First Trip with my new XS ..Questions.

[SouthJerseyJim]

Afters years of use with my Shadow X-5 I broke down and bought a used Explorer XS. My mom uses one and many other friends I know use them and swear by them. Mine came with the stock coil and a 15" Wot coil. I have the WOT coil on it now and I am using max sens. on auto, Deep on, Thresh very low, Gain 10. I am having problems with Iron. I hear a lot of signals that sound high and they turn out to be rust nails. Also I tried air testing (I know I hear this doesn't guage much) a penny and It would have to be about 2 inches from the coil before I heard it. I air tested large cents at home and they were fairly far from the coil with a nice reading. So Im confused. Is there something I am doing wrong? I have a friend with the same machine and coil and pulls stuff outta fields at 10+ inches.

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Upgraded Night Vision Monocular Digital Infrared Monocular Telescope for 100% Darkness with 8X Zoom - Grab it through Amazon!

[Erik in NJ]

Need to know if you're in Iron Mask or Smart Find mode? Conductive or Ferrous sounds?

 

[stasys]

first change auto sensitivity to manual. take discrimination to -15 forget programs like coins and all the rest bla bla bla forever, put back stock coil and drop sensitivity for starting use your nice xs to 24 its still will go very very deep if you will scrape coil. and hunt buy sound only check with screen. after month you will learn more buy reading forums, but for start is ok. good luck Stas

 

[SouthJerseyJim]

I use the crosshairs, Iron mask basically -16 and Ferrous sounds. Thank you for the help.

 

[Erik in NJ]

Yes, stay in Smart Find, set your Iron Mask to -22 and dig all repeating signals. If the sounds are overwhelming as they were when I moved from a Garrett 2500 10+ years ago. Edit a pattern on the screen with a 1/2" x 1/2" square open in the upper right hand corner. Set you Sensitivity to 30 - Auto as it makes the machine more stable and wait for repeating signals. You will get signals through the null. Once you feel comfortable, go to Iron Mask and set it to -22 on the older machines it might be a different number.....drop me a PM and I'll check for you as I have 2 older XS's and now using an SE Pro. If you want PM me and I'll walk you through the proper set up. I know it can be a bit daunting at first, but you will be digging "deepies" soon with your machine. Best, Erik

 

[Iron Patch]

The first thing you have to do is change coils and do that penny test again. (something is up) Trying to learn an Explorer with a WOT on is something I would try to do.... and it ain't real bright!

 

[Don in SJ]

I believe his only problem is the WOT coil, I think Jim is using the the basic settings I used for 10 years! And I got those settings from Beachcomber (aka Bernie) who was just about the best there was when the Explorer XS came out and yes, all in South Jersey soil conditions.
I sure would not want to learn the XS using a WOT, but I am sure is doable, but sounds like there is a coil problem on his penny test.

Don

 

[Iron Patch]

I believe his only problem is the WOT coil, I think Jim is using the the basic settings I used for 10 years! And I got those settings from Beachcomber (aka Bernie) who was just about the best there was when the Explorer XS came out and yes, all in South Jersey soil conditions.
I sure would not want to learn the XS using a WOT, but I am sure is doable, but sounds like there is a coil problem on his penny test.

Don

There's definitely a problem because the WOT is sensitive for a big coil. It will detect things much smaller than a penny at more than a couple inches.

 

[SouthJerseyJim]

Thanks, I will swap to the stock coil and giver a try again.

 

[SouthJerseyJim]

Air tested with the other coil after I reset all settings and barely heard a thing scraping the penny on the coil. It was actually nulling the penny. Mind you I am sitting in my computer room with 2 computers and a big TV. Change sensitivity to manual at about 20 and things worked great. Put the WOT back on and it picks up stuff real far away using manual sensitivity. As soon as I switch to auto the depth drastically dropped off. I know I need to do this outside but does this make sense? There should be no problems learning on the Wot its just a big coil right? I can handle it. As long as it can pick up a penny more than an inch away that is. So Manual sensitivity is working much better than auto.

 

[Don in SJ]

Hmmmn, try lowering the Sens in AUTO to a much lower amount, and see if it works right, Im no electronic guru, but sounds like there is a possible problem with the Auto Sens , not sure if what you are doing in the house would effect the results or not, if anything I would think Manual would have been more of a problem, but not sure, something is amiss in Auto, which is no big deal if you can live with Manual and in our area, once you get the Max you can go Manual, it should basically be the same overall, but you will want to lower it a lot if in very heavy rat a tat tat type of iron areas, sometimes as low as 14 area, otherwise I would say 28 - 30 should be fine whether in Auto (if it works) or Manual. I could run my XS in AUTO 32 almost all the time, except when I was in really heavy iron hits and would lower the Sens to about 18 or so, but slowing down more helps better yet and no WOT in heavy iron (Note: I did go from Auto to Manual a lot over the years, and preferred staying in AUTO for the most part)

 

[Iron Patch]

I think you should be ok, it's just the interference making your detector adjust down to a very low sense. There's no way to know how low it's dropping, but being that environment it's definitely dropping a lot. Once you're outside you should be ok.

 

[Iron Patch]

It wouldn't hurt to do a factory reset. Always the first thing to try at the first sign of something wacky.

 

[SouthJerseyJim]

Sounds good. After I did the retest things seem to get better. Too damn cold to go out and play around right now though. Too budy making pounds and pounds of fish cakes from my last deep sea trip Thank you for your help and I know Ill be needing it again.

 

[Erik in NJ]

No problem....just send me a few of those delicious fish cakes