Thoughts On Ground Tracking

[CyberSage]

I have always had good luck with the ground Tracking on The V3. I have favored having Ground Tracking turned on with a lower Speed setting of 20. I hunt mostly park like environments and older school grounds. Recently I ventured out onto a grass parkway strip. There was a series of light poles and I could see the power cable ran underground right along the curb. I had to turn down the sensitivity setting to accommodate the EMI issues in this area. As I started digging coins and pinpointing I noticed the 3 frequency pinpoint was not representing the coins properly. The 2.5 kHz response would drop and the 22.5 kHz would creep up. I would re-ground balance and it would read correctly again. A lot of other V3 users on the forums would use Locktrac when hunting, so I gave this a try. The ground balance stopped drifting and the coins continued to pinpoint correctly for the remainder of the hunt. I have since used the Locktrac setting turned on in my hunts. Things are sure a lot quieter and I am still finding the good stuff. So I was interested in others experiences with ground tracking, and when/when not to use it. I recheck my ground balance every once in a while while hunting as recommended. So is ground auto tracking really necessary in yard and park environments? Lets here what you think on this subject, and what your experiences are.

Jack

[My4Kiwis]

I'm too new to this game to have any real input but I appreciate the education. I'm going to try it out when I get home.

[rcsnake]

Personally I don't use the ground tracking on the V3 or V3i. I just reground balance when needed and this is very site dependent esp with the places I as some of them have fill dirt in them. I don't care for the auto tracking as on very deep targets i find it may change the way the instrument may sound off on them. As I hunt in stereo mix mode now most the time I can tell real easy when the machine needs to be reground balanced. Didn't care for the mix mode on the V3 but on the V3i I really like the stereo mixed mode as it makes easier for me to know when to ground balance.

When the ground is real consistent reground balancing is not usually require or at least this is what I have found when I am out hunting.


rcsnake

[giant056]

Since I've gotten use to my V3i I prefer locking the tracking, usually the soil in this area is pretty much uniform, I will ground balance every now and then.

[MANDAD76]

I use locktrac exclusively. It's always worked fine and I've had no reason to try the ground tracking feature - I intend to experiment with it some though - haven't had time - been too busy huntin! I do think it could be useful in some areas - beach wet/dry - old dirt/new dirt - hillsides - varying depths of fill dirt - driveway material - oyster/clam shell, etc... Good post - very informative.

[cliffy]

Because I hunt in terms of depth or layers to which targets are. I usually hunt with tracking locked down to six inches or so. Once I get past the 6 inch targets I will jump to tracking... drop the audio threashold of headphones from 8 to 2 and bump the filter to 10hz and recovery at 100. The slightest bump I get from the audio all metal and I dig. A medium fast track in this Arizona dirt has worked well for me.
cliffy