Coil on or off ground detecting?

Just after your thoughts, many say you get better depth by keeping the coil raised of the ground while detecting. Others like us are scrubbers and we think the lower the coil, the more depth, as it is then closer to the target.
Some say you need that air gap to get better depth, but then that means that the coil will then have a greater depth on a target, then that means depth from bottom of coil to target is greater. If that is the case, then at what % and would that change on various size targets.
Not after arguments, just positive answers as prehaps there is something to this.
Scrubbing should not false target, well it does not for us, unless coil is faulty.

G'day Wally

It depends on the coil and the detector and the ground really.

We use to scrape the ground with the 4500 and all the various coils and got plenty of gold and wore out plenty of skid plates, and the 2300 is also scraped on the ground a fair bit as well

With the GPZ 7000 I find it is better to keep a slight gap from the ground, even with the stamdard GPZ coils but even more important to keep the coil slightly off the ground with the new X-Coils for best results, these coils have plenty of grunt.

cheers dave

Heres a snippet from a post on detector prospector forum by JP.

"ZVT tech is not to be trifled with and will saturate more readily than a GPX" ... "keep the coil at least 20 to 30 mm above the ground at all times, you are actually losing performance by running the coil too LOW!!"

He says this is recommended in all the Gold/Ground Type Modes.

My experience is that on hard ground with no humus it's best to cruise just above the surface.
If you are detecting over thick leaf litter/humus I find that I can ping/hear the tiniest of sounds better by running the coil on the surface.
Some humus/dirt/moss/leaf litter can be 4 to 6 inches thick in my neck of the woods ,so it's an advantage to let the coil slide along the surface.
Plus when I'm totally knackered from swinging the detector; it's easier to let the coil do the walking

cheers moredeep

G'day Travelergold

Although this subject has been up for debate on more than one occasion in the past I can & will only give you my experiences on this matter.
Firstly I'd like to say I'm a coil scrubber myself. Coil scrubber as in lightly making coil contact with the ground at times, not bulldozing my way through the surrounding scrub/rocks.
I know many have said this or that in the past, but I say if your coil needs to be swung much higher off the ground after it is set/balanced, change to another coil size or configuration. I find dumbing down ones detector to ridiculous levels in order to have a quietly stable & smooth running coil, in order to hear/separate a positive target from the ground minerals, to me is ridiculous, when we have other better options at hand.
To me every inch off the ground, is one inch less depth in the ground. What makes people think, that as ground gets more higher in mineralization, lifting the coil say a couple of inches off the ground, will give one better in-ground depth, towards a positive target?
 Raising a coil off the ground so as to compensate for high mineralization/ground noise, will certainly give you a much quieter running coil but at the expense of depth, for it still has to penetrate the noisiest section of ground, which most always lies within the first inch or so of the surface.
For a positive target to be clearly heard whilst the coil is raised an inch 2 or more off the ground, has to be large enough or much closer to the surface, in order for that positive target to still be heard. Get a very faint in-ground signal whilst scrubbing your coil on the ground, then lift the coil higher a couple of inches & see if you can then hear it?  You'll find the faint signal now gone.  
If one is searching over ground with constantly high/changing mineralization, requiring one to lift the coil higher off the ground in order for a positive target signal response, be heard/separated from the surrounding ground noise, I can only suggest to them, change your coil from say a smaller mono to a larger mono, or DD in configuration & watch/listen to the difference in performance, on/over positive in ground targets, over the same sections of mineralized ground.  
I personally see no purpose/advantage/gain, of dumbing down a detector/coil (via the detectors gain, settings or timings) in order to have that coil running sweet/comfortably quiet, over highly mineralized ground at the cost of a loss in depth, when by changing to another coil size or configuration, finding/doing pretty much the same job, if not better, without the dumbing down.
BTW, I'v been running my GPZ 7000 in the same manner for little or no loss of depth over faint positive in ground targets, with great success, losing depth on faint positive target responses, only as the detectors coil is raised higher off the ground.
Mind you fellas each to their own & if one wants to swing a coil from neck height, saving them scratching their skid plate, by all means do so. The above information are only my experiences, not gospel.  

Cheers  Kon.

Hi Kon, No disrespect or anything but I find it hard to read some of your posts. It's a bummer because you always write good posts and I look forward to reading them.

Must be me but when trying to read large blocks of text I seem to lose my place or read the same line twice. must be a case of getting old, lol.

Anyway, ill cut and paste your reply into an editor and break it up into 3 or 4 smaller paragraphs

Cheers

Rick

What Kon said...........

Yep go for it Rick. I do tend to pile it all up in one large block of text, when In reality, I should be breaking it up into smaller paragraphs easier on the eye as well as to read/understand. Changed. Hopefully this is in much better format.
BTW, running a coil an inch or two higher off mineralized ground, in order to run a more quieter/stable coil, instead of touching or almost touching highly mineralized ground, will most definitely give you a quieter coil, with the advantage of even raising ones detector gain, to compensate for the extra coil height, but this in turn, does little in way of compensating for depth or extra depth over faint in-ground positive signals, contributing more towards enhancing ground noise, coming from highly mineralized, surface ground minerals.
Scotty beam me out of here, the ground noise is to severe.    

Cheers Kon.

Kon, what you are saying is what we have found. And by scraping, we mean lightly touching ground, an occasional knock on rock ect.
For us skid plates do not last overly long, but wrapping lots of the silver duct tape around the edge make them last nearly forever.
I suppose what i was asking origonally was if there was bit of air between coil and ground, would that have some sort of effect on the machine sensing its electronic signal into ground, or receiving that signal. 
Leaf matter or ground mulch is much different i would think. As said, the coil an inch higher of the ground, to me is an inch lost in the ground.
Re dumbing down machine, that is where if you are determined and tune yourself into a machine and the way it speaks to you, then you will pick up those very faint targets. But you still need to know how to set up your machine for optimal use, and that does take time to learn. Trial and error. When i detect, world war 3 could be breaking out around me and i would not hear it.

Maybe so, maybe not, why my gold jar isn't full, have never worn out a skid plate in nearly 40 years of detecting.
Always used mono coils.
Owned my SD2100 for 10 years using 8". 11" & 18" monos and more often than not out performed my mates who upgraded with each Minelab release.
Tried the scrubbing method but went back to skimming the ground/rock cover because banging/pushing rocks out of the way interfered with sound from dual speakers.
Owned a 3500 & 4000 for a short time but wasn't impressed.
When the GPX4500 came along we skimmed once again with this one for another 10 years using 11" Commanders & NF 16"/20".
The gold tally had thinned out so we took the plunge and bought a SDC2300 a couple of years ago but still skimmed the surface with limited success.
2019 we sold both the 45's and bought the GPZ7000.
I use the ZED and once again skim the surface and with some initial help from Davsgold (your hats won't fit if I keep praising you Dave/Veronica. ) was picking up sub grammers last trip.
Carol began scrubbing with the SDC and wore out the first skid plate in just over two weeks. It was worth it though, 70+ bits on scraped ground that had seen every detector known to man.
I followed behind with the ZED skimming the wind rows, picking up 30+ bits.
Our trip was cut short due to mechanical problems and had to limp home.
We are heading out again soon and quite excited with the prospect of working the hectares of old scrapes.
Me I'm going to wander off and bring home a "golden emu."
Good luck everyone out there! Safe travels.

Cheers & best of luck to yas Pete.

Kon.