I have been hitting the park where i know there's lot of targets since i got the DFX back. I figured what better place to get formiliar with this Machine.
I just about filled my pouch with clad both shallow and deep, i mean about 6 to 7' deep. I did dig a few real deep iffy's that turned out be'ing nail's that where close to a foot down. I set up the Machine in a Modified preset coin mode.
Meaning i opened up the disc then learn rejected the targets i didn't want to dig. Bumped up the preamp to 3, AC senc 80, DC 45,sweep speed at 12 Ground filter 4. Like i said i was getting depth but the biggest problem i was having was inacurate VDI. For you DFX guys what is your preset custom program that you use for 99% of your field and cellar hole hunting. I know not all field's and cellars are the same but where do you start to get the max depth and most reliable VDI. OH, i did learn that the signagraph is way more reliable but i would like to see the #'ers stick. Could it be the VDI senc.
This will help the XLT users also. This makes me curious, as my take on the Whites machines is they are great machines but they're not what you'd call depth machines. They are more suited for tweaking and getting the most accurate ID of targets within an average depth range.Hope I'm saying this right.Let me say that I have never been a Whites fan because of what I've heard over the millennia.
Maybe I've lost out on using a great machine, but that's my loss.Maybe one of you Whites users can correct me on this. In fact, I'll make it another question for this thread.(Are the top end Whites machines as good at depth and accuracy as other top end brands?) Taking all into account such as coil size and basic settings. As I'm sure you have heard the preset programs are a little weak on the depth side of the White's machines. But with some tweeking i believe the DFX and the XLT will go as deep as any of the other top brand detectors. I am also learning that the VDI can be accurate you just have to know how. The signagraph is the most important in determining a good target from the bad and the VDI #'rs are second and the Icon's are least important. I have learned how to maneuver thru all the programs now pretty quick and that in itself is very important when experimenting in the field.
Digging Deeper Questions
This makes me curious, as my take on the Whites machines is they are great machines but they're not what you'd call depth machines. They are more suited for tweaking and getting the most accurate ID of targets within an average depth range.Hope I'm saying this right.Let me say that I have never been a Whites fan because of what I've heard over the millennia.
Maybe I've lost out on using a great machine, but that's my loss.Maybe one of you Whites users can correct me on this. In fact, I'll make it another question for this thread.(Are the top end Whites machines as good at depth and accuracy as other top end brands?) Taking all into account such as coil size and basic settings. I have found that the DFX, when set up correctly, is just as deep as any other high end machine that I have used. The key phrase there is 'when set up correctly'.
My impression is that many users fail to learn how to properly adjust their machines for their own personal detecting technique (i.e. Swing speed, etc) and to their local conditions and instead just try to find someone else's program to load. As a result they get sub-optimal results as the programs they copy aren't right for them and then say they can't get good depth out of the White's machines when they use them.A good for instance is the setting of the response time on the machines. I found out the hard way that I had set the response time too fast for my swing speed and as a result of swinging too slowly for that setting I was missing deep and/or small targets. My experience shows me that if you crank that all the way up as I did, then you need to swing the machine at a very high rate, much faster than I was doing. After I got the machine properly set up for ocean beaches I was routinely hitting pull tabs at 11 inches which is pretty good depth in the wet sand at a salt water beach.I think White's has recognized this too as they have added some features to the V3 to help the end user set up the machine correctly for the ground they are hunting in.
Plus they introduced the VX3, which is a V3i but with many of the 'Pro' functions removed from the user interface, with them set by the machine itself in software and no longer exposed to the end user. Thus adding a high end machine to the lineup that doesn't allow the end user to mis-calibrate it.It took Bernie K about a season and a half to really learn his V3 but he has had some sort of break thru with his understanding of how to set it up and what it is telling him and so has been kicking some real butt with it lately. I'd really like to try a V3i or VX3 someday myself after seeing what he has been doing with it lately. Terry.are you using Tone ID? That and the Signagraph were my favorite features of the White's line. I would turn off the Icons and save some battery life, I always thought they were a gimmick.
If you get brave, try out the Mixed-Mode in a place with little trash like a field. That to me was the deepest mode but I could only take it in small doses.You are finding that the Signagraph is pretty accurate in it's ID of targets, sort of like the cursor of the Minelabs. On the older machines, that bar graph was the dominate feature, then as they evolved, the ID numbers got bigger so that is what catches your eye first. Once you learn Tone ID, you will hardly have to look at the numbers. Good luck, you will do fine with all your experience. Terry the vdi on a target is only accurate to about 7 inches after that it can get skewed due to mineralization, emi ect and also it depends on the angle the target is at. So only trust it up to about that depth.
The sound (tone i.d.) and signagraph are usually rock steady to alot more depth and are what rely on more. As you know my custom program starts from the relic preset that i tweaked to use for cellar and old farm fields because that preset has the least amount of discrimination to begin with. Some machines are better in certain settings than others and i'll give you an example, busy city parks, theres lots of emi interference with power lines, cars speeding by and the dfx is very suseptible to this but my buddies e-trac will be far less bothered by all this. So i guess what i'm saying you can't expect the machine to perform great everywhere.Dan.