Beach Vs Land Programs: An Unmasking Conundrum

[CPT_GhostLight]

I have Sunday off (Father's Day 😎) and I have loaded your settings on my D2. I don't have a saltwater beach, but I do have a sandy lake beach nearby, so I'll try to see if I can replicate what you are experiencing. And maybe some of the other salt water hunters on here could do the same and post their results, because more users showing the same results may grease the wheels at XP, so to speak. 😎

[ColonelDan]

36 minutes ago, CPT_GhostLight said:

I have Sunday off (Father's Day 😎) and I have loaded your settings on my D2. I don't have a saltwater beach, but I do have a sandy lake beach nearby, so I'll try to see if I can replicate what you are experiencing. And maybe some of the other salt water hunters on here could do the same and post their results, because more users showing the same results may grease the wheels at XP, so to speak. 😎

The test doesn't require you to be on sand.  Mine resulted in masking in my test garden backyard.   sandy soil/loom.

Clad Quarter buried at 6 inches, ferrous tent stake pushed vertically in the ground and buried with the horizontal top of the stake at 1 inch deep and only 2 inches to the side of where the quarter was buried.

Just FYI...I also conducted this same test with my second D2 just to rule out malfunction with the first D2.  Same results.

I await your report

[TJ Jeepguy]

I wonder if the beach and diving programs need the salt/mineral component to process things correctly.  

[ColonelDan]

42 minutes ago, TJ Jeepguy said:

I wonder if the beach and diving programs need the salt/mineral component to process things correctly.  

That’s it and it makes sense otherwise the salty environment and related mineralization drives detectors nuts.  

[TJ Jeepguy]

I don’t pretend to understand how these detectors really work or process information, but it seems logical to assume that ground information must play a very specific and critical role in the D2’s programs.   (Probably most good SMF detectors also).  

[brys]

12 hours ago, TJ Jeepguy said:

I wonder if the beach and diving programs need the salt/mineral component to process things correctly.  

And does clean water need the salt setting ,i detect in clean rivers 

[ColonelDan]

No, fresh water does not need the beach programs.  I use General in fresh water lakes and it does just fine.

[CPT_GhostLight]

On 6/16/2023 at 10:29 AM, ColonelDan said:

The test doesn't require you to be on sand.  Mine resulted in masking in my test garden backyard.   sandy soil/loom.

Clad Quarter buried at 6 inches, ferrous tent stake pushed vertically in the ground and buried with the horizontal top of the stake at 1 inch deep and only 2 inches to the side of where the quarter was buried.

Just FYI...I also conducted this same test with my second D2 just to rule out malfunction with the first D2.  Same results.

I await your report

Okay Colonel, I got a chance to slip out and test the masking scenario today. Let me preface as saying my soil is mineralized and sandy in my back yard and has dried out some since it hasn't rained since early yesterday and was sunny today. It's about 6 bars on the Ground Level Mineralization Strength meter. My ground balance varied from 87-89, but with Ground Tracking on, it settled in the 87 zone.

This is not exactly scientific testing but I approached it with a mind set to see if I could make the D2 unmask the clad quarter in your program. I was able to get it to unmask with the various land programs, but not with all of them. Granted I didn't spend too much effort adjusting the land programs, just basic hunting tweaks I would normally make to see which programs could hit the quarter. 

I set up for the test with your listed settings:

Base Program = Beach Sensitive, Max Freq = 40, Disc = 0.0, Notch = Off, Sensitivity = 95, Silencer = 0, B.Caps = 0, Reactivity = 0, Audio Response = 7, Iron Volume = 7, Tone = Pitch, Threshold = 0, Audio = High Sqr, Audio Filter = 0, FE TID = On (I forgot to turn that off from the factory default setting), Ground Tracking = On, Ground Stability = 2, Salt Sens = 7, Magnetic Ground = Reject.

This was the orientation of the quarter and tent peg in the ground with the quarter and tent peg in an East-West relationship:

I tried all the various settings and combinations as you did to unmask the quarter with no success. Pitch tones was giving me a high false tone on the tent peg but low VDI number, probably because I forgot to turn FE TID off. I raised the Disc up to 10 with no change, I began lowering it back down to zero with not much change in audio or TID, but when I lowered the DIsc below zero, the audio on the spike began to change and break up a bit and there was an occasional higher number (56- 85) flashing sporatically and the non-ferrous bar showed response as well.

This would only show up on the Southern  and sometimes the Northern end of a 360 swing rotation. It was also more pronounced if I did a rapid wiggle off of or onto the location of the quarter. When centered on the quarter, the tent spike would dominate the tonal response and TID.

Here is an unexpected result. I was going to raise and lower the Reactivity to see how that might affect the signals when I acidentally lowered the Iron Volume instead and, for some unknown reason, the lower the Iron Volume went the higher non-ferrous numbers appeared  on the TID while doing a 360 sweep. With Iron Volume from 3-0, I was able to tell there was a good enough non-ferrous target there to dig near the tent peg. When I set the Reactivity from 1.5-2.5, it improved the response even more with the lower Iron Volume settings. I don't know how that happened, but I would have dug those signals knowing there was something near the peg. You might give that a try to see if it makes any difference on your turf and beaches, but it worked for me. BTW, I was using the 9" coil in this test.

I hope that helps in some small way.

[ColonelDan]

4 minutes ago, CPT_GhostLight said:

Okay Colonel, I got a chance to slip out and test the masking scenario today. Let me preface as saying my soil is mineralized and sandy in my back yard and has dried out some since it hasn't rained since early yesterday and was sunny today. It's about 6 bars on the Ground Level Mineralization Strength meter. My ground balance varied from 87-89, but with Ground Tracking on, it settled in the 87 zone.

This is not exactly scientific testing but I approached it with a mind set to see if I could make the D2 unmask the clad quarter in your program. I was able to get it to unmask with the various land programs, but not with all of them. Granted I didn't spend too much effort adjusting the land programs, just basic hunting tweaks I would normally make to see which programs could hit the quarter. 

I set up for the test with your listed settings:

Base Program = Beach Sensitive, Max Freq = 40, Disc = 0.0, Notch = Off, Sensitivity = 95, Silencer = 0, B.Caps = 0, Reactivity = 0, Audio Response = 7, Iron Volume = 7, Tone = Pitch, Threshold = 0, Audio = High Sqr, Audio Filter = 0, FE TID = On (I forgot to turn that off from the factory default setting), Ground Tracking = On, Ground Stability = 2, Salt Sens = 7, Magnetic Ground = Reject.

This was the orientation of the quarter and tent peg in the ground with the quarter and tent peg in an East-West relationship:

 

I tried all the various settings and combinations as you did to unmask the quarter with no success. Pitch tones was giving me a high false tone on the tent peg but low VDI number, probably because I forgot to turn FE TID off. I raised the Disc up to 10 with no change, I began lowering it back down to zero with not much change in audio or TID, but when I lowered the DIsc below zero, the audio on the spike began to change and break up a bit and there was an occasional higher number (56- 85) flashing sporatically and the non-ferrous bar showed response as well.

This would only show up on the Southern  and sometimes the Northern end of a 360 swing rotation. It was also more pronounced if I did a rapid wiggle off of or onto the location of the quarter. When centered on the quarter, the tent spike would dominate the tonal response and TID.

Here is an unexpected result. I was going to raise and lower the Reactivity to see how that might affect the signals when I acidentally lowered the Iron Volume instead and, for some unknown reason, the lower the Iron Volume went the higher non-ferrous numbers appeared  on the TID while doing a 360 sweep. With Iron Volume from 3-0, I was able to tell there was a good enough non-ferrous target there to dig near the tent peg. When I set the Reactivity from 1.5-2.5, it improved the response even more with the lower Iron Volume settings. I don't know how that happened, but I would have dug those signals knowing there was something near the peg. You might give that a try to see if it makes any difference on your turf and beaches, but it worked for me.

 

 

Excellent report CPT.  Very thorough and promising.  I wonder what impact those settings might have on targets that aren’t next to ferrous items.  In any case, I’ll give them a shot here and see what happens.

Thanks again.  👍🏻

[Chase Goldman]

30 minutes ago, CPT_GhostLight said:

Okay Colonel, I got a chance to slip out and test the masking scenario today. Let me preface as saying my soil is mineralized and sandy in my back yard and has dried out some since it hasn't rained since early yesterday and was sunny today. It's about 6 bars on the Ground Level Mineralization Strength meter. My ground balance varied from 87-89, but with Ground Tracking on, it settled in the 87 zone.

This is not exactly scientific testing but I approached it with a mind set to see if I could make the D2 unmask the clad quarter in your program. I was able to get it to unmask with the various land programs, but not with all of them. Granted I didn't spend too much effort adjusting the land programs, just basic hunting tweaks I would normally make to see which programs could hit the quarter. 

I set up for the test with your listed settings:

Base Program = Beach Sensitive, Max Freq = 40, Disc = 0.0, Notch = Off, Sensitivity = 95, Silencer = 0, B.Caps = 0, Reactivity = 0, Audio Response = 7, Iron Volume = 7, Tone = Pitch, Threshold = 0, Audio = High Sqr, Audio Filter = 0, FE TID = On (I forgot to turn that off from the factory default setting), Ground Tracking = On, Ground Stability = 2, Salt Sens = 7, Magnetic Ground = Reject.

This was the orientation of the quarter and tent peg in the ground with the quarter and tent peg in an East-West relationship:

I tried all the various settings and combinations as you did to unmask the quarter with no success. Pitch tones was giving me a high false tone on the tent peg but low VDI number, probably because I forgot to turn FE TID off. I raised the Disc up to 10 with no change, I began lowering it back down to zero with not much change in audio or TID, but when I lowered the DIsc below zero, the audio on the spike began to change and break up a bit and there was an occasional higher number (56- 85) flashing sporatically and the non-ferrous bar showed response as well.

This would only show up on the Southern  and sometimes the Northern end of a 360 swing rotation. It was also more pronounced if I did a rapid wiggle off of or onto the location of the quarter. When centered on the quarter, the tent spike would dominate the tonal response and TID.

Here is an unexpected result. I was going to raise and lower the Reactivity to see how that might affect the signals when I acidentally lowered the Iron Volume instead and, for some unknown reason, the lower the Iron Volume went the higher non-ferrous numbers appeared  on the TID while doing a 360 sweep. With Iron Volume from 3-0, I was able to tell there was a good enough non-ferrous target there to dig near the tent peg. When I set the Reactivity from 1.5-2.5, it improved the response even more with the lower Iron Volume settings. I don't know how that happened, but I would have dug those signals knowing there was something near the peg. You might give that a try to see if it makes any difference on your turf and beaches, but it worked for me. BTW, I was using the 9" coil in this test.

I hope that helps in some small way.

Hmm. Interesting.  So there potentially is merit to zero iron volume as I suggested earlier in this thread.  But to be fair, I was suggesting it as an alternative to notch. Great info CPT.