinkingabout:

Thanks for all of the hard work. Now do it with gold! rofl I have heard and discussed this idea before, might even remember hearing that Angel prefers channel 9 for silver? I have been meaning to do an air test version of what you did with gold, but that would take mineralization out of the equation... I think the channel selection is why some people seem to have bad luck picking up certain gold objects with their Etrac. I have a couple nice 12-1 gold items that would be ideal for the test. I will remember your post next time I am out in the field.
Thanks!

Great post Randy!

As for gold, I think the E-Trac hits just fine on rings. It's the very small items like chains, pendants, etc that are hard for it to hit on. But I don't feel it's weak, my PI has trouble hitting on very tiny gold too.

Thanks alot for the info its funny how you use a detector for so long and still learn new things from the help of other

Great post. thumbsup01 Thanks for all the work. I can use some of the info with my Explorer. I need to try things in the field, experiment with different setting. Great advice. :perfect10:

I found this post very helpful, as I've been thinking along these same lines lately. I have an overwhelming feeling that I'm not getting any E-trac finds. Everything seems shallow and like I'm cherry picking. Who knows though. I just recently moved to Dallas (this past weekend) from Denver, so hopefully I can play a bit with these ideas.

One question that I had for other E-trac users, which may deserve its own thread, is 'what kind of numbers do you get in your area, on your best channel for autosensitivity +3?' I hear that a lot of you folks in the NE part of the country hunt on 26-29 manual almost exclusively. That always amazed me. What kind of auto do you get? In Colorado, it was everything I could do to listen to a manual in the low 20's, as more often than not, my auto +3 would be in the 13-18 range. They say Colorado has tough soil, so that's why I wanted to ask you other E-trac users in different parts of the country. It would be cool to make a cartoonish map showing the results too.

I know when I've taken my detector to Minnesota and Michigan, auto sensitivity comes in much higher (sandier soil, less clay like in Colorado). I'm curious to see what my auto will say in the DFW area.

I am from Indiana and have just tried some diferent channels and it really dose seem to make a dif. on auto I have some places I run auto +3 and have hit 29 and some will not move from 19 :dontknow: but if you scan it seems to raise a bit higher I to always felt I was only digging only 4-5in silver but after I read this post I have been paying more notice of the auto trac and since I have dug a 9in merc and the other silver seems stronger it really should not make a differ but I think it just might c >: because I always did run man.30 and leave it :embarrassed: but do to another post that decribed it as driving in fog with your brights on 8/ even more makes auto +3 a better choice :thinkingabout: :thinkingabout: what a forum we have here thanks all |:confused:) |:confused:)

Thanks for the post. Getting my Etrac tomorrow and can't wait :twirlingeyes: I do have a question; does the Etrac automatically change channels or does that only occur when you noise cancel?

The E-Trac won't automatically change channels on its own unless you Noise Cancel. (You can manually change it to a certain channel as well).

Your post makes sense to me Randy because EMI is related to soil mineralization. Right? And the auto-tracking would represent the level of mineralization, so if auto +3 is giving a lower number (using your example, under 20) despite whatever you have the sensitivity set on manually, it seems that another channel (with better auto-tracking/less mineralization) would be preferable. It's something I never paid attention to, but I will now for sure.

I don't know if EMI is related to mineralization. I always thought they were unrelated, but I'm certainly no expert, and could be wrong. I think there are three unrelated factors --

a) which channel does the machine like for EMI. You get this by holding it a foot off the ground, and doing a noise cancel.

b) which channels are natively best for deep silver (my tests suggest 2, 6, 9, and 10, at least on one site where I spent quite a bit of time testing this; on another site, as alluded to above, 9 was a dud).

c) which channel is best for the local mineralization. I get this by looking at where auto tracks (and just listening to how smooth it runs; I always run manual), and see if one channel seems to have an advantage over another.

So. my procedure is this. At a new site, I do a noise cancel, and if it gives me 2, 6, 9, or 10, I press on (tho I don't really like 6 and 10 as much as 2 and 9, but I take them). I'm always happy if it gives me one of those, as two of the three problems are accounted for right off the bat).

If it doesn't give me one of those, I manually set it to 2 or 9. If the channel runs crappy (judged by me objectively as auto running below 20, and subjectively by me hitting deep targets), I noise cancel again and use the assigned frequency, and see how this runs, and see if I'm getting deep targets.

If I get a target that I know is a deep coin, right on the edge of detectability but with a clean signal, and I think I will be hunting the site repeatedly, I cycle thru the channels (often I just test 2, 6, 9, and 10) to see if any can't hit the target cleanly, and make a note of this for the site.

If its a site I've been working, I just use the channel that had been working the best previously, regardless of what the machine wants to do. Sometimes that is a mistake, as you get different EMI on different days (I guess anyway; the site I was working when I did all this experimentation was an urban site, so I imagine alot of EMI is going on, or who knows, maybe it was sunspots :confused:).

Another thing I will do is look to jack the manual. I never go below man 26 unless it is a TTF site (then I often use auto, as depth often isn't the issue at those sites). I just grin and bear the chatter. If however, the auto tracking is good (23 or better), I jack manual to 28 and see how it sounds. I think it makes a difference when you can do that, tho our dirt is so horrible it is rare that you can.

And my tests suggests that all this stuff matters. Getting it right will not take you from a 0 silver day to a 10 silver day, but it may add one or two, depending, maybe 5 over a week of hard hunting? I dunno :crazy:. I do know I observe some channels hitting deep silvers cleanly, and some not (same target, all other things being equal). Many people probably will not want to deal with this (especially newbies, as there is alot to the machine to learn before this stuff), but I try to get every advantage I can.

I wish I could offer a cookbook on how to get the right channel, but it is more a juggling act, more art than science, and I suppose I get it wrong more often than right. This is made even more complicated by sites like the one I was working where the dirt (and mineralization), kept changing, and where channel 9 was great 10 feet away; it could hit nothing in the next grid over. Then again, it could just be hocus pocus or superstition on my part -- I don't use rigorous scientific method on this stuff -- I don't like wasting time in the field.

One other thing -- its been stated that a given man level is not the same as a given auto level. The way I understand it, is that man will jack all the frequencies to the given level, whereas auto may only be running one there, and if its not a low frequency, you may be out of luck if you are looking for silver. Don't know if that, or any of this, is true, just what I read elsewhere. I wish Minelab would come clean on all of this, put it in the manual or on their blog, and leave me to detecting rather than experimenting >{

Well, I don't think I have much more to add to this subject >:tongue: lol; that was a novel, wasn't it? Just wanted to now get all my thoughts on this in one place, FWIW. Just play with your machine in your conditions, and try to optimize these factors if you care to. I wouldn't worry about this if you are a newbie -- there are other more important aspects of the machine to learn IMHO. This stuff is sort of esoteric.

HTH

8/ lol Obviously I know nothing about electrical engineering lol When people start talking about how detectors work my eyes start to glaze over :cheesysmile:

No, EMI has to do with the surroundings not the ground mineralization (I think) but it seems to me that where there is one, there often is the other. I am sure there is nothing scientific behind that, though.

All I know is that I did not pay much attention to channels before, but now I'm going to.

We should also get into a discussion about exactly why increased sensitivity does not necessarily mean increased depth. I remember a very complicated thread on that somewhere a few years ago that left my head spinning. :shocked01: I prefer to think of them as directly proportional. :cheesysmile:

Interesting thread. Perhaps EMI does impact mineralization contained in the ground and why it is now recommended to do the noise cancel with the coil on the ground and not 12 above.

Randy-thanks for this info. I have about 2 months on my e-trac and just today was wondering about these channels. I always noise cancel and just go, but sometimes my finds are scarce. It seems to make sense to me as some days I will hit alot of one particular type of coin. Somedays I feel the machine isn't really looking very deep. I'm gonna try these different channel numbers now and pay more attention to it! Thanks for bringing it up!

Great stuff Randy! Thanks for sharing your experience.

Jack

After I read this post last night I went out with Angel's settings (which I haven't used in awhile) and put on channel 9. I managed a 48 rosie in an area I have hit 6 ways from Sunday with 3 different coils in both multi and 2 tone. Tonight in a limited hunt grabbed a 1919 merc. Definitely might be something to this channel thing!