Going deep With The Vision/V3/V3i

[CyberSage]

I have been seeing a lot of post regarding depth problems with the V3. I thought I would provide some basic guidelines to getting more depth out of your machine. There is a substantial amount of misinformation floating around the Internet that I believe is leading folks down the wrong path. There are those that would have you believe that rock solid stability is the best approach on the V3. By rock solid stability I mean no falsing, ultra quiet, and no sound except for that of the desired target. This would be nice, but unfortunately all it means is that you have weakened the field of your coil to the point that all you will be finding is shallower targets. The reality is if you want to find those deeper coins, coins on edge and coins that are masked by adjacent trash, you will need to tolerate some noise in your hunt. Lets look at some basic adjustments that you can apply to most any program to get more sensitivity and depth out of your Vision/V3/V3i.

1. Frequency
If you are coin shooting then the 2.5 kHz frequency will get you deep in a hurry. Unfortunately it will have you digging deep iron on a regular basis. If you don't mind digging, this is the way to go. If you want to eliminate a lot of unnecessary digging go with a 3 frequency mode. Best Data is the deepest running 3 frequency mode. It is also very noisy. This excessive noise increases the chance of missing a desirable target. If you move slowly and deliberate in your hunt this mode can be a coin killer. It is just a little to much noise for me. I choose to use the Correlate mode. This will get you plenty of depth with the ability to control the response based on the consistency of a target using the Span setting. If you have moderate to high mineralization strength in your soil then the Wrap setting built into the Correlate mode will serve you well in dealing with coins that are in the fringe area of your coil field. Irregardless what 3 frequency mode you choose to use, the benefit of the 3 frequency pinpoint graph will make life very easy at determining a good deep target. Look for your 2.5 and 7.5 frequencies to be dominant in strength. Your 22.5 frequency should be the weakest in response. (Nickels and 2½ Dollar gold pieces excluded.) There I go dreaming again.

2. Filter
This one setting will get you better results than any other one setting on the detector. I can not stress this enough. Set your Filter to 5hz Band Pass. Trust me on this one. Not only will it get you deeper, it will have a pronounced effect on quieting EMI. I don't honestly know why this makes such a difference, but it does in a big way. There is a catch when you choose to use this setting however. You must slow your swing speed down to a crawl. This is actually a good thing. Slowing your swing speed will help in picking out those masked coins and coins on edge. To fast of swing and you have a noisy machine again. This also brings us to our next adjustment...

3. Recovery Delay
I have found that a setting of 80 to 100 is ideal for deep coins. This setting is one of great controversy. The school of thought has always been the faster the recovery time the better the separation between targets. While this is technically correct, it comes with a heavy price. That price is at the cost of... you guest it, depth. This is the great double edged sword I have spoke of in other post. To fast of recovery speed can cause your deeper targets to breakup in their response. To slow and targets can be missed due to masking from nearby bad targets. Slower coil movement is a must with a setting this low. This also seems to lengthen the response from a deep coin, which you can agree is beneficial to our cause. So, a slow swing speed is very very important. Relax your hunting style and slow down. If you swing to fast none of the above settings are going to help you out.

4. Discrimination
The best advice I can pass on to you regarding the use of discrimination is, don't use it at all. Use custom tone adjustments to quiet undesirable response from the detector. Simply set the tone for any VDI range you do not want to hear to "0"�.

The Vision/V3/V3i is a great detector and is capable of pulling nice finds out of heavily hunted areas. It has the ability to take you on a medal detecting odyssey that will continue to produce great coins as long as you are willing to swing it. Hopefully these tips will point you in the right direction. Ultimately the best settings are the ones that work in your hunting environment. You will need to make adjustments and experiment. The true beauty of the V3 is it's versatility in meeting your needs. I warn you. Be careful of Gurus on the Internet who seem to know it all. This will always be a learning process. Be open minded and seek information on how to use your detector, just as you seek those old coins buried in the ground. Good hunting and good luck.

Keep Swing'in
Jack