BigSkyGuy

You bet. This is what the forum is for. People here have helped me out plenty, and I am happy to pay it forward.

May be related to the dual coinage system in use at the time. A Spanish "bit" was worth 12 1/2 cents and the medio 6 1/4 cents. Both were commonly used in the 1830s along with US coinage. Often, the medio and the US half dime were used interchangeably, but one party would lose 1 1/4 cents in the exchange. A cent and a cut 1/2 cent added to a US half dime would be a fair exchange for a medio (in theory).

The fact that things went south after the rain suggests to me that you may have some degree of salt in your soil, such as fertilizer, cow urine, or salt from a lick. I have a site that I can hunt in Park 1 on the Equinox when dry, but need to switch to Beach mode when wet. Lots of cows and evaporation of flood irrigation water at this site. You may want to try the Beach mode on the Pro when the soil is wet. Let us know how it goes.

The Meaning of the Front Side of the Miraculous Medal

Mary is standing upon a globe, crushing the head of a serpent beneath her foot. She stands upon the globe, as the Queen of Heaven and Earth. Her feet crush the serpent to proclaim Satan and all his followers are helpless before her (Gn 3:15). The year of 1830 on the Miraculous Medal is the year the Blessed Mother gave the design of the Miraculous Medal to Saint Catherine Labouré. 

I usually run at 5, but I bumped it to 6 for this site due to the number of rusty nails. On the 800 I have found that higher RS helps with mineralization, but have not fully tested this on Manticore. 6 seemed to be the sweet spot for the 800 in my soil, but I doubt the numbers correspond.

From:

"Record of American Uniform and Historical Buttons - Bicentennial Edition" by Alphaeus H. Albert

I have a site where I have a clad dime buried at 8", which is on the edge of detection in this soil for the Equinoix 800. I can get a faint high tone in one direction in Park 1, Sens 22, Rec. 4, IB 1. Yesterday I took the MC to this site, which has really corrosive ground and deep targets. The iron is very rusted, and even the pull tabs are corroded. Bottle caps are completely gone, with only the foil liner and rust staining remaining. I tried the MC in AT-LC, Sens=22, Rec.=6 and got only the occasional high tone pop every couple of swings. Switching to AT-G I got a good repeatable high tone with VDI ranging from upper 70s to lower 90s. In AT-HC I got a very nice high tone with tight VDI ranging from 79-82, all other settings the same. So I started hunting in AT-HC, but quickly ran into the falsing issue that many have mentioned. I found that the best way to avoid this is to pinpoint and then check the target again with a very short sweep over the exact spot. If the signal is not confirmed it is a nail. It is interesting that this site is more prone to falsing than others that I have hunted. It may be the degree of corrosion on the nails. I hunted mostly in AT-LC, despite the better depth on high conductor targets, just because it slowed me down so much. I did find lots of pull tabs at 8" that were missed with other detectors. I also have found that the MC is better at unmasking than the Equinox. The key is to look for what I call "spongy" signals. What I mean by spongy is the signal is not solid but intermittent. When I trun on the horseshoe, these signials have both iron tones and nonferrous tones, but I like to hunt with horsehoe off (i.e. so that iron tones cannot be heard). Anyway, if the intermittent tones are mostly in the 70s to 90s I dig. I have found a couple of nice Barber dimes digging these kind of signals.

Quote

I really don’t know why 4 kHz is less interfered with here in the USA than 5 kHz. Maybe the 60 Hz USA and 50 Hz difference in the UK and most of Europe and Asia has something to do with it.

At the risk of stirring a hornets nest I will throw in my theory as to why 5 kHz is a problem but not 4 kHz. Power lines seem to be a big source of EMI, yet the transmission frequency, as Jeff mentions, is 60 Hz, two orders of magnitude lower than metals detectors. However, I have read that there is a power line carrier communication (PLCC) signal that is transmitted along with the power that is transmitted in the kHz range to as low as 5kH. This is why meter readers are no longer required. The power useage in your home is sent via PLCC. PLCC is also used for home security systems, and home control and automation.

I have used my DetectorPro UW, which operates at 2.4kHz, no problem right under power lines.

The "F" is for Frankford Arsenal and the 10 and 87 indicate that it was manufactured in October 1887. Frankford Arsenal later used "F" and "A", but the early ones were only "F".

This information is from "Cartridge Headstamp Guide" by Henry P. White and Burton D. Munhall.

Very cool! The key is for a Model T. Very distinctive shape.

Funny you should ask okie. Just found this dental bridge on Saturday. Rang up 14-15 on the Manticore. Hard to imagine the scenario under which this was lost. Was alcohol involved? Nice score on the crown!

Very cool! The key is for a Model T. Very distinctive shape.

I use the TRX with my MC and have had no issues in AT-G or AT-LC. Were you using AT-HC when you had the issues? The TRX operates at 12kHz which may be similar to AT-HC.

I received the phones from Ukraine but have not yet installed them. They look like pretty good quality, but I have no way to test them until I get the time to open up the Excal.

The key is No 4 (press and hold the wireless button). This is different from the equinox.

The silver may be upaveraging and wrapping into the iron range due to the bad ground.

I have had success using All Metal, Ground Balance = 900 (auto GB is around 550, so a very positive GB), Black Sand = On, and 6.4 kHz. These settings are very quiet in black sand.

I have a permission for a field which contains cattle during most of the year, but is flood irrigated at times. When the ground is dry my detectors work well, but during times when the field is partially flooded I need to use Beach mode on the Equinox, otherwise, the chatter is unbearable. I attribute this to cow urine, leaching from salt licks, fertilizer, evaporation of standing water following flooding, or all of the above.

Dog tooth spar (calcite) would be my first guess. Second guess would be quartz. Hard to tell from photo. If it will scratch glass it is quartz.

Banded chert, not sure, azurite (blue)/malachite (green), scoria basalt, bornite (peacock ore)/chalcopyrite.

Saw this on another forum;

Manticore Flooded

I hope this is the exception and not the rule!

42 minutes ago, steveg said:

Let's say you have that "nail/coin" target I mentioned above.  With open screen, and with appropriate limits set, you should hear a mix of non-ferrous and ferrous tones, let's say 50/50 mix.  So, when you discriminate out the iron ID portion (and thus the ferrous tones dissapear), then you SHOULD hear the 50% non-ferrous tones, but since you are only hearing "50%" of the conglomerated target, you are missing the other 50%, and thus is sounds "choppy."

My response above was with regard to this part of Steveg's post. I am still a rookie on naviagating this site!

Could this be due to use of "open gate" on the MC vs "closed gate" on the Equinox? Tom mentions polyphonic audio as a new feature of the MC, which appears to mean that more than one tone can be heard at once. By silencing one tone you enhance the other. On the nox you hear bits and pieces of each tone at different times rather than a blending of tones. Not sure how the target trace works though. It sounds like it may be presenting the audio in a visual form rather than presenting independent information, at least in part.

The concentric coil is also much less sensitive to flat iron (bottle caps, can bits, etc) which can be discriminated out at relatively low disc levels.