Using The D2 Relic Program For Relics? More Spanish Silver

[Chase Goldman]

Great hunt my friend.  Congrats on yet another Spanish silver.  It was a joy to get out even though I got to the field 2 hours later than planned.  Nevertheless I was happy with my finds in quality, quantity, and variety, though I did break my silver streak.  Oh well.  I didn't exactly sob uncontrollably on my 2 hour trek home.  Glad you are really liking Relic, Bob and tweaking it to suit your detecting style.   It's easy to like it seeing how successful you have been with it of late.  You're killing it!

Anyway, I hope you don't mind me injecting some additional detector tech nerd commentary and clarifications on D2's Relic mode based on my experience using Relic almost exclusively for more than a year and loving it even more since the Deus 2 Version 2.0 update was released.  Though the update only officially addressed improvements to the Goldfield program processing and sensitivity to small gold, I have noticed what seems to be greater TID stability on all programs and greater sensitivity with  Relic, as well.

19 hours ago, F350Platinum said:

I use Relic relatively unmodified, the main thing is to set one notch at 00-00, which essentially will make iron blank out. You cannot set discrimination in Relic, but you can crank Disc IAR to 5 which forces most iron to blank.

First some context - Relic and Golfield's lack of discrimination that is otherwise present on all the other stock programs also means that those two programs lack the ability to process and display negative TIDs. 

Notching 00 will blank weak, small iron and ferrous mineralization related ground noise not cancelled by ground grab that occasionally show up as TID 0.  But not all iron is TID 0, so notch 00 does not blank all iron.  Also, for some strange reason, TID 0 is audibly heard as pitch vs. Iron audio, which is very confusing, so 00 notch gets rid of that anomaly as well.  If you run with a reference threshold, anything detected that is notched out will blank the threshold.

Iron Amplitude Rejection (IAR), the Relic/Goldfield form of discrimination despite its name  doesn't actually blank or reject iron, per se.  It works more like an iron bias, suppressing the tendency of small and/or large iron (depending on the IAR level applied) to false outright or false off the edge of the coil.  If it detects iron, it processes and displays a corresponding ferrous ID and iron audio for anything below TID about 10 (not adjustable).  Increasing IAR has no impact on the breakpoint TID that results in iron audio being applied. I run with an aggressive IAR of 5 in mild soil as even deep non-ferrous tends not to indicate ferrous at the edge of detection.  In hotter soils I back off on IAR.  In the hottest of soils, I back all the way off IAR to 0 because IAR will aggressively break up any target signal in such ground.

IAR is far from foolproof.  I haven't actually observed it provide a false positive signal on a non-ferrous target (I periodically dig high probability ferrous targets just to make sure the detector is not fooling me).  As Bob mentioned, IAR does get consistently fooled by certain common ferrous targets including: big, deep flat iron; iron hooks and bent nails; and by iron rings and nut fasteners.  There are telltale clues to ferret out falsing:  typically falsing is also accompanied by a simultaneous ferrous grunt and corresponding simultaneous indications of a ferrous and non-ferrous target on the horseshoe display, falsing often manifests as TID 85 or occaisonally TID 75 that devolves into single digit ferrous IDs when you turn on the target.  If you can isolate and turn on the target and maintain the non-ferrous ID, there's a good chance the target is non-ferrous or there are co-located ferrous and non-ferrous targets.  If you are digging a deep hole and getting a progressively strong pinpointer response indicating a large target, you are probably digging to iron.  My Nokta discriminating pinpointer helps to keep me from having to completely extract many of these big pieces of leverite.

7 hours ago, F350Platinum said:

Thanks Mark,

I often wonder whether a PI would make any difference here, but we've tried the Axiom, and while it is awesome it's still pretty much a dig it all proposition. Like the D2 it's not perfect on iron.

In the mild, sandy soil of the Northern Neck, there is little if any depth advantage to be gained by going with a PI unless the coil size available to you is much greater than the maximum coil size for the preferred vlf detector.  Regarding "dig it all", yes that pretty much applies, but the Axiom "on demand" ferrous check should work better at greater depths than would be expected in a hot dirt location.  But if PI is not really detecting much deeper than the D2, in mild soil, there is no compelling reason to fly partially blind by running the Axiom vice the D2 in the mild soils.

Anyway, I still need to clean up and examine my finds closer but here's a look at my keepers.  Many of which were plucked out of machine gun iron while running IAR at 5.  No silver this time out for me other than a hint of some silver plating on one of the brass items.  But I did manage an IHP, several buttons,  a thimble as well as several fancy colonial buckle pieces and saddle adornments.  And a rarity for this neck of the woods, a fired CW era minie ball.  On the way back to my vehicle I got a sweet 93 and thought my silver streak was going to be saved.  Turned out to be a '65 clad quarter.  Couldn't even eek out a '64 to save me.  SMH. 

Thanks again for the opportunity to dig with ya, Bob.  It was yet another killer outing.

 

[F350Platinum]

36 minutes ago, Chase Goldman said:

Anyway, I hope you don't mind me injecting some additional detector tech nerd commentary and clarifications

Heh, I was hoping you would, I don't have engineering or scientific experience, I just made compudahs work all my career. 🤣 With detectors I just go by "muh feelz".

This was probably not a great attempt to illustrate my epiphany regarding using the Deus the way it was intended, not by bashing it into another mold. I appreciate the additional info. 👍

[Chase Goldman]

36 minutes ago, F350Platinum said:

Heh, I was hoping you would, I don't have engineering or scientific experience, I just made compudahs work all my career. 🤣 With detectors I just go by "muh feelz".

This was probably not a great attempt to illustrate my epiphany regarding using the Deus the way it was intended, not by bashing it into another mold. I appreciate the additional info. 👍

You did great.  Those two pseudo All Metal modes are strange in the way they behave and process target signals.  Those who don't have a Deus or who do but have not experimented with those modes are probably lost with either explanation.  It's something you have to use to appreciate but it can also be a little overwhelming unless you have options to tame it (e.g., Notch 00, IAR, Max FMF Frequency, High Square audio, and periodic ground grabs).  I just like Relic's reactivity to what's in the ground.  I use other modes for interrogating targets or for cherry picking.  But if I use them for general searching instead of Relic, I feel like I'm operating a little partially blind to what might be under the coil and, like you, I like how non-ferrous audibly pops out at you when in thick iron.  And you can't argue with the results.

[mh9162013]

Nice hunt! Finding silver is almost always a highlight of my hunts. But not all silver is created equal...

If that silver piece could talk, the stories it would tell!

[F350Platinum]

20 minutes ago, mh9162013 said:

Nice hunt! Finding silver is almost always a highlight of my hunts. But not all silver is created equal...

If that silver piece could talk, the stories it would tell!

Thanks MH,

Whoo, 300 years? 🤔

Every time we visit this field it talks to us, the activity imagined from relics found. I have two sites like this one, and you kind of get to live the colonial experience. 🙂

[EL NINO77]

Disc setting of the IAR disc can first of all change the discriminative properties, for example, when identifying iron.. where setting the IAR to 5... will most reliably identify iron...
on the other hand, setting the IAR discrimination too high when detecting small non-ferrous targets in mineralized terrains can lead to a more ferrous or even ferrous response to these targets.

[ColonelDan]

Why was I so late in seeing this post???   75 year old brain I guess.  

Yet another excellent hunt.  You're finding more Spanish silver in that field than we're finding along the Treasure Coast these days.  😅 

[F350Platinum]

37 minutes ago, ColonelDan said:

Why was I so late in seeing this post???   75 year old brain I guess.  

Yet another excellent hunt.  You're finding more Spanish silver in that field than we're finding along the Treasure Coast these days.  😅 

Thanks Colonel,

I've been posting too much probably 🤣

This makes two, the third was found in a field not too far away.

You'd find it if it was there, but don't skip those pennies. 😬 All 3 were 79-81.

If you can drive on the beach this season, tell the beach patrol your 4 wheeler broke so you decided to use your backhoe instead 🤔

[F350Platinum]

10 hours ago, EL NINO77 said:

Disc setting of the IAR disc can first of all change the discriminative properties, for example, when identifying iron.. where setting the IAR to 5... will most reliably identify iron...
on the other hand, setting the IAR discrimination too high when detecting small non-ferrous targets in mineralized terrains can lead to a more ferrous or even ferrous response to these targets.

Thanks El Niño,

Yes, and the same goes for using bottle cap settings in other programs, or F2 on the Equinox.

We can get away with it here because the soil is so mild. Default ground balance is 87 on the Deus 2, I have found many times that if I don't balance the machine I miss a lot of small targets. The ground balanced at 75. That is significant.

Honestly I'd rather come away with as much good stuff as I can, to me it's almost a waste to spend a lot of time on the details, on the beach and in the fields I'm pressed for time. I've literally never had a completely bad sounding target be a good one. Maybe a few that were somewhat bad can evade me, but I'll bring home 100 good finds for an occasional iffy one by not wasting time on them.

300 year old Tombac buttons are a great example. They show up as low tones from ~30-60, and almost always have an iron tone because of the iron shank, but it's either one-way or short. I always dig foil, pull tabs, and anything in the high 80s to 99.

Bottom line is you have to know your environment, and it's great that the D2 tells you what is going on. 🙂

[Tom_in_CA]

Good show.   Great pix.