Tips to add depth in dry soil?

[Viking]

Hello,

I hit a 1930's home this morning and did ok, but was mainly finding shallow finds. I've had this experience in other old yards too, you know, feeling like my Ace 250 could make the bulk of the finds I'm getting with my E-trac (whether or not that's actually true).

Many times in these old yards, the soil is extremely dry and there is the usual rusted roofing nails and what not. The soil almost looks like rotted wood at 4 with old worm holes in the hard, dry dirt. Because of this (I believe) my autosensitivity likes to camp out at 17-19 (on auto +3), so I'll try to bump it up manually into the 20's, but it does plenty of talking and chirping (even after noise cancelling multiple times).

Does anyone have any tips for getting added depth in dry soil conditions? Learn to live with chattery manual sensitivity, while going very, very slow (I have a hard time pinpointing when it's talking a lot)? Wait for a good rain? Other tips?

Thanks! |:confused:)

[coinnut]

I actually like dry soil sometimes lol . The iron has a smaller halo around it. I use very little discrimination (a bit more than just nails) Two Tone Ferrous, Deep - On, Fast - Off, a Sunray 5 coil, and I set the sensitivity at around 26 or 27. I go fairly slow. The more nulling, the slower I go. This has always worked for me. I never run Multi Conduct at houses. I have gone over my Multi Conductive hunts with a TTF hunt (the same day)and found lots of targets. The other thing is that sometimes you must remove the surface targets (clad, junk) in order to open up the deeper targets. Hope this helps.

[Viking]

That definitely helps. thumbsup01 Thanks! I think I'll head back there tomorrow morning and try TTF. Keep ya posted on if I'm able to recover anything more (3 wheats today, deepest was 4 or so, no silvers).

[randy]

I hit a wheatie at 8 inches yesterday in almost bone dry dirt (top inch was damp from a recent rain). I think you lose a little depth, but you should get more than 4 inches. I hit a silver at 6 inches, and did notice the target id was a bit dicey. You may lose target id at depth as well, or there may have been junk under the coil messing with it (think it was just weak TID, tho).

I almost always run man 26, deep on, fast off, trash high, tones multi conductive, with the stock coil. This was at a trashy park with lots of EMI. I just tolerate the falsing.

[Viking]

Well I went back to that 1930's yard yesterday morning to try TTF. While I did find many more items, it felt like they too were very shallow. Perhaps there just aren't many targets deeper than 4-6 here, what with the hard packed soil and all. I ended up pulling about $7 from the yard with 5 wheats, no silvers, and enough brass hose parts to open a hardware store.

A couple of questions came to me though. First, in a relative sense, what is the difference in depth between a manual sensitivity of, say, 24 versus 29? Inches? Unfortunately I live in a condo with no yard, so it isn't easy for me to play around in a test garden. Secondly, whenever I go to home sites, I get a ton of sweet sounding tones, but the numbers (usually 27-44 or so) and lack of repeatability from multiple directions, convinces me to keep walking. Is this the right move? When I decide to dig these, they're always rusted nails/trash and it takes digging a crater to unearth.

I'm getting concerned that I don't know what a good deep item sounds like. I'm under the impression that an actual good target should be repeatable. Perhaps faint, but it should still get your attention? Sure would be nice to get out with another E-trac user who makes their living digging the hard to find leftovers! Even a video would do (showing swing speed, sounds, Fe/Co numbers, depth, etc).

Thanks.

[coinnut]

First, in a relative sense, what is the difference in depth between a manual sensitivity of, say, 24 versus 29?


Not sure you can say in inches, since everyone's soil is different, but for me 24 is a good, solid setting, but may not respond well to the very deep targets. You may not hear them clearly, or even at all. Deep fringe targets are small hits that I usually only get when I crank the sensitivity up past 27. Bring yours up to 26 or 27 (or higher if it doesn't false too much), and go over a very small grid again. Try a 10x10 square and go over it in a couple of directions. Take any signal that repeats in at least one direction and pinpoints in the same visual spot. If you are gonna use multi Conductive, make sure you discriminate out from 24 -35 on the ferrous side. That way, only iron falsing is gonna try and slip through. It takes a lot of patience and trial and error to get them targets. I can get them at cellar holes rather easily now, but standing houses are a different story. There is much more trash throughout the ages dropped there, so it is harder (or impossible) to reach the lower layers. Try the technique a bit away from any barn or house and work your way in. That way you enter from an area that has less trash and slowly work into a more congested area. If the place has not been detected, then all the items are there, just a different strategy needs to be developed as you go. It's not like hunting parks or cellar holes. I have found standing houses to be much harder to detect deep.