Vanquish Went Quiet Fast

[Steve Herschbach]

7 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

No, the voltage source (battery) for a VLF is regulated through a switching power supply to provide a fixed voltage to the electronics and transmit coil winding.

I don’t think he was asking if you could put bigger batteries in a VLF but if more power gives more depth. There are reasons why that limit has been met in single frequency VLF and the thread I linked to above gets into that.

[Noah (FL)]

2 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Bells and whistles are nice but almost all comparison posts and videos ask only one question.... “how deep does it go?”

Ahhhh.......the fabled panacea of “extreme” depth from the newest machine.  😂😂😂

 

[EL NINO77]

The detector's range is to some extent from the frequency ,,, but the frequency of 7-30khz can still have a deep reach on various types of target ... but in the com is relatively high frequency rearch ... it is mainly separation in the iron .. where the frequency is higher helps separating ..
 

 

[Joe D.]

Ok Steve thanks,

 So bear with my beginner questions for a minute! Or give me another link for this one!

Since the VLF is maxed out depth wise, is it just coil size that dictates depth now, or is it also a proprietary thing between manufacturers?🤯

[Chase Goldman]

6 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

I don’t think he was asking if you could put bigger batteries in a VLF but if more power gives more depth. There are reasons why that limit has been met in single frequency VLF and the thread I link to above gets into that.

Gotcha.   The thread you linked is good, just started reading it again.  At the risk of repeating information there, transmit power does affect depth.  But under certain conditions, like high mineralization, attempting to "punch through" with more power on a VLF just makes things worse (unlike a PI).  There is also a consideration for how much power is needed to generate multiple transmit frequencies for simultaneous multi frequency detectors since that power has to be divided amongst the various transmit signals in the frequency domain (no free lunch), that is why the argument regarding number of simultaneous transmitted frequencies is kind of a double edged sword.  The fewer you can get away with while elegantly accomplishing your goal of getting multiple different frequency components in the ground through various waveform manipulations (e.g., harmonics and sidebands) and receive signal processing methods the better vs. a brute force approach where 3, 4 or more waveforms of various frequencies are transmitted simultaneously.

[Joe D.]

So is the Equinox  the first to master perfect or near perfect waveform in multi frequency? Or is that also a tradeoff! Power output not withstanding? 

By the way, its the first cool day in nearly a year here in S. FL, and I'm doing yard work, instead of detecting!! Damn my priorities!!🤬

[Steve Herschbach]

10 minutes ago, Joe D. said:

So is the Equinox the first to master perfect or near perfect waveform in multi frequency?

I don’t think that has happened yet. Equinox is a beginning, not an end. And it just builds on BBS and FBS.... Minelab has a huge lead in this area. Given that Equinox was the first shot at Multi-IQ I expect whatever higher end Multi-IQ product eventually replaces CTX will be far more refined than Equinox.

[Chase Goldman]

35 minutes ago, Joe D. said:

Ok Steve thanks,

 So bear with my beginner questions for a minute! Or give me another link for this one!

Since the VLF is maxed out depth wise, is it just coil size that dictates depth now, or is it also a proprietary thing between manufacturers?🤯

Steve will chime in too. 

Depends on whether you are talking ultimate detection depth or ID depth.  What does that mean?  The linked thread above discusses that with VLF technology dime sized targets can typically be reliably detected and positively identified at about 5 to 6 inches under most conditions perhaps deeper in really mild soil and much less in highly mineralized soil.  Beyond that, the detector may know the target is there but can't ID it, ultimate depth.  That ultimate depth (as well as ID depth) can be influenced by some of the variables listed below.

There are many variables that affect depth including: transmit power, sensitivity, frequency, recovery speed, coil size, target composition, target size, target shape, target orientation, nearby "non-desired" targets (ferrous and non-ferrous), soil conditions, and the user interface that facilitates human brain decoding of the receive signal (typically the audio vice a target ID number or even graphical user interface).  All of these things compete in differing ways and degrees to determine your ultimate depth capability.  VLF technology has not progressed to create a significant improvement in ultimate depth in several years. 

But ultimate depth is not the only key.  Multifrequency is a great technological advantage, though not necessarily because it creates more depth but because it allows exciting multiple targets that respond favorably to different frequencies with a single pass of the coil and enables effective balancing under salt or other unfavorable soil conditions (e.g., mineralization) which can improve ID depth.  The other great innovation has been improvements in signal processing both in speed and ID accuracy through advanced microprocessor components and software algorithms allowing much greater detection separation between adjacent junk and desirable targets.

What these technologies bring to the table is the ability to unmask shallower targets that are hiding amongst the muck of other junk targets or in difficult to manage mineralized or salt ground conditions that limit detector capability.   Advanced signal processing technology also improves signal-to-noise ratio to enable faint targets, regardless of depth to be more readily picked up by the detectorist.  The ultimate depth detection capability hasn't changed, but the ability to discern targets under difficult conditions has.  Shallow targets that were previously masked are now becoming unmasked by advances in detector technology.

Not sure there is more that can be wrung out of this technology now, so the battle ground is detector cost, weight, environmental ruggedness (waterproof detectors), and advances in the user interface (wireless, graphical user displays, simple menu navigation) and feature upgrades/bug fixes over the internet.  Hence, Vanquish and Simplex and the mid-range cost breakthrough detectors like the Equinox and the Nokta Anfibio that preceded them.

[Chase Goldman]

12 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Given that Equinox was the first shot at Multi-IQ I expect whatever higher end Multi-IQ product eventually replaces CTX will be far more refined than Equinox.

Agree.  I suspect the Vanquish is giving the ML engineers some breathing room to come up with that CTX Multi IQ variant (or whatever high-end VLF they choose to release in the coming years).  It accomplishes two things, gets another iteration of Multi IQ out there and in the hands of users so ML can learn more about the tech through user field experience to better inform future higher end Multi IQ detector applications and it enables ML to take a stab at biting into the low-end/entry level detector market segment dominated by Garrett (Ace Series) and to a lesser extent FT (Bounty Hunter).

[EL NINO77]

There is something like the optimum frequency and the optimum coil size of the detector ... the optimum frequency is, according to me, the multi-frequency ... because it has a wide range of sensitivity and reach to the various sizes of desired targets ...
 Separation properties of different frequencies I have already mentioned ..
With a sufficiently strong TX multi-frequency wave, there is no problem to make a very deep detector ..,
it can also use this possibility, that not all transmitted frequencies are equally strong.
 This will have an excellent reach and also an excellent ID on different types of terrain.

The optimum coil ... should have excellent range and sensitivity to a wide range of desired targets ..

If too large a coil is applied to the detector - so on a normal VLF IB detector the sensitivity to the smallest items drops sharply, and in most cases the resistance to Emi and the interference from the ground also decrease.
Some sophisticated detectors, however, have the features of TX Bost where the transmission voltage is increased as well as ..
 which removes these deficiencies in large coils, balancing the sensitivity of the detector and the resistance to Emi at the level of normal coils.
In this case, we can also expect some impact on reasonably large targets.

Spectra V3  : 18" excelerator coil , multifrequenci , TX bost ON...