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New Treasure Talk - Recovery Speed & Target Masking


Dan(NM)

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SUPER write-up, Steve!!

Thanks!

Steve

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Thanks Steve

That is a top dollar report on.

Recovery Speed & Target Masking

Fortunately for most of us here in the UK we don't have much of a problem with trashy fields and our land is of "Low or Very Low Mineralisation" which enables us to operate the Equinox with the lower "Recovery Speed"

Good Hunting

Randy Dee

 

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Thanks everyone. As Randy notes where both trash and mineralization are low then slower recovery speeds can be a good thing. Remember though that you can never predict when a trash target may be so close to a good item so as to mask it. A low mineral field with relatively sparse trash can still have a trash item next to a good item, and it is higher recovery speeds that reveal such targets. Otherwise you simply miss them and never know they were there. You can’t know what you are missing.

One of the most important metal detecting articles ever written - Beneath The Mask by Thomas Dankowski.

Things that can help defeat target masking:

  1. Faster recovery speeds
  2. Slower sweep speeds
  3. Smaller coils
  4. Approaching an area from multiple angles

Recovery Speed, Recovery Delay, And Reactivity

Recovery Speed & The Conveyor Belt

minelab-equinox-recovery-speed.jpg

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21 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

One of the most important metal detecting articles ever written - Beneath The Mask by Thomas Dankowski.

+1

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Good stuff!  Thanks for another great write-up, Steve.  So many of us who are new to this technology are fortunate to have your help getting us into the groove early and smoothly.

Ted

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I can’t add to this excellent report but I can submit an actual occurrence I had some 15 years ago.   At the time I was using the very best VLF machine that a particular company sold.  I had been using the machine for about 2 years so I was in no way a novice and can say I’d found some very nice items. 

I was hunting an old school yard where many silver and copper coins had been found in years past.  I was hunting around a huge oak tree when I came across a very faint, repeatable signal.  Thinking, “This must be a super deep target.” I dug a nice plug about 12” across and 7” deep (the large plug actually causes less damage) and proceeded to check the hole, nothing.   Knowing from past experiences a detector can have problems seeing a deeper target once the plug is removed I carefully extracting another 3-4” of dirt, I check the hole and nothing.  By now I was completely confused and somewhat frustrated so I filled in the hole and returned the plug just to hear the same faint, repeatable signal.  To be honest at this point I was determined to find this target regardless of what it took.  So I removed the plug and started to scrap off inch by inch of dirt from the bottom up and then at less than 3” from the grass layer was a silver Roosevelt dime.  Now this was before I knew about terms like masking and partial masking.  So my conclusion was the machine must be out of calibration.  A few days later I boxed up the detector and shipped it back to the factory for a tune up.  Two weeks later the machine returns with a note in the box “calibration and testing indicated there were no problems with the detector”. 

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