Whites Spectra V3i

lenoil wrote: not sure if he put it aside for me, or if another Melbournite happened to buy one today  

Turns out I am the Melbourne buyer - had been put awy for me...

I will be picking it up this Saturday, thanks to the timely sale today of an old SD that I had stored away   

Yeah ok mate!!...hands up who hates lenoil for getting his new detector sooner than the rest of us/me.   

Well done on the sale of the boat anchor SD.   

Your not going to play with it until i get mine.....are you.?  

Ha!!...guess what turned up in the mail today??...yep!...see ya. 

New set of bowls. Maybe,,coulda sold ya mine  

 If any one still wants a new Whites V3i, pm me. I`ve got some deals!

Stuff me!!, the yanks make using that digging tool look easy, yeah BS it is..not in our parks.   

Oh my, have we not bitten off more than we can chew with this thing.  ...the mind boggles at the amount of programing this thing allows by the operator...and its gunna take time.

Check out my first ring found today with the V3i.....how good is this thing...that blue ring is made of plastic....which stunned us when it came out of the ground....along with a coin sitting below it.   

Just to the right of the ring is an old penny...gunna take a bit to read the date as its certainly decayed some.  

We are underway with it anyhow.....patients will be the biggest test with this thing.
The sensitivity is remarkable, even as low as 1 it was able to pick up coins in a well compacted park, near went home and got my prospecting pick to make the job easier.

One word sums it up so far.....Brilliant .  

Awesome booty there.. Once you really get the hang of it, you will be on fire!!
  

Narrawa wrote:Ha!!...guess what turned up in the mail today??...yep!...see ya. 

And you went out and used it without waiting for me to get mine!

I picked mine up yesterday afternoon and walked out of the shop with buyer's remorse... The wallet was a bit lighter than when I walked in  

Used it for about an hour in a very trashy, hammered campsite in the goldfields.

Didn't find anything exciting (no doubt due to the nature of the area)...but the target graphs etc seem pretty accurate, and the menu options are mind-boggling   

Hopefully I'll get a chance to use it on the old racetrack this afternoon...will report back if I find anything interesting (and/or figure the detector out)   

G'day Narrawa,

Good to see the V3i has started to pay for its self. How much has it got to go now???    Sounds like you need to be computer Tech to run it.   

Cheers.

Mike.   

lenoil wrote:Hopefully I'll get a chance to use it on the old racetrack this afternoon...will report back if I find anything interesting (and/or figure the detector out)   

Can't wait to hear how you go with it, and what ya find, hope you find a gold sovereign, have heard of people finding them from the old race tracks.

G'day lenoil,

Good luck with your new V3i and can't wait see what you find.   

Cheers.

Mike.   

And you went out and used it without waiting for me to get mine!

There's only two people in this world mate...the quick & the dead.  
I was blown away with the fast postage....wasn't expecting it till next week some time.?

Two bloody right i went out and got my head into it.....now to get my head around it.  

Iv been into every setting it has to offer, iv done a couple of resets already and made my own search program, which is a must. Get into the Expert menu and hook in.
Make the Polar Plot screen your Analyzer screen for when you push the trigger forward. Use the Sizing screen for general display and watch the CD video that comes with the detector. In the Tips menu of the video you'll see the reason for the camel humps and how to make heads and tails of the info. Trying to remember it all once your out there is going to be the biggest problem.

Mike & Jen,
Not all that interested in how much i find with it monetary wise, its the fun of the learning curve and keeping busy till its time to go back to work in WA.  
One thing is for sure, the trashy areas of the gold fields will come alive, the information this thing puts before you is mind blowing, and can see it being a true winner in among the trash spots that would otherwise turn most away. Saying that, its got to be understood first and not everyone has the patients to learn such a complicated detector.
Even in its pre-sets ....its complex to understand and frustration is imminent to start off with.

Sounds like you are getting the gist of it though and good luck with it.     Sounds like you will have a lot of fun with.      

Cheers.

Mike.      

Doing ok Mike...got out for a few hrs this arvo and found a few gold coins this time round.
We'll be eating well tonight.

I wont bore yas with photos but one more penny came to the surface today and lots of current coin.
No diamond rings or plastic ones for that matter on this outing.

Found a few good settings that gave more confidants after spending hrs last night going through the destruction manual and video. Will be doing the same again tonight.

Just got home and am about to sit down and read the manual too - wasn't able to last yesterday/last night/today as I was in bush. I did manage to watch about 10 mins of the DVD before    though (through exhaustion, not boredom)   

I gave it a run this afternoon, in a really trashy park that seems to have been done over for coins. All that seems to be left is foil and ring-pulls. Whenever I've gone there with the E-Trac it's all I find, aside from the odd bit of ferrous junk that shows up as ok until it's exhumed. Having said that apart from the maybe 50 ring-pulls, I did find 20c in the playground area   One day one of those ring-pulls is going to be a sovereign, I know it...

Narrawa wrote:Doing ok Mike...got out for a few hrs this arvo and found a few gold coins this time round.
We'll be eating well tonight.

I wont bore yas with photos but one more penny came to the surface today and lots of current coin.
No diamond rings or plastic ones for that matter on this outing.

So far, have all the coins come up as straight lines on the polar plot screen? And also as smooth humps on the camel?  Having not really read the manual nor watched the DVD with concentration yet (and having forgotten the youtube vid's almost as soon as watching them  ), all I recall is the guy at the shop saying to only really take notice of the targets that show up as diagonal straight lines on the polar.

Jen58 wrote:

lenoil wrote:Hopefully I'll get a chance to use it on the old racetrack this afternoon...will report back if I find anything interesting (and/or figure the detector out)   

Can't wait to hear how you go with it, and what ya find, hope you find a gold sovereign, have heard of people finding them from the old race tracks.

Mike54 wrote:G'day lenoil,

Good luck with your new V3i and can't wait see what you find.   

Cheers.

Mike.       

Sorry, missed these posts first time around!

Thanks for the well wishes!

Didn't get to that race track after all.

So far my finds are a bunch of junk consisting mainly of ring-pulls. And one 1996 20c coin   

Narrawa wrote:

And you went out and used it without waiting for me to get mine!

There's only two people in this world mate...the quick & the dead.  
I was blown away with the fast postage....wasn't expecting it till next week some time.?

Two bloody right i went out and got my head into it.....now to get my head around it.  

Iv been into every setting it has to offer, iv done a couple of resets already and made my own search program, which is a must. Get into the Expert menu and hook in.
Make the Polar Plot screen your Analyzer screen for when you push the trigger forward. Use the Sizing screen for general display and watch the CD video that comes with the detector. In the Tips menu of the video you'll see the reason for the camel humps and how to make heads and tails of the info. Trying to remember it all once your out there is going to be the biggest problem.

Thanks. Yeah, I was running it the same - camels/sizing for the search screen and polar plot for the analyze screen.  I don;t see much use for the spectragraph screen, although having not gone through the manual, I've no doubt missed the importance of it.  

Actually, I just turned the machine on and tested spectra vs. sizing vs. polar, and it seems that the display in spectra mode recovers/updates much more quickly than the other two modes... do you find that, too? Also the polar plot is way too slow to be used as a main search screen, IMO.

Narrawa wrote:
Even in its pre-sets ....its complex to understand and frustration is imminent to start off with.

Oh, you think so?  I don't find it all that complex, and I haven't experienced any frustration at all so far... as a matter of fact, here's a pic of me earlier today showing just how cool, calm and collected I was while testing it out:

...have all the coins come up as straight lines on the polar plot screen? And also as smooth humps on the camel?

No, not all...shallow coins do like the $1 & $2 coins that are not surrounded by other objects. The older coins were in a small money pit, and had to be thinned out before a better graph representation was seen.

tested spectra vs. sizing vs. polar, and it seems that the display in spectra mode recovers/updates much more quickly than the other two modes... do you find that, too? Also the polar plot is way too slow to be used as a main search screen, IMO.

I know what your saying, and i played with a lot of settings in order to better the updating of the Polar Plot screen. Recovery may help....Speed...rate...turn off S.A.T. if its on. I use No threshold on any of the settings in any of the modes. Run the Polar plot screen as a Search screen and check the update speed.??...If it helps, mimic the search screen properties into the Analyser screen.....this may have been what i did.?? Cant be certain yet as im still in the middle of making my own Program. Once im done and im happy its a better coin pattern for our soils, i'll put my settings up.

That picture sums it up nicely hey wot.?  

Arny told me to show you a picture of him after a session swinging my detector.
And he said He won't hold tha pin-pointer against ya................Bungee using Girly Man   

Got rained out so now I'm ordering one tomorrow.
Are you liking your new toy so far?

Do i like my new toy you ask.?....I'LL BE BACK at it tomorrow arvo.  

Yep, im gob smacked at the amount of user adjustable settings. I got into the settings where you can alter the tone for each VDI number if you want.....i'll group these a little better for our coinage latter on in my own program.

Another old penny comes to the surface this arvo. I was just checking on a few alterations and the women said she would dig if i had a nice target....so i took her up on it.

You could imagine the excitement that was us tonight, as we continued to dig up the back yard and this came to light.




Bloody kids toy. 

Narrawa wrote:

...have all the coins come up as straight lines on the polar plot screen? And also as smooth humps on the camel?

No, not all...shallow coins do like the $1 & $2 coins that are not surrounded by other objects. The older coins were in a small money pit, and had to be thinned out before a better graph representation was seen.

Ah, good.  Comforting to know that I wasn't doing it completely wrong!

Work was quiet today, so I did some air tests and found that even a friend's yellow 1oz and 5g pieces o' 999.9 didn't always come up as nice straight lines/camel humps & consistent ID's, especially when the signal was picked up by the edge of the coil... so the theory of only noticing straight lines can go out the window   

Other targets were similarly unpredictable, from brass/iron relics to coins.  Just about the only items that were pretty consistently straight on the polar plot were ring-pulls. Great!   

Narrawa wrote:
I know what your saying, and i played with a lot of settings in order to better the updating of the Polar Plot screen. Recovery may help....Speed...rate...turn off S.A.T. if its on. I use No threshold on any of the settings in any of the modes. Run the Polar plot screen as a Search screen and check the update speed.??...If it helps, mimic the search screen properties into the Analyser screen.....this may have been what i did.??

Ehhh...         I'm still yet to really get into the depths of the expert options (hey - in my defence, the first thing I did was get rid of the kiddies menu!) and will check all that out before this weekend when I'll be taking it out again.

So you did get the polar plot to update faster then?  

I think I might have read somewhere on some US forum that using only 1 freq will/might/can make the display update more quickly. Sound right/familiar to you?  Are you still running the 3 freq's?  I assume that taking out frequencies was not one of the things you changed?

EDIT: Just had a quick look and found the "Filter & Speed" sub-menu.   

Narrawa wrote:Cant be certain yet as im still in the middle of making my own Program. Once im done and im happy its a better coin pattern for our soils, i'll put my settings up.

  

Have you given the prospecting mode a run yet?

Narrawa wrote:That picture sums it up nicely hey wot.?  

IMO they should use that pic in the advertising material!

Have you seen this:

http://www.metaldetectingintheusa.com/files/advanced-users-guide.PDF

fromFound it here:

http://www.metaldetectingintheusa.com/whites-v3i-metal-detector.html

Thx for the links, iv read the bottom one, but not the PDF one. 

Once you nut it out a bit more, you'll be able to assign/remove VDI numbers and tones that are not consistent enough with your finds. I did this when i had the Explorer. It makes IDing your targets a lot more easy. There are too many VDI numbers flicking by that dont need to be there in my opinion. At the moment, the tones are what im trying to get use to. I never really did pay much attention to the number systems on all other IDing detectors i had. This one has far more user control ability and can be altered to suit the other things that influence these readings. I found myself taking certain FP sets if you like from std modes and adding them to my own program once i got it up and running. From there, i adjusted the setting and when happy, made it the Default for my program.
Its going to take some time, but already i can see my long term goal with the v3i...rearrange it to display and sound off the way an Aussie wants it too..  

So you did get the polar plot to update faster then?  

 Not really sure, it appears to be updating ok, and yes, i use both singular freq, and all three, but notice  the polar screen does appear to be faster using just one freq. It maybe nothing, or it may have merit.???...but iv moved from the std color screen to the Pine colored one, which uses a black background, and i find stands out far better in sunlight than white. It may drag less from the CPU.?? Anything that lessons CPU load, will add to speed in processing times.??...i could be totally wrong in that....but thought it worth a mention as there maybe other less useful features able to be switched off. It is a computer after all.  

Have you given the prospecting mode a run yet?

I did, and i can tell you its not a refreshing sound.  Modifying that program soon as im a little more up to speed with it.  

Narrawa wrote:Do i like my new toy you ask.?....I'LL BE BACK at it tomorrow arvo.  

Yep, im gob smacked at the amount of user adjustable settings. I got into the settings where you can alter the tone for each VDI number if you want.....i'll group these a little better for our coinage latter on in my own program.

:

This was one of the main reasons for my interest in the detector after I read the manual along with the individual frequency strength and choice programmable options and just how much user control whites gives you over all of the settings I think it will be a great detector.
And the coil selection that's available, Have you looked at the detech coils available for it Narrawa?
The 13in and 14in and the SEF range are all ripper's I bought them when I was searching for treasure in europe last.

Im in the middle of reprogramming a new search pattern now while testing it. Its just for our coin. Im allowing a few patterns either side of the readings for ground conductivity and the likes...coin on its edge ect ect. Its time consuming thats for sure.

Iv not looked at the Detech coils for it yet, but they'd need to be spot on for the detector to function correctly.?? Will look into it soon cause im a little partial to elip coils. The D2 coil is fine for parks ATM, not all that interested in digging beyond this coils reach just yet.The few holes that have gone over 10" is enough to tell me there's depth left in the setting yet.

The individual freq sig strength is a bonus feature that im now just starting to look at more interdependently on the signal screen. Amazing amount of info present in many forms. Especially when more than one item is beneath the coil. The signal screen is perfect for noting this on the fly.

First ring yesty...well metal one anyway.  Two new programs added and a few more dollars found. Cleaned out a modern park with the swing set surrounded by wood-chips. To easy.

lenoil    
So you did get the polar plot to update faster then?  

Ok all that other sh!t i posted was guess work and yes i have the screen loading like a military machine now.   

I copied the C&J program about 3-4 different times now and renamed it to suit the hunting style that best suits whatever it is im hunting. Leaving the original C&J program in tact for reference.
In the Live Control menu under Search screen, select Spectragraph...scroll down that menu and you'll see a heading called Single Pass. Press Enter and lock it in. If its not there, while under the Search screen still, push ZOOM/VIEW....this will take you to the expert menu under search that will allow you to put a x in the box to turn it on. It will now show in the menu as above.

Its not visible in polar plot  or the other screen menus, yet once selected in the Spectragraph screen it appears to do the same job in Polar plot.?? i could be wrong but i feel im not, but i just might be,   tho it certainly makes a difference to the loading of the screen with each pass of the coil over the target. Whatever the case...im unable to find anything about it on the net. Iv tested it with wild swings and controlled swings and im impressed with its reaction time thoroughly.

Tip for newbies like me.....learn how to initiate the on board help screens over any of the worded menus/adjustments for an in depth run down on its function. Also, on the right hand side of the control box is a graph for the VDI numbering system and target relation. Thats handy ay.?? 

The v3i should have been made computer controllable. Reprogramming of patterns is not a 5 minute job. Whites, why was there not a USB slot allowing basic up/download facilities built into this detector.? Or SD card reader built in with the above said.?...idiots!!

In today's day and age, all new detectors from any manufacturer should have these facilities as a std feature.
This idea could have the coin relic hunters world wide, swapping programs leading to sales soaring when the word gets out. Used as a backup gold detector, again, it only takes one dude to come up with a near perfect program before it would make a VLF a more prominent part of backup equipment.

I rest my case.