Conclusion Of Effect Of Bone Dry Soil On The Equinox

[Randy Dee]

Before I start I must declare that I am speaking from a platform of 42 years of metal detecting experience not a fly by night.
Well, over the past 3 months here in the UK my normally very productive Roman fields permissions have not produced finds of any significant numbers or depth most stuff found has been either on the surface or no more than 3 inches deep no matter of the size of the find and this has been borne out with not just myself but friends David Hopper, Kevin Hopper and Pistol Pete on my very sandy soil permissions, and I know that my fields show an abundance of Roman finds but like all sites with past Roman occupation there is stacks of iron junk and iron slag and this ferrous crap was always showing good signals when the soil conditions were dry.
Between the four of us we have used a wide selection of detectors but providing the same result.
We have used 3 Equinox 800, 2 Minelab CTX-3030, 2 XP Deus, 1 Makro Racer 2, 1 Golden Mask 5+ and 1 Golden Mask 1. so plenty of tackle to get the correct conclusion to the dry soil effect.
Yesterday Sunday 2nd September I took Pistol Pete with me to one of my Roman permissions where one of the fields was in wheat stubble and which I have not detected on before and on this field there is three active springs so the damp soil is more conductive, Pete started with his CTX and using the 6" coil and I decided to use my Deus and the 9" black coil with the normal settings which I have used for the past 8 years, Pete said he was getting too much chattering so switched to his Golden Mask 1 but again heavy chattering but this was nothing to what I was getting with the Deus the noise was a constant rapid rattling like a machine gun I tried everything to attempt to quieten it down but to no avail the whole field was covered in Roman iron slag and through it being wet was highly conductive the lowering of the "Sensitivity" and "Ground Balancing" didn't have any effect so before I threw the towel in I changed to my 9" White HF Coil and used my own program but what I had achieved was to find broken plough share after plough share six in total and masses of rusted iron bars in the 30 - 45 VDI range but nothing non-ferrous very weird.
We decided to move on to a close by field away from this annoyance, and between us we had brought some test pieces so as to carryout some testing to see why we have seen the terrible loss of detection depth during this extremely dry spell my gold gents ring on a cord and a hammered silver and some Roman bronzies, Pete buried my gold ring 5" inches deep his hammered silver 4" deep and a thick Roman bronze at 3" deep, well we were left gob smacked when these items couldn't be found by the CTX, the Deus, the Equinox or the Golden Mask remember this soil is like flour and all test pieces had been shoved into the un-disturbed side wall of the hole, with one detector at a time switched on to test and it was during the testing and altering the functions that we became aware of what was influencing the detection depth results and to get to the point it was because the soil is bone dry and with a pathetic conductive response for non-ferrous objects but just the opposite for ferrous objects so it was a case of getting the "Noise Cancel" & "Ground Balance" & "Sensitivity" right, the main culprit for loss of detection depth was proved to be having the "Sensitivity" set too high even what we would normally set mid range the effect was that the Sensitivity was amplifying the mineralisation feedback for the Ground Balance and the Sensitivity was now desensitizing the Non-Ferrous signals, now armed with this info we gradually reduced the "Sensitivity" and witnessed the signals slowly becoming audible and eventually loud.
We spent some considerable time adjusting the "Noise Cancel" & "Ground Balance" & "Sensitivity" levels on all of our detectors we even dropped the test pieces deeper to find the best results and comparisons between detectors by the time we had completed the testing the Equinox 800's were the top results with "Sensitivity 16" the "Ground Balance 51" the "Reactivity 2" and the "Iron Bias 4", be mindful that these settings were applicable to my dry soil only and may differ on other detectorists land conditions but gives food for thought, by this time the temperatures were in the high 20's and mid day so detecting was a slow laborious endurance but we both had a massive improvement in detection depth for non-ferrous.
Hope this conclusion gives a wee bit of guidance help to others.
Good Hunting
Randy

[Redneck]

A month ago I took my 800 to a tiny beach, red clay and stones. Bone dry, as we had no rain for a month.   I found very little and not much depth. Last  week  I rechecked it after we had 2 weeks of heavy rains,  and the beach came alive , found 16 coins, all deep.  I believe it was the dampness that was the key.

[DDancer]

I've always had my best results with moderately damp soil.  I feel it helps with halo effect for deep objects and improves soil conductivity.  I base my thoughts on many hunts on previously hunted ground at different times of the year.  Usually a day or two after rain storms seems to be a kicker for me.

[NCtoad]

That's some great information Randy thanks for posting!  Lower sens settings on the nox will still get pretty deep.  I've found 8-9" lincoln cents with the sense at 17 or 18.  This in moderately damp ground though.  I guess the ticket for drier conditions would be to lower the sense, especially in mineralized soil.  

[Sinclair]

I can only speak for our dry sand beaches (which were really dry after weeks without rain), and I newer run my sens higher than 18. If it get's chattery, I lower it even more. I didn't notice any significant loss in depth.