Hello Angel - I've been reading your posts with grear interest. I'm a new Etrac owner. I'm going to load your settings from the Etrac post today, ... but. I live on Saipan, in the Northern Marianas Islands. We have a LOT of WW2 junk and some hopefully good stuff. I'm mostly interested in a rocky beach area that was the site of a Spanish ship crashing into the reef in the late 1600s. You can still find small oieces of Chinese porcelin washing up today. I've been out with the out of the box settings, coin, on my Etrac. I have a very impressive pile of pull tabs. I'd rather find something better. What words of wisdom would have as a good starting point with the Etrac? I'm useing the standard coil, but have an SEF 12x15.
Thanks for any suggestions - Dave Power
Hi Dave, and welcome to American Detectorist! Sorry for the tardy reply by the way.
You have yourself a fine machine, one I'm sure you will enjoy using for years to come. I know I have enjoyed detecting with mine these past two years.
I have not used my own E-Trac at any of the saltwater beaches I have worked out here, preferring to detect at such sites with a waterproof machine, like the Excalibur. There are others who have gained much experience using the E-Trac while working wet sand however, so no doubt they will be able to offer great suggestions on settings and discrimination patterns to use with the E-Trac when detecting at a beach.
I did use the E-Trac on dry and wet sand at one beach found at a lake though, and it performed quite well. But saltwater beaches do pose a different set of challenges. I have always worked those locations with my Excalibur or PI machine. However, if I were to use the E-Trac I would not hunt in all metal mode, that is, using a wide open screen. I do suggest using as little discrimination as possible though, perhaps just blocking out numbers near the bottom of the display to tame some of the iron you are likely to encounter.
Two or four tones is what I would turn to, using manual sensitivity, gauging where falsing may start to take place, and maintaining your sensitivity setting at just below that level. Set the ground setting to Neutral, Recovery Deep set to On, Recovery Fast set to Off, though this one is a matter of taste. Personally I don't care for it as I find the resulting tone distortion much too annoying.
I would have
Trash Density set to
Low unless the particular beach you are working is known to be strewn with iron. In that case I would have the setting set to
High as it will allow E-Trac to detect good targets next to the iron you may be rejecting in your discrimination pattern. Having
Trash Density set to
High will allow the machine to yield a signal for the strongest accepted target, even if next to a rejected target.
I hope that helps.
