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My Soil Sucks Please Help With Equinox 800


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2 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

Do you mean tracking?  Auto is just manually pumping and letting the machine set the GB.  Tracking is the machine tracking mineralization and adjusting GB on the fly.  If you are using g tracking, that's good.  Just be sure to auto or manually set GB at the outset so tracking can start doing its thing with GB already "in the ballpark" otherwise GB will be way off unill if can catch up which can take awhile.

I auto GB by pumping and then set to  auto tracking. I always refer to autoband tracking in the same breath which isnt a good idea with all the different detectors in the market. If i am on a fringe area I auto GB and leave tracking off or it will really throw the machine wacky. Thats only in a few spots. 

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2 minutes ago, bethanyb1201 said:

I auto GB by pumping and then set to  auto tracking. I always refer to autoband tracking in the same breath which isnt a good idea with all the different detectors in the market. If i am on a fringe area I auto GB and leave tracking off or it will really throw the machine wacky. Thats only in a few spots. 

That's a sound approach.

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As you have the V3i Spectra, you could find out the value of the phase and mineralization of your terrain using Ground Probe.

oktober 9 iphone 5S 2018 052_DxO.jpg

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On 3/29/2019 at 12:19 AM, EL NINO77 said:

As you have the V3i Spectra, you could find out the value of the phase and mineralization of your terrain using Ground Probe.

oktober 9 iphone 5S 2018 052_DxO.jpg

I know.. l never learned how to fully use the v3i. I only got it due to its ability to handle salt and other minerals. The readings are all over the place as far as pinpointing ,depth phase angle. I do honestly believe that that machine will be the one that can crack this nut. I need to have someone show me how to use it properly. I never took to time to really get deep into the machine after I seen the numbers go wild.

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I honestly believe from watching others hunt with the V3I that it is the BEST machine on the market for difficult ground. You just have to have 7 doctorates in rocket surgery to learn what ALL the machine can do.  In the most capable hands I think that machine could get to tue depth I need in my soil but I am greedy and wont invite anyone to try :(. I need to get over myself and bring in some reinforcements.

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In the Ground Tracking menu, press the "ZOOM / VIEW" button to go to the screen that is in the photo ...:
1.then press the "MENU / TAB" button -to activate the "ZERO" function - on the Autocalibration Detector coil ... Hold the detector coil high above the ground ... 1-1.5meters ..
2. Then press the "ENTER" button, and then place the detector coil on the clean ground ... -Then get the correct reading Phases and mineralization ground in%

oktober 9 iphone 5S 2018 079_DxO.jpg

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8 hours ago, EL NINO77 said:

In the Ground Tracking menu, press the "ZOOM / VIEW" button to go to the screen that is in the photo ...:
1.then press the "MENU / TAB" button -to activate the "ZERO" function - on the Autocalibration Detector coil ... Hold the detector coil high above the ground ... 1-1.5meters ..
2. Then press the "ENTER" button, and then place the detector coil on the clean ground ... -Then get the correct reading Phases and mineralization ground in%

oktober 9 iphone 5S 2018 079_DxO.jpg

This is a great feature BUT it takes those measurements from as deep as it can get repeatable numbers. So for instance I have places in my yard where the soil between the thatch and hard clay is 3 inches and the places I am trying to master go 12+ inches. While the v3i will give a spot on phase angle of your soil(thus determining mineralization) it will only do so to its limits. So if it can read my soil accuratly to 3 in and not to 6 it will tell me about only the top 3 inches. I guess what I am trying to say is while the info is usefull and its one of the best machines on the planet if you can learn it the machine wont let you know its having problems and only telling you phase angle/mineralization less than a few inches. My soil wont return a signal back to the machine for it to read any data. Thats why the minelab falses(like a void) or the whites dials itself back. I do really like the machine I just cant get it figured out. 

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For these Spectra Ground Probe measurements, set ... RxGain to 1 ... - because the mineralization value you get in the Ground probe is directly dependent on the RXgain setting ...

To explain:

As you can see in the picture, my low mineralized terrain still has a value of 1-2% mineralization in the Groud probe even with Rx gain = 13 ...

  At... 4bar Fe3O4- mineralized terrain - at 1/2 setting RxGain = 7 mineralization value of 17% ...

W extremely mineralized "black sand" -7bar Fe3O4 I get at minimal setting RxGain = 1 to 16% mineralization ...
  In practice, this means setting the detector to Rx Gain = 5 and more ..... SpectraV3 goes overload ..
 But you can work well with the RXgain 1 to 3 ...

Equinox 800:
 The detector does not see mineralization layers - it shows the total mineralization of the given terrain site under the coil.
 
Factory setting of Ground Balance = 0 is very close to setting on ferrite.
-high mineralization ..

With very variable and varied mineralization, it would
I kept Ground balance = 0

If you have places where extreme mineralization occurs, I would use these places to set the right sensitivity and stable Equinox work.

If you have salted and also use the Mineralization of Field1, Beach1, Beach2 ... these programs work well on salt and Fe-mineralized soil.

Beach1a Beach 2 programs also have a function of overloading my TX performance - to achieve detection stability - during work with a lowered Tx performance, the Equinoxa Triangle Icon is displayed.

I'll try to do some tests on pure magnetite ...- how does the sensitivity setting work with Equinox ..

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The problem here is, there is no clear cut answer to your situation and conditions.  I've been in some soils that shut down most VLFs to a depth of around 4 inches max...that the Equinox could handle pretty well, and get down to 8 to 10 inches in.  I encountered some dirt last week that I was digging dropped Civil War bullets left and right with the GPX...and when I saw I had walked into an unhunted Civil War camp, I got excited.  Stuff wasn't deep and it was everywhere, and mixed in with a lot of iron.  I was having trouble with the iron and the GPX so I swapped over to the Deus that I had with me, and this ground completely shut down a Deus, and I had both 11" X35 coil and a 9 inch HF coil.  I tried every setting I could think of for it, and still could not get a bullet beyond 4 inches with it.   I came back the next day with the Equinox and was confident it could handle the site decent.  Just on the east side of this same farm, I had done extremely well with the Nox back in the fall.  The west side of the farm is where I was this go around...and the dirt is vastly different. Another big difference...is that this side of the farm has had cattle on it some 60+ years.  I'm talking about hundreds of head of cattle.  I fired up the Nox, got my favorite relic program, ground balanced and started hunting.  It was so noisy I was beginning to wonder if something was wrong with it.  I was getting constant 1 and 2 signals.  I finally put the thing down and fired the GPX up til I located what I was pretty confident was a drop minie ball.  Lay it down to signal check with the Nox and BARELY got a one way signal that bounced in the teens.  I circled it....played with iron bias and recovery speed settings, and the different modes. I couldn't ever get the signal any better but could make it worse.  I was hoping and praying that I was wrong and the signal was actually iron or a piece of junk.  Nope...it was a dropped minie around 6 inches.  About 10 yards away, another signal on the GPX....same thing on the Nox...one way hit.  If I pressed the horse shoe button to fully open the whole disc range, I could hear it iron grunting most of the time.  Another dropped minie.  

Long story short, I dug 30 something dropped bullets, some carved bullets, 3 large round balls, and a button, plus about a half pound of camp lead.  Had I been hunting solely with the Nox, I dare say I might have dug 6 to 8 bullets tops.  Had I continued with the Deus and either coil, I would have walked all through this camp and not found the first thing.  I believe it was 9 mineral bars on the meter for it in most places.    

My theory is a crazy one but here goes.  I think with all the cattle that is on this farm in this one area...the cow poop and pee has altered the soil and made it very salty and acidic.  You figure, 60+ years of over 100 head of cows on average.  You can't hardly walk across the field now without stepping in piles of poo...and I've always noted that cow poop will make a detector false.  I did not try salt modes on the NOX....may try that next time I go down there.  It was down hearting enough that I listed my Deus for sale and sold it.  

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