Nokta Legend V1.11 Depth

[Jeff McClendon]

I spend some time on other forums and some Legend Facebook forums too. I see many posters reporting excellent results with the Legend using V1.11 software. I see some posters reverting to V1.09 software or earlier because of reasons of their own. In general however, there is quite the buzz from some users from all over the world who claim that their Legend will not hit targets deeper than about 4". Some actually report that their Legend will hit iron targets but it won't hit high conductors and silver targets deeper than 4". Others report that their Legend simply won't go deep since they aren't finding deeper targets. Some people who I trust are really having an issue like one of our members whose iron and salt mineralization levels are much worse than those where I most often detect. I am not surprised that he is having some depth issues.

Maybe you own a Legend or are thinking about buying one and don't know what to make of all this after reading some Facebook posts. All I can say is I posted the following little write-up on a Facebook Legend page.  It has received many likes and judging from the names of those who like my post, they are from all over the world....amazing.

 Another poster posted a video showing his Legend completely missing what looks to be a UK large penny on the bottom of a freshly dug 6 to 8" hole. Basically after requesting some advice, he received several posts that explained his "issue" which was settings/iron masking related and was not an example of a Legend malfunction but was instead user error. He even admits that now but plenty of posters have reported "Me Too" type posts without even realizing that the poster screwed up. Oh well.

D. Smith from our forum and a couple of guys over on Friendly have real issues from what I can tell from their descriptions.

However, lots of posters from around the world are doing just fine with their Legends, even with the latest software V1.11

Anyway, I hate to be out detecting with my two Legends and wonder about all of this. So I did some testing to help settle my thoughts about my two Legends using my Deus 2 with 13X11" coil as the target finder and one of my Legends as the tested detector.

Legend V1.11 Hunt,

 

I've been enjoying the Legend a lot. I have been through software updates since V1.04. I have read all of the posts about this software version being better than that one, the Legend can't detect targets deeper than 4", the Legend chatters too much.

 

Anyway, I flagged 4 deeper sounding targets on a hunt recently using my Deus 2 with 13X11" coil. I was hunting a park in Colorado that has moderately high iron mineralization (6 bars filled on the Legend's iron mineralization meter) and which is old enough to have silver coins from the 1880s to 1964. I have found older US coins in this park in the past with the Legend, Deus 2 and the Equinox 800.

 

So I located 4 deeper than 4" deep high conductor targets with Deus 2. I checked them with my Teknetics Tek Point pinpointer to make sure. I have it set to detect 4" or shallower coin sized targets. My Tek Point did not detect the 4 targets that I chose.

 

I put my Deus 2 in my car and I got out my Legend with version 1.11 software and LG28 stock coil. I removed each flag and swept the area of each target to see if the Legend would detect them and especially if the Legend would detect them while walking over the targets with a normal sweep speed. No problem whatsoever even though the first target sounded more like a mademade Iron target than a deep non-ferrous coin. I dug that first target that Deus 2 had liked a lot/Legend not so much.......it was a 9" deep bent nail in the side wall of the hole that I dug using the coin popping method with a flat bladed screwdriver with an 8" long shaft. Plug digging is illegal in my area as are shovels of any kind. Well done Legend with V1.11 software. The second target sounded very good with target IDs from 49 to 52. It turned out to be a 1966 copper Lincoln Memorial penny that was 7" deep. The third target was a 1946 copper Wheat penny that was also around 7" deep and had excellent audio and target IDs from 48 to 50. The fourth target had really strong audio responses and solid IDs from 49 to 51. It was a 6.5" deep 1959 silver Roosevelt Dime.

None of these coin sized targets were super deep. They are much deeper than the 4" that is claimed by some to be the depth limit of the Legend.

 

I have two Legends. One is an early version and one was made five months ago. Both will easily detect even small coin sized targets well past 4" even in moderate to high iron mineralization.

 

As you can see from the photo below of the Legend's screen showing the Fe3O4 mineralization meter, I am using Park M1, with the G discrimination pattern, sensitivity 28 ground balanced at 6, my recovery speed was 5, iron filter 1, iron stability 4, bottle cap reject 0, audio gain 4, iron volume 7, with 6 tones. When I switched to the F (ferrous rejected) discrimination pattern along with having the iron filter setting on default 8, the 3 flagged targets that were copper and silver basically disappeared. That's the effect of moderate to high iron mineralization masking these deeper non-ferrous targets so that any response they might make would mimic iron responses due to the iron filter being set way too high for the ground conditions here and those audio responses would also be rejected by the F discrimination pattern.

[Jeff McClendon]

I was able to do a second quick hunt today. I was willing to dig absolutely anything with a decent repeatable signal and with stable target IDs. I was at an elementary school that has thick sod with sod staples about 4" below the surface that are in various states of rust. Makes for a very noisy, iron false filled hunt but at least the staples are spaced regularly so I basically know when I am over one. Some of these targets were in the sod thatch so around 3 to 4" from the bottom of the coil. Others were well below the sod in the original soil. The grass was about 4" long and very thick so some of these targets were detected about 8" deep. None had weak audio responses or unstable target IDs once I had the coil properly centered over them. Like I said, I was searching for low, mid and high conductors including gold jewerly (skunked) and silver jewerly (got one .925 ring) and silver coins (skunked but I did get a Wheat penny). I was running the same settings as in the previous post. The Legend's iron mineralization meter showed 7 or 10 bars filled. Ground balance stabilized at 5.

[Digalicious]

Thank you for the thorough and objective experiment Jeff. You're one of the very few hunters that I trust for such experiments. 

I don't want to derail your thread, but as a side note to depth, Dilek recently stated that their head engineer has been working on a "boost" mode for the Legend, and that it will be an enhancement update.

[glacialgold]

8 hours ago, Jeff McClendon said:

However, lots of posters from around the world are doing just fine with their Legends, even with the latest software V1.11

Yeah, no depth issues here with the Legend running v1.11. Granted, I'm dealing with a fairly low level of ground mineralization, which makes things much easier.

Thanks for the thorough test and post, Jeff!

[Jeff McClendon]

38 minutes ago, Digalicious said:

Thank you for the thorough and objective experiment Jeff. You're one of the very few hunters that I trust for such experiments. 

I don't want to derail your thread, but as a side note to depth, Dilek recently stated that their head engineer has been working on a "boost" mode for the Legend, and that it will be an enhancement update.

I am aware of the announced version 2.0 software update which includes an M4 Beast or boost mode. Whether that has anything to do with some of these current complaints is doubtful. 
 

Several previous Nokta Makro detectors had “Boost” modes. In general they were effective in certain circumstances that were not hindered by high EMI or high mineralization. I did not get to use them much. 

[Digalicious]

13 minutes ago, glacialgold said:

Yeah, no depth issues here with the Legend running v1.11. Granted, I'm dealing with a fairly low level of ground mineralization, which makes things much easier.

 

No depth issues for me either. I also have low level mineralization. I'm also getting a little more depth and better ID's with the appropriate SMF modes compared to the appropriate SF modes. My tests are always with a silver dime and gold ring.

Jeff,

I was wondering the same about the boost mode. More specifically, the Legend already has a very high sensitivity ceiling, so any more will be an issue in EMI. However, perhaps the boost mode will mitigate EMI by increasing the Tx power and utilizing some sort of digital signal processing. Well, it will be an interesting enhancement none-the-less.

 

[abenson]

I broke down and bought a Legend about a month or so ago. Watched lots of videos and read lots of forum posts before I ever went out in the field to hunt with it so I could understand the settings. I'm not seeing depth issues in my high mineralized soil or beach hunting. I don't think it's as deep as either the Deus 2 or Manticore, but it's no slouch either. I found targets over 12 inches deep at the beach and over 7 inches deep at park. No performance complaints here.

[JCR]

A good thorough performance report in real world conditions. Thank you for posting it to help clear the fog some people insist on remaining in. 

[Bill (S. CA)]

Jeff,

Always love your write ups.  I'm curious about a couple of things:

1.  Why don't you run any bottle cap rejection?  I will be honest, I have played with my Legend and the bottle cap rejection really doesn't do much so I keep it low.
2. "When I switched to the F (ferrous rejected) discrimination pattern along with having the iron filter setting on default 8, the 3 flagged targets that were copper and silver basically disappeared. "  Do you think if you ran in F and lowered the iron filter to a lower value you would have hit those targets?

Bill

[Jeff McClendon]

1 hour ago, Bill (S. CA) said:

Jeff,

Always love your write ups.  I'm curious about a couple of things:

1.  Why don't you run any bottle cap rejection?  I will be honest, I have played with my Legend and the bottle cap rejection really doesn't do much so I keep it low.
2. "When I switched to the F (ferrous rejected) discrimination pattern along with having the iron filter setting on default 8, the 3 flagged targets that were copper and silver basically disappeared. "  Do you think if you ran in F and lowered the iron filter to a lower value you would have hit those targets?

Bill

I only run the Legend bottle cap rejection when I have to.  Bottle caps are not a predominant target at the test location. 
 

Due to the high iron mineralization in the area, the Legend, Equinox 800 and Deus 2 all detect deeper non-ferrous targets with some intermittent ferrous responses. Running the Legend with the F discrimination pattern would cause broken up, sporadic responses on those nonferrous targets.