Gary's Metal Detecting Forum
Gary's Detecting forum => General detecting talk => Topic started by: DaveJ on August 14, 2015, 11:28 am
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This has had me thinking in the last few days after seeing a few videos that suggest that if you reduce your swing speed down while detecting it 'could' give it better time to process the information better,in my mind this does make alot of sense.
But in the real world and with electronics so advanced and quicker would this still apply,starting this weekend i plan on trying reducing my swing speed down and take a mental note of if it actually does make any difference,of course a conclusion cannot be made after just a few outings but over a longer time frame and then it will be worth seeing if any advantage can be gained.
Has anyone got any additional thoughts on this one please.
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i can remember my first motion machine was a whites 6000 and had to be moved quickly ,then i got the toltec 100 and it was like switching to slow motion capture . i think every motion machine has a sweet speed ,but do wonder if even that can vary with the mineralisation encountered.
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if i remember correctly the dfx has a adjustable sweep speed section ,i don't think it actually did anything that made any difference though ,generally again from memory the whites worked best on moderate speeds ,new fisher and teknetics require a faster rate ,minelab need a sloooow rate of swing .
i can remember watching someone at a rally once literally whipping his machine as he walked ,and the coil was only in detection range for a micro second of each sweep .takes all sorts ::)
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Depends upon the detector. Some machines will go a bit deeper if sweep speed is increased and then some will not even see the target if the sweep speed is too fast. I think you'll see more of this is disc and or disc target ID mode than in all metal mode.
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It's all relative.
We see fast recovery speed machines like Deus every day being swung like a scythe, many are under the misapprehension that they CAN sweep that fast because it's a fast machine, they are WRONG.
If you have a slow recovery machine and slow your sweep speed down it will help the machine overcome that problem to an extent but it will still not be as fast as a fast recovery speed machine at the same sweep speed.
Everyone should try to slow down, it's not easy as you tend to speed back up again within a short space of time, the old, saying slow & low is very appropriate.
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Small signals could be "swallowed" and you will hear almost nothing (even in headphones), if you keep swinging at high rate. Trashy sites are also to be hunted with the lowest rate.
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Interesting post, which has certainly given me food for thought!
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i can remember watching someone at a rally once literally whipping his machine as he walked ,and the coil was only in detection range for a micro second of each sweep .takes all sorts ::)
I think I've seen the same bloke, or maybe it was his brother.
He's usually the one that leaves the rally within 2 hours of it starting, F'in and Blindin' that there's nothing there. LOL
Nigel is right ... "slow & low" ... but don't tell everyone.
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i can remember watching someone at a rally once literally whipping his machine as he walked ,and the coil was only in detection range for a micro second of each sweep .takes all sorts ::)
Some years ago there was a chap at MMDC digs who used to swing his machine as though he was conducting the Berlin Phil. It went everywhere except near the ground. Never found anything of course and always complaining about that.
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Isn't their a difference between response speed and recovery speed?
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In my experience, slower is nearly always better, but some programs, such as FA on the fisher f75, seem to suit a faster sweep speed.
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In my experience, slower is nearly always better, but some programs, such as FA on the fisher f75, seem to suit a faster sweep speed.
Perhaps that's Fisher's way of telling you to slow down, otherwise that's all you'll find. :D
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The thing is you need to slow down when you are in any area of the field where you are recovering items of interest however if you are in 40 acres of land and you search slow and methodically then you are looking at about 40 days searching
If you can imagine a scythe cutting corn by hand a farm labourer could cut about 1 acre a day, he would cut all the corn in front of him, to cover all the ground in the same methodical way you should be doing about an acre a day, but no all parts of the field are as productive as others so you need to speed up till you find a productive area then slow down till you are happy you have found everything that, that section of the field has to offer, then move on looking for the next productive spot
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I love to see the Scythe Swingers on the beaches I frequent detecting fast and furious with the coil about a foot off the surface.
;D ;D
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i can remember my first motion machine was a whites 6000 and had to be moved quickly ,then i got the toltec 100 and it was like switching to slow motion capture . i think every motion machine has a sweet speed ,but do wonder if even that can vary with the mineralisation encountered.
The Toltec 100 is usually fitted with a 10" concentric coil and concentic coils obviously read the target the same, no matter which angle you approach them from. A detector fitted with a DD coil will read the target best when approached from one particular angle, that's why it's often necessary to check targets at 90 degrees ( As Such Much commented in the other thread on this subject). I found with the Toltec that I either got a signal or I didn't and didn't need to check anything again at a slower sweep speed.
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@muddy fingers,interesting that you have mentioned about the Concentrics being better for giving a signal from both directions,that does make alot of sense as i have a B3 with a Concentric coil and that does exactly as you have mentioned.
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Hi DaveJ, yes, I hadn't really thought about it much until I read Such Much's comment in the other thread, (it's in this bit of the forum) What they used to call the "widescan" heads like on the Tesoros were 2D athough they looked identical to the concentrics from the outside as they were solid. The concentics do concentrate on a small cone shape of ground at a time though which is good for in the iron junk and better ID'ing but it does make for worse ground coverage and so overlapping of the swing is important. I used to notice that a friend using the T2 (2D coil) in a relatively clean field got a lot (X10) more signals than me even when we were in the same bit of the field. I may well have done better in a more iron contaminated area I suppose, but as I say, it was something that I hadn't realy given much thought to before.
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Over the last few days have been out and reduced the swing speed down by a fair amount and my personal opinion is that it certainly does help,could it be the fact that it gives the detector just a little extra time too decipher the signals better that i am not 100% sure but it could well be the case.
Have also seen a few folks with not only the coil way off the ground but swinging like a pendulum and then they start complaining that they have found nothing.
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i think after a few weeks with the t2se what i need is not the ability to slow down but someone to come and dig the holes for me .finding far to much :P
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i think after a few weeks with the t2se what i need is not the ability to slow down but someone to come and dig the holes for me .finding far to much :P
Jeff,thats exactly what i am finding,currently using the small 5'' coil on the T2 as most of my land still has stubble but saying that after all this rain it must start rotting off i would have thought.I still have my Deus,but after playing around with it using the 'Cold' settings it really is starting too grow on me again.
So although in theory i was just going to keep one and that was the T2,may keep the Deus as well,not been out today due to the bad weather but as soon as its brightens up during the week will be out most evenings.
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if i remember correctly the dfx has a adjustable sweep speed section ,i don't think it actually did anything that made any difference though
It did Jeff, it made your arm ache more!!! :-)
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lol pete ,you had a look at the sigma sport yet :P
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Good post, any seasoned detectorist will always reduce the sweep speed once a hot spot is found, or if detecting a worked out site.
Works every time.
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In our club we have a few fast n furious swingers and they do very well one lad in particular with his Deus goes like the clappers with his coil front pointing up as well and he has found shed loads of things, another has a CTX3030 and he swings it so its 2 feet off the ground at either side so it only goes near the ground in front of his feet and he has found gold hammered and much more than me with my slow and low swing it all comes down to luck at the end of the day really and they just seem to have it.
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In our club we have a few fast n furious swingers and they do very well one lad in particular with his Deus goes like the clappers with his coil front pointing up as well and he has found shed loads of things, another has a CTX3030 and he swings it so its 2 feet off the ground at either side so it only goes near the ground in front of his feet and he has found gold hammered and much more than me with my slow and low swing it all comes down to luck at the end of the day really and they just seem to have it.
These are different tactics. If you at new field with Minelab/XP Users, the main goal is to collect surface/close to surface obvious targets which would not be missed by any detector. Low down Gain/Sensetivity and swing quickly ;). When this field is cleaned from surface finds, add Gain/Sensetivity and swing thourougly 8).
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Sometimes you just dont have the time to go slow,one of the best examples would be say when you are on a club dig or a rally,then you only have say about 7 hours as a one of time duration to hit that site,so the best tactic would be if of course you own a large coil would be use that to give you more ground coverage,this may not be the best tactic but i dont pesonally think such a site can be done any other way.
Then we move onto our own permission,this situation allow us to be much more methodical in our approach as we dont have a clock ticking against us,then we can use a smaller coil and take much more time to cover the are with a smaller coil and then once we feel it has been covered then start using a slightly larger coil.Of course this method/scenario is based on if the detectorist has a few coils,but i feel that this method in the long run will produce the best results,that is of course if finds are in that location.But just by using a large coil straight away will i feel give you alot of 'nulled' signals.
So if i go on say a days rally then i would tend to use a slightly larger coil and slightly increase my sweep speed but on my own permissions i would slow down and on some occasion have seen snails over take me,but they have usually produces some of my best finds.
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Anyone who has owned an Minelab Explorer and done well with it, knows correct sweep speed. It's now about how fast you cover the area, it is about how well you cover it. And slow is always better than fast. Tried and true!
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Here's a typical example of going really slow with an Etrac on a very well detected small pasture field that has now given me 11 hammered over the last 2 years........
Just been out this week and pulled this small hammered up from my favourite site, it looks like an Elizabeth 1st half groat London mint 1582 - 1602.
This site has been done by just about every detector known to man over the past 2 years, so I put the Etrac on full sens and full Volume gain in MTC, and a one pence sized block of discrim in the right hand bottom corner, also turned both recovery deep and fast OFF. Most important thing was I worked very slowly, it's surprising how many tiny blips you can miss going too fast.
I found 6 buttons and various bits of small lead and brass fragments over a 3 hour session, and the hammered was a barely audible low grunt but it was a repeatable signal when cross swept, if I had been going a bit faster it would have been missed. Only thing that spoilt my day was the detector started giving false signals after 2 hours, especially when I held the coil up in the air on it's edge . This can only mean one thing, water in the coil, I have had this happen to me before on the original stock coil and it had to be replaced, looks like I will be buying a new Ultimate pretty soon, at least I can put the original coil back on for now though.