Equinox Ground Balance Settings

[mh9162013]

5 hours ago, longbow62 said:

. I do not trust ground tracking when I can just do a auto GB when I think I need to.

But how can you always be sure when you need to adjust your GB or not?

I've never used the tracking GB on the Equinox 600, but on my next hunt, I will. The reason is because I think my soil conditions change even if it's not obvious.

If I'm hunting a curb strip, then cross the street to hunt a grassy field at my local park, I'll know to adjust my GB or deal with the consequences, w/e they might be. But when moving from one part of a grassy field to another, there's no obvious way (short of digging targets and noticing a pattern b/w VDIs and targets) to know that your ground conditions could be changing in a way to alter your VDIs. And if there is a way, I don't what it is.

I've noticed in yards and in parks that a given area might look the same on the surface, but the soil profile is changing depending on where you are. For example, the amount of milder brown/black soil above my mineralized clay lay gets thicker or thinner as you move across a yard or field at a park. Or, older soil is replaced with fill dirt. It's these changing underground conditions (even though the surface seems unchanged) that I think the tracking GB might be helpful for me. We shall see.

[Chase Goldman]

18 minutes ago, mh9162013 said:

But how can you always be sure when you need to adjust your GB or not?

Simple, if you are hearing ground noise then you should rebalance.

 

[mh9162013]

6 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

Simple, if you are hearing ground noise then you should rebalance.

What do you mean, ground noise? Like iron grunts? I normally hunt in Park 1 or 2, so those are discriminated out.

I thought ground conditions could change such that there's no noticeable change in the sounds you're hearing. Except the tones and VDIs will start corresponding to targets of different conductivity levels. 

So in one section of a field, copper pennies might ring up as a 22, but in another part of the field, the same pennies might ring up as a 24. However, reground balancing could avoid this shift in VDIs (or tones, depending on how your tones "bins" are set up).

Or am I missing something?

Another issue with reground balancing is many places I hunt are so trashy, finding a clear spot in the ground is difficult. I can't just stop a hunt and reground balance. It might take several minutes of walking around to find a spot that's trash free to reground balance...and this location could be far away from the place I was originally hunting at.

[Chase Goldman]

On Equinox ground noise manifests as continuous or machine gun hits in the -9 to -7 range.  When ferrous is discriminated out, it might not be noticeable though you might experience some slight depth loss but target IDs should not be affected.

[mh9162013]

7 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

On Equinox ground noise manifests as continuous or machine gun hits in the -9 to -7 range.  When ferrous is discriminated out, it might not be noticeable though you might experience some slight depth loss but target IDs should not be affected.

Hold up. I must be confused or missing something here.

If my Equinox 600 is not ground balanced properly, my target IDs should still be unchanged?

I've noticed that the same type of coin will read differently depending on the soil conditions with respect to mineralization and moisture levels (conductivity?).

Sometimes, a copper penny is 20. But other times, I've had a copper penny ring up as high as the mid 20s. I assumed this variation was, at least in part, due to diffferences in how my machine was ground balanced for given soil conditions. Then there's the fact that without proper ground balancing, my MIQ machines have had a habit of chasing ghost signals deep in my clay soil after a recent rain...

[F350Platinum]

A good trick for me is to clear a small area of all targets, big enough for the coil with some space around it. I ground balance in that spot. Useful when there is iron everywhere.

[mh9162013]

2 minutes ago, F350Platinum said:

A good trick for me is to clear a small area of all targets, big enough for the coil with some space around it. I ground balance in that spot. Useful when there is iron everywhere.

But that doesn't address the situation where your ground conditions are changing as you move around during your hunt. Reground balancing in your new location may not be possible due to heavy concentrations of trash. This is a problem I face, at least. I've assumed there's nothing I could do about it, but now that I realize tracking GB might be an option...

[midalake]

1 hour ago, Chase Goldman said:

Simple, if you are hearing ground noise then you should rebalance.

Then one needs to be proficient enough to know the difference between Ground noise and EMI. 

[Chase Goldman]

1 hour ago, mh9162013 said:

But that doesn't address the situation where your ground conditions are changing as you move around during your hunt. Reground balancing in your new location may not be possible due to heavy concentrations of trash. This is a problem I face, at least. I've assumed there's nothing I could do about it, but now that I realize tracking GB might be an option...

Don't overthink it or get too caught up in trying to have the machine perfectly balanced at all times. Small bits of non-ferrous trash are not really going to affect GB that much.  I've successfully GB'd while purposefully pumping over a pull tab.  Your target's ID might be affected by ground conditions (as well as orientation and adjacent targets) but doing a GB is not likely going to change the ID, just reduced ground noise and possibly increased target signal strength.

 

23 minutes ago, midalake said:

Then one needs to be proficient enough to know the difference between Ground noise and EMI. 

Like I said, if it is showing up as -7 to -9 signals, it's probably ground noise whereas EMI typically shows up in the non ferrous range and can't be zeroed out by a GB.  If I can't tell the source, I usually raise the coil and do a noise cancel then auto GB if I'm not running tracking.  

If, like you do, run tracking almost exclusively, then it's usually a non-issue (which is what you were probably inferring) and you mainly just have to be concerned with EMI.

[Jeff McClendon]

2 hours ago, mh9162013 said:

What do you mean, ground noise? Like iron grunts? I normally hunt in Park 1 or 2, so those are discriminated out.

With your buried clay layer, I would be ground balancing very carefully. That requires that you have nothing rejected when you ground balance. So, turn on the Nox 600, do a noise cancel, press the horseshoe button to accept all targets, find a relatively clean spot and do a quick ground grab. Once the Nox 600 has settled on a number you are ready to go. Press the horseshoe button to reject the iron range and go detect.