NCtoad

3 hours ago, PimentoUK said:
To be extra nerdy, the length of the co-ax cable matters, and it should ideally be multiples of half-wavelength long, ie. 62mm. It matters because the RF signal current flows in the inner core AND the outer screen.

( Anyone familiar with CB radio, for example, would know the ideal co-ax cable length ( rig to antenna ) is 18 feet in Imperial units ( 5.5metres ), and even if your vehicle installation only required 12 feet, you don't cut down the cable, just leave the slack in your trunk etc.)

So, a multiple of 62 mm, which to us still using the dinosaur units of inches and feet, is 2.44”.  Which in multiples is:  2.44, 4.88, 7.32, etc.   The ideal lengths depending on how tall you are and how far your shaft is extended will  most likely fall in the following ranges: 31.72, 34.16, 36.6, 38.04, 41.48, 43.92.  All in inches.  I’m not so nerdy as I am anal, so I would use the length that best fits my needs.  Thanks for the specs Pimento!

Hell yeah!

Call me different, but I like challenging sites like that, especially if I can hunt them multiple times trying different settings.  

46 minutes ago, CPT_GhostLight said:

Ditto that!

10x5... 9.5x5... 9x5... any of those will do! 😏

I would even take a 6” round if it’s possible to stuff a battery and circuit board in it.  I have always (and still do) loved my 6” nox coil.  

1 hour ago, Carolina said:

Couldn’t make up my mind soooooo. Good side by side for judgement.

That 11x13 looks so much bigger than the 11”.  Has anyone actually measured the width of both?   From your pic the 11x13 looks a little wider than the 11”.  It’s probably just the perspective.  

One thing that may be an advantage to the 11” is that, since it being a stock coil, there may be more used ones available.  Thus cheaper.  

33 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

Gotcha.  I just figured the the further you run it up the metal shaft, the more attenuation occurs, with the mid point probably being the worst.  The closer you are to either end of the upper less attenuation.  Couldn't say where in the upper Parkgt terminated the waveguide so I just assumed it was being attenuated by the upper shaft metal.  I'll have to run some tests myself because the "cut to suit" coax solution seems best.  It also looks like that's where XP is headed with their new antenna pack.

I’ll probably do what Carolina has done and coil the cable so it contracts as the rod is collapsed into its travel configuration.  That way I could hunt in water that’s as deep as the top of the upper rod.  

35 minutes ago, matt said:

Exactly what I thought. Hopefully they fixed the water intrusion too.

Me too!   Lol

If I were to buy a larger coil, I would get the 11x13 over the 11”. 

Hell yeah!   And thanks for posting the tid that it came in at.  

8 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

See my explanation in the previous post above.

Thanks for the explanation Chase.  I had surmised that the co-ax radiated it’s signal from the unshielded end.  However, in the original post Parkgt’s photo shows the end of the cable sticking just past the end of the lower rod.  When he puts the lower rod in the upper metal, the end of that cable is then enclosed in the upper metal tube and as shown in the video it works fine.  Why is that?

On 1/23/2023 at 11:50 AM, Carolina said:

The upper shaft is metal therefore it prevents the signal unless you run it all the way into the plastic retainer that the RC snaps onto. I coiled my cable like the CTX and ran it all the way up to the retainer and held it in place with a plastic tie wrap so it works with my WS6 module. 

What you posted above is what is confusing me about the remote losing it’s signal.  In that post Parkgt said that he tried running the co-ax cable all the way up the upper shaft but the signal wasn’t good.  What I’m not understanding is that if you run the co-ax cable just long enough so that it hangs out of the top of the lower shaft, some of that cable is still inside of the upper metal shaft.  If the metal shaft is causing interference, why doesn’t it cause interference when the co-ax end is is at the bottom half of the upper shaft?   In other words, if I run the co-ax so it just hangs out of the top of the lower shaft like Parkgt shows in his pic in the original post, the top of that cable will still be inside of the upper metal shaft.  If I made that cable longer so the end is near the top of the upper shaft, why would that make the signal worse?   Maybe I’m misunderstanding something.  Sorry if I am. 

Ok now I’m confused.  Some are saying if you extend the antenna higher up (closer to the remote) in the stock metal upper shaft it won’t work as well.  But leaving the end extended just past the end of the lower (I’m using the cf nokta lower shaft) it works fine.  How can that be because the upper end of the lower shaft is still inside of the metal upper especially in my case where I don’t extend it very far?   

On 1/21/2023 at 10:04 PM, Jed in NC said:

Going to give parkgt's idea a shot on my new 11" x 13" coil. I bought some RG179 removed the shield and double covered with marine heat shrink. Attached to the coil with velcro wire ties so I can easily remove the coil cover. Can still attach the charging clip without removing the antenna. Ran up the outside of a Nokta Legend carbon fiber shaft and hold the cable in place with a section of nylon split braided sleeving that I had left over from an audio job. Thanks again to parkgt for this great idea! Have not tested it yet, but hope to in the next few days.

 

Where did you get the cover to go over you nokta lower shaft?  

Wow!   Those are great finds.  For me, even though I live in North Carolina, I live in an area that had little or no civil war activity.  I’d love to find some civil war relics like that.  
 

As far as disc vs. notch, my take is this, (and please correct me if I’m wrong):

Disc is basically a tone break so setting disc at 40 everything 40 and below will give a low tone just like iron.   
 

Notch is different in that if your disc is set at, say, 7 and you notch from 7-40,  anything below 7 will come in with a low tone and anything from 7-40 will be silent.  

Whether one way or the other unmasks better in iron is, I think, still up for debate.  I know some have posted that notching unmasks better, but I don’t think anyone’s got any actual proof of that.  However since everything 7-40 is silent using notch, you may hear a high blip easier than if you just had your disc set at 40.  

Excellent!   This setup is perfect for me as I rarely water hunt but would like to submerge the coil at the edge of streams or in springs, etc.  Thanks for sharing!

57 minutes ago, strick said:

Ground Balance: It just seems to take forever to do  manual ground balance and then I give up and stop...not going to sit there forever pumping the coil....people watching may think I have some serious issues.  Whats up with that? MInelab seems to have it down to a science takes a few seconds and done with it. How can you trust a machine if you are unsure if it's ground balanced correctly? 

strick

This right here!  It takes at least 12 pumps to get a stable ground balance number.  Too much in my opinion.  Nox takes about half that many pumps to ground balance.  

Wow!   That’s a great hunt!  Two Indian head pennies, a nice sized silver coin, a large cent and some nice relics!  Nice goin’!

Hell yeah!

I tried it out after work last night in my test garden.  My test garden consists of one silver dime buried at 8” in mild soil. Lol  The musketeer hit it but barely.  Definitely enough of a signal to dig though.  I thought that was pretty good for a 7 3/8” coil.  As a side note, my Tesoro mojave with its 7” coil will not hit this dime.  I also tried my nox with the 6” coil and it hit it hard!   

Doesn’t XP say in the manual that most detectors with a ground stability setting won’t even let you adjust the ground stability to the equivalent of setting 1 on the d2?   Something like, that setting is for very experienced users?  I’m going from memory here so please excuse me if I have this totally wrong.  

13 minutes ago, F350Platinum said:

Spent the day at the farm where I found the Scottish sixpence today, big farm with small hotspots. One of the most unusual things about this place is that despite finding a lot of really old relics in two places, not a single button has been found. This probably means it was detected by others. But, they did leave some interesting stuff behind!

Got there early, it was about 30 degrees and there was a frost, but it was easy to dig, and by the end of the day it got up to around 50. I invited Chase down to see the place and give him a shot at what could be there, I only scouted it so it wasn't hammered by me. I did find some great stuff before but there was more.

Used the RC and 13" for a while waiting for Chase, when he arrived I switched to the WS6 Master with the 9". What a difference. 😀 Just swinging the 13" for 2-1/2 hours got kinda tiring today, and I didn't find anything at all but buck balls. I also tested ground stabilizer a bit but quickly changed back to my original settings. Not here!

We walked toward the hilltop where I found the sixpence and found some stuff on the side of the hill, here's my haul for the day:

2 spectacle halves that don't seem to fit together, a single buckle identical to my first find in this field. A pewter spoon handle end, some more buckle bits and a bag seal of some sort.

The most interesting thing I dug today (not that 1600s buckles are uninteresting 😀) was the knob on the left, it's knurled and has a pin on the back. Exactly half the alphabet on the front from n-z. 🤔 I wonder what it was used for?

Hope on a return visit I find the other one 🤣 probably won't.

Gotta say it was a pretty trashy day too, buck balls and bullets mostly. A couple of square nails got me too.

It was fun hunting with Chase, and he did pretty well. There really isn't much in these 100 acres.

Those are some great finds!   I’d love to find stuff that old around here.  That round knob reminds me of a knob from safe.  

A minelab musketeer advantage, that is.   It’s in nearly new condition and I can’t wait to try it out.  I need to buy some batteries though.  From what I’ve learned from internet searches is that these musketeers were analog machines and very deep even with the small ts800 coil, which is what mine came with.  Anyone else ever use one of these?

1 hour ago, Dcraun said:

By chance do you remember what your silencer was set to? I had mine on 2 but I believe zero will be more productive I will try it this weekend and let you know

It was on 2.  

8 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

There's very little written about the ground stability setting because it shouldn't make a big difference on target acquisition except in mineralized soils that have variable ground conductivity.

Ground stability settings are not available in the beach/dive/relic/gold field modes.

Ground stability settings need to be set individually for each mode that has the setting available.

Ground stability can be set to 1, 2, or 3.  The default is "2" for all modes except Park where it is "3".

Basically, its a ground feedback filter:

1 - This removes all ground feedback filtering other than rejecting the ground signal based on the ground grab or manual ground balance setting.  This setting allows you to hear it all and might improve your ability to hear faint signals, especially in mineralized ground that raises the balance point above your established ground balance setting.  However, you will be bombarded by ground feedback "micro" changes in ground conductivity due to pockets of mineralization, bricks, ceramics etc. especially if running with little discrimination.  I believe it also increases coil bump sensitivity.  

2 - Mostly rejects ground variations above the ground grab setting but there is some signal processing secret sauce that still enables the machine to still detect targets in high mineralization conditions (conditions that locally raise the ground conductivity above the balance point).

3- Maximum filtering applied to quiet ground feedback due to ground conductivity variations and also minimizes coil bump sensitivity.  It is the "quietest" ride, but you might miss some faint targets as a result depending on ground conditions.

As with all of these things, YMMV and experimentation to see what works best for your local conditions is the best course.  I don't think you can really handicap depth or faint target sensitivity significantly unless you go to "3", and then only for certain soil conditions and targets.

HTH

Once again Chase, a very concise and easy to understand post on the ground stability feature!