Conductive. Soil. Reduction

[ColonelDan]

Due to the characteristics of the areas that I routinely hunt here in Florida, I only use programs that have the conductive soil reduction capability…the beach programs, General and Relic.  Wet conditions are very prevalent as you can imagine so the halo effect, when using the other programs, has the potential to impose itself on your detecting life.

Now this got me wondering, would it be possible or feasible to add a conductive soil reduction on/off option for all programs to the Deus II software?  If so, the halo effect would be, could be or might be eliminated throughout the program options.

 I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no software engineer by any stretch so this might be a crazy idea.  Just thought I’d  throw it out there. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[Lodge Scent]

I like that idea Colonel. I use General when the ground is wet and it does seem to help with the falsing on those crusty iron colonial nails. I'm not sure the halo effect can be eliminated, but I would take any improvement!

[ColonelDan]

45 minutes ago, Lodge Scent said:

I like that idea Colonel. I use General when the ground is wet and it does seem to help with the falsing on those crusty iron colonial nails. I'm not sure the halo effect can be eliminated, but I would take any improvement!

I’m sure the halo effect can’t be totally eliminated in all cases.  I’m not sure that what I suggest can even be done.  I just throw it out there for those much smarter than me to chime in.  Like I said, it may be a crazy idea….🤷🏻‍♂️

[Skull diver]

20 minutes ago, ColonelDan said:

it may be a crazy idea….🤷🏻‍♂️

It is not, I can instead confess the same desire to possibly use other parameters and programs at the beach or in salt water.

A goldfield program with salt removal capability for example would be able to flush out fine necklaces.

But I remember that Steve in a really detailed post explained the great difficulty in using a gold detector (in our case a program) without having to give up something.

Hypersensitivity to gold invariably means going crazy with false signal from salt.

[ColonelDan]

I was thinking more in terms of land hunting programs for the on/off switch….e.g. Deep HC, Fast, Park etc.  

 

[UKD2User]

I've always thought of the effect of conductive/salty soil as being different from the halo effect.

I think that conductive/salt subtraction aims to neutralise the effect of a pretty much uniform distribution of conductive mineral salts dissolved in water (mainly sodium chloride solution) evenly spread out in a layer of wet ground and/or water.

I imagine that the return signal from this salty stuff is fairly uniform and is at a predictable frequency/phase-shift - so is easy enough to 'remove' using an algorithm similar to the ones which eliminate the general effect of the ground (as long as the set of frequencies transmitted and analysed in that particular operating program/mode cover the salt response region).

The halo effect, as I understand it, is about corrosion products forming a kind of graduated 'shell' around a metal item - a 'shroud' of rust, or a 'coinball' stuck together by copper/silver/nickel salts leaching into the soil around the coin.   I think that this kind of thing happens to a greater or lesser extent in all soils, and it's obviously not a uniformly distributed thing.

[ColonelDan]

Gary Blackwell addresses the halo effect at the end of this video and how CSR impacts it.

 

 

[UKD2User]

4 hours ago, ColonelDan said:

Gary Blackwell addresses the halo effect at the end of this video and how CSR impacts it.

 

 

I watched the video when it came out and again just now. I don't think what he said is at odds with anything I wrote above, except that he mentioned the "halo effect caused by damp ground" - I think this is just his way of describing a general background mineralisation caused by metallic salts dissolving in groundwater making a conductive 'ionic soup'. Google tends to support my definition of 'halo effect' (which is similar to but different from the way he used it) e.g. this example chosen fairly randomly: https://www.metaldetectingworld.com/halo_effect.shtml

I don't know Gary personally, although I know the area where he filmed that video - it's a few miles from my home. His videos are great but his choice of words is not always precise!