Low Weighted Multi Vs 5/10 Khz To Avoid Tiny Targets

[Joe D.]

Argyris, 

 Congratulations on being such a dedicated student of the Equinox! You are already "light years" ahead of me, in such a short period of time! I'll just follow behind you, and the forum "Yoda's"!  And try to sponge up as much as this thick skull can absorb! ???

 

[Argyris]

Thanks Joe, I'm also waiting for one of Clive's Equinox Skill books to arrive...I love hunting, but also love to read and learn as much as I can about my hobbys when I can't be in the field...and also, being a mechanical engineer, it's in my DNA to learn the fundamentals and interprete the behavior of these machines......!

However, Minelab has already done a great job with the factory settings so I keep telling to myself to not overthinking it...Turn on, choose Park 1, noise cancel, GB, adjust sensitivity and go hunting....field time will teach us everything else....it's a fun process afterall and should stay as such!

Such a great community in here I have to say...and really knowledged members than know what they're talking about...really glad to be a part of it! ?

[Argyris]

Well, I finally made it to my favorite pebble beach for a decent 2 hours hunt and thought I should share my results!

I intented to hunt only the dry part to make some practice in these aluminum junk targets that make me suffer, but the huge amount of trush between the pebbles nightmare and the fact that the water was so calm and without swimmers, I very soon decided to give it a first try underwater in waste depth while snorkeling with my mask. It was my first time with Nox underwater so I was really nervous to see if it leaks but everything went fine and really enjoyed it ? 

In my very first underwater hunting, I didn't messed a lot with settings but made some minor adjustments..I  was running beach 2 mode in 2 tones (set all VDI >0 to pitch 23 with max volume in order to hear it underwater, since I was using only the control box' speaker while snorkeling with my mask.) I also notched out only -9 to -7 to get rid of ceramic rocks and some ground noise and set iron (-6 to 0) to low volume. Reactivity was left at default 6 and Iron Bias (F2) setting also @6. Sensitivity @18 and GB at tracking mode since I didn't have enough time to experiment with auto-pumping.

Well...as expected, ZERO JUNK UNDERWATER!!! No aluminum, no foil, no iron.....only good targets. In these 2 hours, I managed to get 30+ (!!!) early clad coins (drachmas of 90s...nothing special unfortunatelly and very corroded too), also found a HUGE amount of lead sinkers,  and also found my first gold ring with nox (!!!)...so pretty happy with my first underwater experience!!! ? ? ? 

Ring is marked 14k with 7 little rocks and came at a rock-solid vdi of 11 from all directions. Almost all targets where really shallow (the specific beach has a pretty solid bottom - no soft sand at all so staff don't settle very deep I guess....I suppose that's the reason I could easilly find these old drachmas of 90s in no more than 3-4'' deep).

However, I do have a question regarding iron bias: is there any reason to run iron bias at zero (f2=0) while underwater in salty conditions? Does iron bias could make me miss thin chains/earrings or other difficult or very deep targets if no iron is present to mask them? Iron masking and junk doesn't seem to be an issue underwater in my beache,  so I left it at f2=6 (I prefer F2 over fe) since it was my first underwater hunt and thought that maybe higher iron bias would help to eliminate some chatter from deep salt & underwater minerals...what's your usual Iron Bias setting while underwater in salt? Any pros/cons or tips regarding iron bias while underwater?

best,

Argyris

[Dances With Doves]

Nice ring. Being in Greece the  people will bring you gold from all over the world.

[Chase Goldman]

3 hours ago, Argyris said:

However, I do have a question regarding iron bias: is there any reason to run iron bias at zero (f2=0) while underwater in salty conditions? Does iron bias could make me miss thin chains/earrings or other difficult or very deep targets if no iron is present to mask them? Iron masking and junk doesn't seem to be an issue underwater in my beache,  so I left it at f2=6 (I prefer F2 over fe) since it was my first underwater hunt and thought that maybe higher iron bias would help to eliminate some chatter from deep salt & underwater minerals...what's your usual Iron Bias setting while underwater in salt? Any pros/cons or tips regarding iron bias while underwater?

Just leave it at the default, if you don't have iron, it is not going to mask anything.  You can give it a try, but F2 = 0 is just very chatty on land for me.  I will not go below F2 = 4 which is equivalent to FE = 0.  Have not had a lot of opportunity to beach hunt with F2 as it just came out at the end of last year's beach season for me and haven't been to the beach since.  Don't over think it and if you have are curious, just set it to the setting you want and see what happens.  If you are finding stuff, avoid the urge to tweak.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Nice ring.

[GB_Amateur]

34 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

You can give it a try, but F2 = 0 is just very chatty on land for me.  I will not go below F2 = 4 which is equivalent to FE = 0.

For quite a while (most of my time with the Eqx since the lartest software tweak came out with the new F2 iron bias setting) I just left F2 = 5, per your recommendations, Chase.  I would never blame anyone for my experiences as it's completely up to me to decide what settings I use, and whatever others suggest are merely that -- suggestions -- and in pariticular what works best for them in their soil conditions.

I noticed a few times that deep coins (which I determined were deep coins by digging them ?) were giving me an iron grunt at the edge of the swing -- say about 3-5 inches from the target sweetspot in all directions (with 11 inch coil which I use 95% of the time) which means getting close to the coil edge crosses the target.  (I'm not saying this has anything to do with the coil edge being over the target -- I have no idea either way why this occurs.)

Last week I got similar iron hints on a 12-13 TID coin at four bar signal strength ("depth indicator" -- another one of those inaccurate terms).  Before digging I decided to go from Iron Bias F2 = 5 to F2 = 0.  Low and behold, the iron grunt/hint disappeared.  I then dug a 5-6 inch deep Buffalo nickel.  I've since been using F2 = 0 setting exclusively, without much evidence either way that it's different from when I ran F2 = 5.

Of all the settings on the Equinox, Iron Bias is the most baffling to me.  I've never had a detector with this kind of setting.  Further, there are some experts here who dislike filtering and thus set Iron Bias to its minimum.  From what I've read it is at least partly included to identify crown caps -- targets that are the least of my concerns.  I've not found that it helps with nails -- easily the most incidious iron target I encounter.  Maybe it does, but so far I haven't seen it in my soil and admittedly in my limited testing.

Chase, I know you do a lot of relic hunting in difficult (magnetite and/or maghemite loaded) soils.  My soil is intermediate (2-3 bars on the ~6 bar Fisher scales of the F75 and Gold Bug Pro).  Maybe that is why my appreciation for Iron Bias is lacking.

[Jeff McClendon]

Awesome ring and hunt Argyris. The Nox seems to like you.  

I would do as Chase says and use Beach 1 or Beach 2 with default iron bias settings until you get more time to experiment. I  use F2=0 only on highly mineralized dry ground which has magnetite, volcanic rock and ash fragments so I don't get so many iron grunt responses on good targets. I get iron responses just waving my coil over the ground with no visible targets even at F2=0 using the horseshoe button. In spite of all the natural iron, I managed to find a nice 1943 Mercury Dime today at 9" deep. Amazing that I could hear enough nice high tones in the midst of the iron grunts and numbers. When I'm gold prospecting I try to keep F2=0 and recovery speed as high as possible so I can really hear all of the tiny targets.

Continued good luck,

Jeff

[Argyris]

Thanks everyone...going underwater seems to verify everyone's insights regarding beach hunting: treasure/junk ratio is the best possible in the water, vs in the dry part where I have to dig 100 aluminum junk targets for every good target. No light trash underwater since waves take care of them and drive them in the shore...only heavy good targets stay in the water...so I guess I'm already hooked to the underwater thing ?

Anyway, regarding iron bias and following GB Amateur, Phrunt and Jeff's comments, when I tried in the dry beach part the other days and used high iron bias to help some with melted aluminum nuggets, I experienced the same iron grunts on many good coin targets with no iron nearby, and I also had iron grunts in complex alloy targets such as bimetallic coins or big melted aluminum...but I''try to describe how I understand it after reading some Clive's posts to help some:

High IB settings allow to "brake" and give strong iron grunts in not pure consistent one-metal targets or not good microscopic-level mixed alloys, or targets that are very "grounded" (their metal is very well mixed in the soil such as rusted iron for example because iron especially is more close to the ground characteristics than a non-ferrous), so iron bias reads this inconsistency between ground-metal or between the multiple metals of inconsistent alloy targets and depending of the setting either favors iron buzz or high tone. A shallow gold ring eg. of whatever karats or silver coins (that are well mixed alloys in microscopic level - clean metals- and not multimetal or "grounded-mixed in the soil") always give a pure high tone no matter the Iron Bias setting. However, targets that are macroskopic-mixed alloys or bimetallic compositions, or very rusted-corroded items (eg bimetallic 2€ coins, big melted pieces such as alum nuggets that probably contain other metalls too, rusted corroded coins that behave as multi-metal targets due to rust, bottlecaps offcourse and many other "complex" aloys that contain multiple metalls), with a max iron bias they "brake" and give strong iron grunts because iron bias reads this inconsistency due to multiple metal composition. The same happens with  iron due to the "ground-mixed" effect descibed above. I quote some Clive's info on iron bias from another thread which describes what I'm talking about: “Iron Bias” is a filter. Whereas the ground’s signal represents a large, unstable, response, a good target can be seen as a small, narrow and consistent response. “Iron Bias acts to mediate the “line” where this distinction is made. This doesn’t just include iron—but any object which contains multiple metals. So “Iron Bias” can be used to change responses from bottlecaps, corroded coins—anything that’s not “clean” metal such as silver, copper aluminum or gold.  What a detector does is to assess both the ground and any metal that’s in it and then separate the two—based upon this consistent / inconsistent scale. This is the scale that an “Iron Bias” control operates on." So from my perspective, this could explain the iron grunts in some non ferrous targets but also explain why very deep targets (week signals) could be mixed with the ground response and give iron grunts, due to a high iron bias setting which acts in the "incosistency line" of ground response vs metal.

Regarding underwater, I must play with the iron bias setting to further decide what to use but when unerwater, testing is quite difficult....The way I see it, high iron bias can help to eliminate some underwater-ground & minerals response or black sand incosistent response, but a high setting could also give iron buzz in small good targets or deep ones if ground signal & minerals dominate over them...Iron masking is not an issue when underwater in my beach since there is almost no iron junk, but there are many "ceramic" red rocks and some other black coal type soft ones and also some black sand in some areas that experienced when faning with my hands (one of the reasons I notched out -9 to -7 vdi), so a high iron bias could have a bad effect and give iron grunts in good targets near them.....that's the reason I'm thinking to run with iron bias F2=0 but I must check again if I'll have underwater stability issues due to salt/ground/minerals etc with the lowest IB setting.

Thanks everyone for your comments, this first gold with nox was a good boost to continue hunting this difficult beach.

best,

Argyris

 

[GB_Amateur]

10 hours ago, phrunt said:

I have zero bar mineralisation on my Gold Bug Pro/T2 and I REALLY dislike F2.  The original Iron bias is OK but I find F2 does put iron grunts on small silver coins, in the worst case scenario it makes them completely disappear, especially when they're very deep.  This is in the default F2 setting.  I've never experimented with lowering or raising it... I'd rather just not use it, I see no benefit to it for me in my relatively iron junk free hunting environments.  The odd thing about this is people have been saying the Vanquish is using F2 iron bias, I don't know how verified this is but I do find the Vanquish hits the small deep silvers with no issues and no iron grunts.

Simon, are you referring to default Iron Bias settings in Park 1?