Hello All
My First major outing with the QED. I intend to write a review here after ever major outing with the QED, until I understand the detector. This also posted in AEGPF. This is my first PI detector. Price, Capabilities and Aussie made were the driving factors to buying this machine.
I went to Warwick GPA for two days. Two purposes for the trip one to recon as much of the all GPAs as possible and two to test my new QED. Recon was to look for potential Dry wash locations. That a different story.
I found all the trash left in the GPA. Bullets, horse shoes, rusting tin, slug gun pellets. Nothing very deep though, all at only a few centimeters. This concerned me so I buried a five cent piece at 20cm on its edge to make it as small a target as possible. Picked this up no problems at all. Full repeatable target. So I am hoping I just didnt walk over any deep targets
I took an XP ORX and my QED
QED got a good 18hrs of use over the two days and used my ORX on some of the same ground: I found it interesting on how the VLF reacted compared to the QED. ( Not Direct comparison test)
My QED setup is as follows:
QED PLII with Detech Shaft
11" Detech Ultra sensing
Quest WIFI to a set of (Apple ipod earplugs ) I am going to buy a good set
Warwick I found has a great difference in minerals across the area. So I had to make sure I basically reset the QED every time I changed location
Quest WIFI - Worked very well. Battery lasts for 24hrs, just as well as I forgot to turn it off most of the time. Had receiver in my top pocket so my earplugs never got in my way. Forgot I still had them in a couple of times Overall very happy with this audio setup
Detech shaft - Excellent
11" Detech Ultra sensing coil - Being my first coil other than HF on ORX - I a had to get use to it sounding hollow while passing it over the ground. Being hollow cuts down on weight I suppose which is good.
I had to Factory Reset at every new spot I detected, as trying to adjust from the previous location was to hard. So in the end I just factory reset when I turned in on at a new location and went through the setup process. Working through the settings starting at 2, then 1,3,4,5
I talk about each setting in the order I used in my setup process
THS-B - Setup range was 49 to 59 so around 54 was mid point. I used it at mid the entire time so I would received an even tone for Small and Large targets
MGB - Setting ranged from 170 to 210. I very quickly got use to checking MGB on the Fly. I did find myself trying to balance in the wrong direction quite a a lot, this just meant spending time cycling back the other way to get correct MGB ( Silence in the Ear Plugs). MGB is achieved on the down motion of the coil, but I was receiving a tone on the up motion as well. Once I got use to this I adjusted the MGB until neither tone could be heard. Once MGB was achieved the detector was silent.
THS-A - This setting initially confused me a bit, as to me it I felt it wasn't really doing anything, after watch the training video over and over and reading some more I understood its relationship to THS-B. This how I used it - (This may be totally wrong so I will need some feedback here). Once I achieved ground balance I would adjust THS-A up until I could just here a tone being produced I would then turn it down until the tone was only just audible. I took this as being the sweet spot for THS-A. Around 50 all over the GPA
Gain - Adjusting Gain up above 2 produced an unstable response from the QED so 2 was the max setting for most of the trip. Adjusting Gain up also effected the tone produced by THS-A. I put the Gain up and went back to THS-A to try and adjust the tone out. This had no effect. So reset THS-A and lowered Gain to make detector stable
Mode - This setting is coil and ground specific to achieve a balance. I found that 3-4 was good for all areas I detected. Anything higher or lower made the detector unstable
After going through this setup( Only took a minute or two). QED was basically silent except for the very low tone that I could only just here from THS-A. While swinging I kept the coil in contact with the ground. I did not receive any coil to ground contact noise. At times I had to check that the detector was still on by passing it near my boot to get a target response ( steel in boots) The silence surprised me, but was excellent as I didn't have to have continual noise in my ears detecting
In patches this happened. I would get single tones from the detector both high or low, swing back past the spot of the tone, nothing. If I started to get these tones, I sometimes stopped moving the detector and listen, random tones still produced (EMI ground mineral) ? I also came across patches that produced multiple random tones. For example a patch 1m square where the detector was silent all around it, but just produced random tones all over the 1m Square. Nothing repeatable in one spot. I dug this out of curiosity, after removing a couple of cm all tone was gone and no target could be found or single disappeared. So eventually I just ignored this type of signal response putting it down to soil type\minerals. I also had tones that produced like a wobbly type noise that was over one spot that sometimes came and went. When dug target disappeared or I found I just spread the target noise over a wider area.
When target was found the tone was easy to recognize and repeatable over the one spot
Please feel free to give me feedback on my setup. I dont know if I am reducing the small target detection or loosing depth
This was my first experience with the QED. Overall I am very happy and excited with my purchase. All I need to do is walk over some yellow and find it. I think my next move is to setup a test patch somewhere. Lead sinkers from sub gram and up
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