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Equinox 800 And The 12x15 Coil


Lee C.

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Hadn't noticed that.  I could auto GB it just fine.  Can you be more specific about the circumstances (e.g. mineralized or mild ground, beach, saltwater or land hunting) and what you observed to make you come to that conclusion (e,.g., persistent ground noise even after a supposedly sat auto or manual GB).  Were you using tracking GB?

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What phrunt said. Larger coils are more reactive to the ground, and so the larger they are the more difficulty ground balancing. This is especially true of VLF and less so of PI due to pulse induction being less reactive to ground in general. In very bad ground, a VLF might not ground balance at all with a larger coil, and the solution is to go to a smaller coil. For detectors that can use a concentric coil, concentrics are more reactive, and switching to a DD coil will help.

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17 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

Hadn't noticed that.  I could auto GB it just fine.  Can you be more specific about the circumstances (e.g. mineralized or mild ground, beach, saltwater or land hunting) and what you observed to make you come to that conclusion (e,.g., persistent ground noise even after a supposedly sat auto or manual GB).  Were you using tracking GB?

I always manual GB. And the soil here in Missouri is very good for the most part. I only use the 12x15 in fields.  When I GB the 11” coil it balances out perfect, usually 3-5 numbers that are completely silent so it is obvious where the sweet spot is. The 12x15 balances, but it is a lot more noisier in the sweet spot. I have 2 nox’s, so one day I GB the 11” coil in the exact same spot I had just GB’d the 12x15 and it was perfectly silent in the same 3-5 numbers the 12x15 balanced in. Every time I balance the 12x15 I know it’s balanced but it’s just not the same sound as the 11”. I do very well with both so I know it’s balanced but I just wonder if I’m losing some performance because it isn’t as silent as the 11”. I never use the auto balance.

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3 hours ago, Lee C. said:

I always manual GB. And the soil here in Missouri is very good for the most part. I only use the 12x15 in fields.  When I GB the 11” coil it balances out perfect, usually 3-5 numbers that are completely silent so it is obvious where the sweet spot is. The 12x15 balances, but it is a lot more noisier in the sweet spot. I have 2 nox’s, so one day I GB the 11” coil in the exact same spot I had just GB’d the 12x15 and it was perfectly silent in the same 3-5 numbers the 12x15 balanced in. Every time I balance the 12x15 I know it’s balanced but it’s just not the same sound as the 11”. I do very well with both so I know it’s balanced but I just wonder if I’m losing some performance because it isn’t as silent as the 11”. I never use the auto balance.

What you are describing is basically what phrunt and Steve H. are saying about larger coils being more reactive to ground noise, i.e., a smaller balance sweet spot.  As long as the ground phase is not highly variable (typically but not always caused by variations in soil mineralization and which can be mitigated by using tracking GB), then I wouldn't worry about it, as long as you are not getting a lot of ground feedback noise (lots of -7 to -9 TIDs and associated ferrous bin grunts) while swinging the coil in the search modes while in all metal.  Furthermore, Multi IQ does a great job compensating for less than optimal ground balance settings vs. single frequency detectors or single frequency mode on the Equinox, so that can be helpful in this case.

BTW, for my enlightenment, why do you never use auto pump single point GB?  I like that it locks into a single number fairly quickly vs. me trying to hunt for it myself (especially if the last balance point number is significantly different from the new balance point), but agree you would get a better idea of the "sweet spot width" doing it manually.  Though, to me that would be more of a curiosity than something I would need to know.  I suppose that it also allows you to manually bias the balance point to trade noise for depth in single frequency, for example, which can be advantageous in very unusual situations  But is there another advantage to doing a manual vice auto GB?  The Equinox manual explicitly states Auto GB is the recommended method (see excerpt below).  I'm constantly learning something new about these detectors, so am curious about your preference to do a manual balance. Thanks.

SmartSelect_20191017-225048_Adobe Acrobat.jpg

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