Cal_Cobra

16 hours ago, MPL said:

I've been struggling with that headphone on/off button since day one, and I have skinny fingers. At times I have to push it three or four times to activate. Makes you wonder exactly who, in the design/development side of things, determined that it was the way to go.

Agreed, my fingers are normal sized, and that on/off button should've been larger or some better design.  

I dug a 9" deep civil war era Navy cuff button at one of my worked out sites, it has both mineralization and mild EMI, but the button was a dig me all day long signal.  Can't wait to try it at a real relic site, this was more of a picnic grounds type site. 

I saw Brandon (aka Dr Tones) post that he was (in a roundabout way) testing the EQ's 6" coil.

I figured if Brandon was, Steve might be as well?   

I bet the 6" coil is going to be amazing at trash sifting 

Definitely nice IMO to have a paper booklet copy, you can make notes on it, and it’s great to have in the field.  

What I’ve found to be useful is to copy the PDF file to my iPhone.   I have several stored and can instantly pull them up from my iBooks library as I always have my phone with me.  Handy for killing time at the airport, while waiting for detecting buddies, or other times when waiting for whatever, but more importantly when your out in the field and forget how to make whatever settings and don’t have an Internet connection.

Welcome, great finds! 

With the history there,  do you find many hammered medieval and older coins?

Something sounds wrong, my ML80's have been great!  No discernable lag, and the pinpointing has been world class. 

Also over the weekend I tried pairing the headphones to my iPhone and the Equinox at the same time. I knew if paired to both you could hear if a call was coming in on your smartphone, but little did I know that the headphones have a mic and you can take the call right from the ML80 headphones, and the audio quality was clear for me and the person on the call. 

Anyone know how to answer the call from the headphones and not have to take out your phone?

Nice chunky ring, congrats!!

Earth sweeper really sorry for your loss, my condolences. 

I had an AT Pro a few years ago, and while it was a decent iron sifter (better I felt then the F75) I felt that with the stock coil it was, at least in NorCal dirt, below average in depth.  Also tried it in the Nevada ghost towns, and pretty much had the same opinion there. 

I have about 7 hunts on my EQ800 now, for a total of about 30 odd hours on it.  Nowhere near an expert, but I can say for my NoCal soil it's blowing away anything the AT Pro could bring to the table, in both depth (by far) and unmasking, ergonomics, build quality, BIG numbers on the display (not those tiny, hard for me to see numbers on the ATP display), and it's just been a pleasure to hunt with.  It's been a really fun machine, and I suspect part of the reason is because it's finding stuff at my pounded to death sites that most of my other machines have petered out on a long time ago. 

The 6" coil will be my next EQ accessory.....if it ever comes out

Awesome first hunt, like the cache coin and who can argue with a gold ring   Looks like you have a good relic site!

Nails....yeah, if I chase the really iffy stuff, I seem to dig some nails.  I don't think it's any different then chasing those really wonky iffy signals with my other machines, and after a while you kind of stop doing it   

For relic hunting I've been mainly using Field2.  I did try Field1, switched it to 50 tone, and it was OK too, but I felt that Field2 was hotter.

Next time I have ample time to do some extra testing, I'll start testing how the reactivity speed and iron bias work, as I've left everything (aside from tones) on the stock settings up to this point, and the EQ800 has hunted pretty well. 

12 hours ago, Rich (Utah) said:

 

Headphones -  I turn off the 800 and then reach up to the earcup and press the off button and listen for the descending tone. Then I tuck them away in the travel case. The itsy bitsy teeny weenie lights that indicate on or off are hard for me to see in the daylight.

Rich (Utah) 

That was my plan, except the buttons all feel about the same when the phones are still on my head, shame the POWER button doesn't have a tit or something tactile so it stands out when your sausage fingers are probing around trying to discern when button is which

Yes those tiny lights are useless, especially in the sun.

WOW WOW WOW!!!!

Awesome find, it looks like the two reale I found in California in January this year, except gold  

Stunning find!!

Looks like these Equinox detectors are going to pay for themselves relatively quickly

Last weekend I was hunting a spot that apparently a few years ago has some kind of electrical underground device installed, as many years ago I could hunt that spot, and then any detector I took there would loose it's mind due to EMI.  Last weekend I took the EQ800 there in hopes that it might do OK, did a few noise cancels, and it didn't start to stabilize until I dropped the sensitivity way, way down.  I didn't detect it as I figured that the reduced sensitivity wouldn't be enough to get the coins that I know are going to be 8" + deep there.  Maybe I will try it again my next time there.

2 hours ago, Tiftaaft said:

Just curious Cal, what were your recovery and iron bias settings?  And were you in 50 tone with stock disc?  I have been doing more "in the field" testing with park 2, and I find it definitely hits on smaller targets than park 1, which is good and bad, depending on the site. I was just wondering how you weaved your way around the iron falsing running sensitivity that high.  In my ground, the sweet spot is around 20-22... but that may have more to do with my other settings than what the ground can handle with proper settings and a higher sens. 

Thanks for the awesome and inspiring report!!  Tim.

Stock settings aside from the sensitivity, 50 tones, auto GB, noise cancel, seems to run well without further adjustments.

i do need to start doing more scientific testing trying various settings to see how they work, and where they can be leveraged to maximize performance, unmasking and return a higher amount of keepers versus trash.

I’m implementing the crawl/walk/run learning methodology, and would still consider myself in the crawl phase.

Thanks,

Brian

3 hours ago, mn90403 said:

Cal, nice hunt as has been said.  I'm from down Jacksonville way so I can understand your videos pretty good too.  One thing I have to ask about is that name, Cobra ... how did you get that?

Mitchel

Thanks!  

My screenname is from my old days of video games.

3 hours ago, strick said:

Nice period stuff there...glad to see the nox is working well for you. So which program do you like better P2 or F2? 

strick

Thanks!  I like both, F2 seems to be great for relicky environments, and I can’t complain about   P2, seems pretty deep for sure and loves coins ?

In retrospect, when I was hunting those deep coins, I should’ve tried different modes to see how they reacted, BUT I was having so much fun detecting I didn’t want to turn it into a science project. 

Notice that I didn’t do any video, nor did I post to one of my usual forums as it’s turned into a circus every time the Equinox is mentioned.

For deep turf hunting the two things I see that need improvement are:

1. Shallow target identification - some surface targets will give the double blip, but not all and if their coins at the surface or just under, IMO they don't generally give a great indication that their shallow.  Been fooled many times.
2. The depth meter - Over the holiday weekend I took the EQ800 to a site that I've been working for 10-12 years.  Anything left there is either masked, deep, or both.  I noticed at this site the depth meter was crucial, and at this particular site it seemed, for the most part to work OK.  This hasn't been my experience at other sites, but I keep learning the machine so perhaps I'm gaining on the learning curve.  At any rate, at the site I was working on over the weekend, anything that reported as 4-5 was in fact 8" - 10" deep.  The audio wasn't awesome on most of these targets, but by doing the ML wiggle over them I would get a bouncy mid 20's to low 30's TID and pegged depth meter.  This site has been tough for any detector I've taken there.  For the most part the top 6" have already been cleaned out and any surface targets tend to be recent (last year or less) drops, so I wouldn't say it mimics deep turf cherry picking in a trashy park.  I don't know how it would do at such a place, I feel I'd be overwhelmed by junk shallow targets.

Nice find!  Those colonial coppers are considered ubobtainium on the left coast

1 hour ago, bado1 said:

Great hunt and great report, Cal. Many thanks!

I discovered my head phones to still be on one morning after a evening hunt. I know that i had gone through the motions of turning them off but somehow failed to do so. Now I check twice to make sure.

 

Dean

That must be what happened, I'll have to keep an eye on them.  I'm surprised they don't have an energy saver mode and automatically shut off if they loose pairing after a preset amount of time. 

On 3/28/2018 at 4:48 PM, cladzilla said:

Yes even as it was chirping and chipping, signals from actual targets still came through clearly. I just have a lot less fun if my ears are getting bombarded all the time :-)

Sounds like a normal hunt on my F75 

WOW Steve when you said you replied to my inquiry you weren’t kidding ?

I'm visiting family for Easter weekend and only brought my iPhone so I’ll read this again when I get home so I can read all the links and videos, great stuff!

i know in the Minelab Equinox Treasure blogs they talked about Multi IQ transmitting AND receiving simultaneous multiple frequencies as to do real-time ground sampling and analysis.  Pretty sophisticated stuff going on under the hood.

Thanks again for taking the time to post the detailed reply, I’ll give it the read it deserves when I return home.

I tried the SoundPEATS Q9A+, they work fine, and have an IP rating (waterproof/resistant rating), there's no lag, but I just didn't care for the earbud fit while detecting and much prefer the factory Minelab headphones.

For my head/hearing, the ML headphones are comfortable, fit well, zero detectable lag, and sound great.

I started off with wireless headphones on my Racer2, Impact and Multi Kruzer, and now the EQ800, and love being wireless (really sucks getting snagged/tangled up when your detecting in the brush). I'll never go back to wired headphones again, YMMV.
 

Hi Steve,  Yep saw Carl's reply. 

To be honest, the inline probes from Sunray were really only good on the Minelabs.  I had a few on Fisher's (C$ and F75) and to be honest they just weren't that great on a machine like the F75.  For one thing their a motion detect device (because as you pointed out their basically another coil) , unless you're in PP mode, but on the F75 you had to hold the PP trigger, while digging, while trying to operate the probe, which was a bust.  I finally sold of my F75 Sunray probe after I had an encounter digging a barber dime out of a mess of tree roots.  In the roots you didn't have any room to move the probe enough to work in disc mode, so it became useless.  Now on a machine like the Equinox, where you can press on/off the PP mode, it wouldn't be a problem at all, and you'd get those great flutey tones when going after deep silver, with iron tones on the nails, so in my mind it could work well, especially if made wireless. 

I wonder if in the case of the Equinox for example, that already has a well integrated Bluetooth system, if they couldn't effectively make a wireless probe that worked the same as the Dues coils, and simply relay the signals back to the EQ for processing?

I think XP attempted to do something on that order with their Dues wireless probe, but at the end of the day it was kind of a fail as it wasn't really a wireless inline probe. 

Just spit ballin'

6 hours ago, Vez said:

I think i may pull the trigger on tect o trak.  It is showing for 3.49 in app store atm.  Thank you all for your input.

Is that for android os? 

I just checked the apple app store and it's $9.99....for $3.49 I'd d/l it in a heartbeat, but for ten bucks I'd like to try it first.....hmm.

7 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

I use Tect o Trak and it is pretty good.  You can document finds including snapshots, track your progress through the site, set up site boundaries so it stops recording once you go outside the boundaries (good if you forget to turn tracking off when you leave the site).  Works best with a companion app called GPS Locker which gives you more accurate tracks.  Haven't really noticed that it burns up the battery that much.  When I get a chance will post a sample plot I took of a recent hunt. 

I honestly wish ML would come out with a companion app like they have for the GO FIND series.  Perhaps a future feature.

The other app I use is ONX hunts.  You a can also track your progress with it including marking finds on a map.  A paid feature of the app that you can get property lines and tax record information for private and public properties in all 50 states plus a lot of hunter oriented maps.  It is expensive for the 50 state subscription, but the app is well laid out and I use it for secondary tracking and for identifying contact information for prospective permissions.

'HTH.

 

Perhaps it's only Waze that eats up my battery.  I noticed that when my iPhone is plugged in, it actually discharges faster than it charges when I'm using Waze.