Help Needed On Equinox 600 For Culpepper Hunting

[RME]

Does anyone have a good program already tried that worked well in Culpeper, Va. that they wouldn't mind sharing with me. I purchased an Equinox 600 a couple of weeks ago and will

be going back to Culpeper shortly. I will be trying my own programs but don't want to spend the whole trip hit & miss as I am not one with this detector, not yet

anyway. Can use PM, E-mail or post. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[Chase Goldman]

There are no magic settings for Equinox in Culpeper.  The Equinox will struggle with the high mineralization as much as any other VLF machine when it comes to depth and target identification.   All but the shallowest of targets will ID as iron and the problem with that is 1) there is a lot of actual iron there and 2) there are not many shallow keepers left there. The advantage Equinox brings to the table is mode versatility.  The first thing I would do is bring along or get your hands on some test targets (minie balls (dropped and fired), brass military buttons, brass knapsack hooks and gromnets) bury them and see what settings get you the best depth and strongest, repeatable signal (forget target ID at this point) and train your ear on the audio.  I would start with Park 2 or Field 2 (optimised for mid conductors which most relics are comprised of  - lead and brass) at the default settings 2, 5 or 50 tones as you see fit  (I personally would go with 2 tones as your dig decisions will basically come down to ferrous vs. non-ferrous and signal repeatability).  Ground balance and use all metal (horseshoe), vary sensitivity and recovery speed and see how the target signals respond audibly.  Use the settings that provide the best audio for you and go for it.  Dig all repeatable signals.  You will dig a lot of iron, but the more targets you dig per unit time, the better chance you will also dig a few keepers.  One high risk, high reward "trick" is to experiment with the beach modes.  The advantage of the beach modes is that they dial back transmit power in the presence of high mineralization.  This can actually clean up scratchy or fuzzy signals that result when the transmitted field is distorted by ground mineralization (of course raw depth may also be reduced but it is a wothwhile trade if effective ID depth is improved).  Another counterintuitive trick is to lower senstivity in the presence of thick iron.  This keeps the iron from desensitzing the coil edges and may help you better detect shallow non-ferrous otherwise masked by the iron junk.

Other advice - pick a small patch of ground ( 10 to 20 yards square) and pound it relentlessly before moving on.  You'd be surprised at how many targets might be in that patch.  If the hits are few, move on to a new patch.  The wooded areas tend to have less mineralization than the crop fields, so you might have better luck with a vlf there.

My final advice is to see if you can borrow or rent a PI detector (GPX, ATX, or TDI) if at all possible as you will gain a huge depth advantage.  I have let folks borrow or rent my ATX if they only have a VLF and it has helped them snag some good relics.  Another thought is that if you do have a detector (even a VLF) that you know inside and out, you might want to go with that rather than attempting to learn the Equinox there.  Experience with your machine will trump the marginal enhanced performance Equinox might bring to the table with the severe conditions you encounter there.

I am attending DIV this spring so if you need any additional advice or want to meet up just PM me here.  If you are not attending DIV, no problem, PM me anyway if you have questions on detecting in Culpeper.  It is a world class detecting challenge but the payoff can be the find of a lifetime.  Snagged these relics there last fall using a GPX, Deus, and Equinox.

[Joe D.]

Great information Chase!!

Kudos👍👍

 

[2Valen]

2 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

Experience with your machine

Chase,

You give the best advice out there when Steve is not around.

You, Steve, and GB have helped me quite a lot in understanding my 800.

 

[EL NINO77]

In high iron mineralization you can also use 1F frequencies 5Khz ,10Khz  and in some cases even 15khz khz, because:

... 1F separate frequencies at Equinox work with significantly lower TX power /=1/10 normal Tx/- which will work similarly ... or even better than the Beach program ...

Explanation ... commonly multifrequency programs Park, Field, Gold also contain frequencies 20 and 40 which are more sensitive to strong iron mineralization ...- so these multifrequency programs will work well and stable only to a certain degree of iron mineralization terrain ../to 12% magnetite  mineralizacion/

So in case of poor stability of multi-frequency programs/in 33%magnetite mineralizacion/ or their use only at low sensitivity, it is better to use a separate 1 F frequency of 5Khz, 10khz or 15khz.:

1F frequency -5Khz -sa excellently used to detect highly conductive coin-large silver ...

1F frequency 10Khz - will be more versatile and will adequately detect high and low conductive Items.

1F frequency 15Khz is most universal for all types of conductive objects, but may be less stable in some cases of extreme mineralization,/in 33% magnetite mineralizacion /

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1F frequencies 20Khz and 40 Khz/Equinox800/ no longer handle the highest mineralization ... but in terrain where I can still work stable I will have excellent results on low conductive targets.../to12% magnetite mineralizacion /

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Use individual1F frequencies in combination with recovery speed 6-7, and Iron bias to low..and Discrimination to 0,or better to +1and more....-  which appears to be the most effective in strong mineralization.

[Chase Goldman]

Acknowledgement as to whether any of this info was helpful or simply confusing would be useful and welcome feedback.  Thanks.

[Chase Goldman]

On 1/30/2020 at 7:05 PM, RME said:

I will be trying my own programs

How about sharing those with the group, maybe we can learn something too.

[RME]

I am in the learning process with this detector & to much information at once can be confusing. I have a hard copy of the factory owner's manual as well as Andy Sabishch's Equinox series Handbook. What I was looking for were a couple of actual programs that had already been used in The Culpeper area with the EQ 600. I wanted to spend as much time detecting as possible & not  all of my time learning the machine, I can do that here. I can use the factory preset programs & make adjustments to the best of my ability but The Culpeper area is not the normal place to hunt. Just looking for a little help from someone who's used this machine there.

Thanks

PS

Culpeper last year with a Garrett Ace 350 & Garrett freedom Ace - would like to try better machine this year.

..

[abenson]

RME-Chase has a lot of experience in the Culpeper dirt and knows what he's talking about. There really isn't a program you can put in the Equinox and have it work for everyone. The problem with the Equinox is, for most people it isn't just a turn on and go machine, although it can be used that way. Additionally, Using it in hot dirt is just going to add to the issue. Now it might just be me, but personally I don't feel like I understood the Equinox until I had 200 plus hours in it. (my dirt is hot but not Culpeper hot) I kept going back to the Deus in frustration because the tones on the Equinox are subtle compared to the Deus. I now prefer the Equinox over the Deus unless I'm in thick iron. But obviously I would use a PI before either in Culpeper.

Read Chase's post again and try to do some experimenting by burring various targets when you get there. Try different modes and settings to see how it affects the target signal. I will tell you this, the first time I hunted Culpeper with my Equinox I used Beach 1, ground balanced, set the sensitivity as high as I could, reactivity at 6, Iron bias 2, 2 tones and horseshoe off. Very conservative settings and I feel like I did pretty well with it, but I know others did much better with other settings. Now that I have some hours on the Equinox I prefer to be quite a bit more aggressive with my settings, but I also know what I'm listening for though all the noise. It takes time to train your ear in those harsh conditions when using a VLF. If you're planning on attending DIV 49 I'm happy to meet up and give you some help.

[GB_Amateur]

59 minutes ago, abenson said:

I don't feel like I understood the Equinox until I had 200 plus hours in it.

That is in line with my experience, except change '200' to '500'.  I'm not kidding, and I'm far from finished learning.  It does "work" out-of-the-box but you can't take full advantage of it without many, many hours.  At least that is what I've found so far -- and still in the learning phase.

To compare this to college curriculum, the manual is the first semester freshman year class and the books written (Sabisch and Clynick) are the texts for second semester.  To graduate you need a lot more than that, with laboratory courses a major part of the requirment.