Equinox Can Find Some Small Saltwater Gold

[Chase Goldman]

Good idea in the water.  You don't/can't look at VDI and only care if it's ferrous or nonferrous (if you are going to dig all nonferrous anyway) so 2 tones is the way to go.  You just won't have a clue until you get it out of your scoop or onto the floating sifter.

[Jackpine]

On 4/9/2018 at 7:45 AM, dewcon4414 said:

Chase.... im not sure they werent right about just being in multi freq at the beach with a salt setting.   Ive tried hunting in park and field modes.... multi freq.   IF we have a lot of moisture on the sand they can be difficult to hunt with.  I have been able to set them the same (tones, volumes, iron bias ect) way and it quiets them down a bit.   BUT i find myself going back to beach 1..... even thou field 2 and park 1 seems deeper..... doesnt help if you cant hunt with them easily.   Moisture just really seems to light the beach up in other modes.

All your comments seem right about raising the GB especially about loosing weak targets raising the GB.   But, didnt the manual say you get a symbol on the screen when the machine goes into Beach Mode transmission power reduction?  Ive never seen that happen on my screen yet.  

Me and Cliff have been discussing GB so  I talked to Tom about this ....... seems he was talking about adjusting the SENSITIVITY NOT  the GB up those 5 digits.   Which i had found i could easily adjust it up 3 already and keep it fairly quiet in beach 2.   Now .... i read an article that Gordon Heritage did ..... he recommended using the default 0 ALWAYS.  His reasoning was ..... because by balancing them they got very noisy because it make flakes more visible to the machine.   But on a beach thats kind of what we are looking for more sensitivity to smaller targets...... which means a little more chatter ... am i wrong?  

Manual.... vs Auto.... vs tracking on a beach.    To me... you really have to know what the machine is doing in order to manually GUESS at the GB.   In Auto the machine selects the best GB..... and if im correct LOCKS it and doesnt check the GB again...... which means you will have some parts of the beach.... like fluffy sand with nothing there that will be quiet.... and hard pan where it will be chatty.   NOW in tracking .......it adjusts constantly down fall here is depth/sensitivity over the fixed.... am i right?   Auto GB doesnt mean it auto adjusts like in tracking..... it just means the machine will select the correct GB and it stays there once selected.

A good many on the CTX ....... just grabbed the machine and hit the water without GBing.   I think we believed auto GB ment it was being adjusted ..... which was incorrect.   It just ment we were likely hunting in the default unless we or someone had done an auto GB on the machine.   Which is why sometimes ...... you wondered, are targets shallow today or am i just not getting the depth?

Also......GBing before you get into the water..... where should it be done?    Many say right near the water so it can identify the salt as well as the sand.   But isnt that where a greater concentration of black sand and in our case buried seaweed is?  

Thanks for the info Chase.

I'm not a salt water hunter but wouldn't tracking have an advantage on beaches where blacks sand layers exist?  Especially if the layers vary in depth and intensity?

Tom

[dewcon4414]

Yes .... if those conditions exsist, but oddly with that moisture chatty effect the machine will still read default 0 GB in auto or somewhere near 14.... its not EMI you can hold the coil up and hear nothing but a nice steady threshold.   Tracking works ...... but you really loose depth.   Better off to leave it ... or auto GB.   Heck im debating if i even need to GB..... ive not found a lot of difference ..... except tracking isnt as deep i did test that..... here anyway.   This will really very i believe depending on location.  

[Chase Goldman]

I have not noticed any depth impact with tracking...but only used it under very mineralized conditions which enable it to periodically and reliably grab a ground reading and also because the ground balance point changes significantly over short distances.  Leaving tracking off under these conditions could definitely affect depth if I was not frequently auto or manually rebalancing.  If tracking is giving you the right GB number, I do not understand how it can impact depth.  Under very mild conditions such as in sugar sand, then the tracking algorithm may not work reliably at all and I can see that you would not want to run it for fear of getting an off-the-wall GB point.  But in that case, Auto GB pumping would also likely be as unreliable, so it would probably be best to leave GB at 0 under those circumstances.