Magnetic Ground Settings

[Steve Andrews]

Beach detecting today, I came across a lead fishing weight with a stainless hook attached to it by line.  As an experiment, I put the hook on the sand and tried the beach programs on it. You would think that, out of all of them, Beach Sensitive would be the one to pick it up. Nothing. I tried putting the sensitivity up all the way. Nothing. (Salt sens was at max too and I'd done a ground balance. Reactivity 0, 0 discrim). Nothing on Diving or Beach either.

I had been experimenting with Beach P (Pitch) earlier and tried that on the hook. Good signal.  The difference with the settings here was that I had accepted Magnetic Ground in the Ground Balance settings. I went back to my Diving, Beach and Beach Sens programs and, without changing anything else, accepted Magnetic Ground. Every program gave a good signal on the hook, plus an ID of around 41.

I'd be interested to hear your views on this. 

[midalake]

1 hour ago, Steve Andrews said:

You would think that, out of all of them, Beach Sensitive would be the one to pick it up. Nothing. I tried putting the sensitivity up all the way. Nothing. (Salt sens was at max too and I'd done a ground balance. Reactivity 0, 0 discrim). Nothing on Diving or Beach either.

We will do some testing on this today. A couple of general thoughts. The higher the quality of Stainless Steel the harder time a detector usually has picking up the target.  By the color and knowing hooks, I would say you have a 316 stainless hook. 

You may or may not have noticed, but we did take this off the other day and the detector did get a little chatty, had to do a sensitivity reduction. Will report later.........  

[Steve Andrews]

I left all programs in "accept" afterwards and didn't notice any instability. I don't generally detect for jewellery unless on a recovery mission, but I think if searching for a difficult target ..ear ring etc it would be desirable to have magnetic ground accepted.

[martygene]

Steve... i'm not sure to make of all of that. Wouldn't I want steel to not sound off? And why 41 TID? would a good 41 still come up if the mag ground be not accepted? Oh Steve so many questions. I don't know if i can ever detect again until I know the answers, lol. Otherwise I'll be second guessing every signal and just won't know what to do. I'm in the spider web now. 

[midalake]

22 hours ago, Steve Andrews said:

I left all programs in "accept" afterwards and didn't notice any instability. I don't generally detect for jewellery unless on a recovery mission, but I think if searching for a difficult target ..ear ring etc it would be desirable to have magnetic ground accepted.

 

21 hours ago, martygene said:

Steve... i'm not sure to make of all of that. Wouldn't I want steel to not sound off? And why 41 TID? would a good 41 still come up if the mag ground be not accepted? Oh Steve so many questions. I don't know if i can ever detect again until I know the answers, lol. Otherwise I'll be second guessing every signal and just won't know what to do. I'm in the spider web now. 

Well we did some testing yesterday and it seems there may be some slight gains on using magnetic accept. We did notice a little more instability in the moderate black sand we have here. More testing will need to be done. 

Also stainless steel is not just "steel" It should ring in on every detector on the nonferrous numbers. Stainless mimics gold numbers 100%. 

[Steve Andrews]

I took the hook back to the beach today and tried different settings of Beach Sensitive to try to make the hook detectable: different silencer, salt sens, reactivity etc.

Nothing I tried made the hook detectable, until I accepted magnetic ground. Then, a good signal 41.