My ACE 250 on DE beaches after BILL...methods to use?

		Quote:			Posted by saltfisher
	A friend of mine is at the beach now and he said the waves are HUGE, and the water is comming up pretty far from where it normally does. He said there is seaweed that the waves brought in within 20ft from the dunes. Should I search this seaweed area?

This is probably one of the only times I will ever recommend a random search. Search it all till you drop. Find a hot spot? Tell no-one except your dad.

No kidding!!!

Good luck! Have fun!

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If the wave action is strong enough to bring gold coins airborne, they could be anywhere. Use your imagination like a Disney movie and picture how it would have to happen. Remember, sometimes the wave action TOOK sand away - it didn't deposit sand each time. Thus, you are looking for coins that may have been tosses ashore by previous wave action, not that just from Bill.

Depending on how the water levels rise during the tidal surge of the hurricane, it could easily do both. It could throw items ashore at the same time as it removes sand. Should the coins settle, they will likely be left behind. There are actually institutions that study wave action and they make the data available for researchers. As an odd consequence, it also becomes available to us in may ways. Do a Google search on the terms 'study ocean waves' or 'ocean engineering' for hundreds of sites to research while you wait for your chance to go wild on the beach.

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		Quote:			Posted by tabdog
	Garrett Ace 250 Metal Detector Articles brought to you by Bounty Hunter & Garrett Metal Detectors The Garrett Ace 250 is a good machine for the price for an entry level machine. It is light weight and easy to set up so is suitable for a novice. The machine can often be bought with lots of accessories such as a trowel, headphones and headphone pouch. The depth sensitivity is not great, it will detect coins at around 4-6″ and the sensitivity is sometimes too high so it sees a lot of trash, especially aluminium, so you may need to turn the sensitivity down which will also decrease the depth. There is no ground balance feature on this machine so it won?t perform well in areas with a lot of minerals. It is also poor on wet sand or surf so keep to the dry part of the beach and regular soil. There have been reports that pinpoint is inaccurate but we found if you do it correctly it works fine. The headphones have no volume control so you might want to replace. Sorry, but automatic ground balance in most cases is the same as factory pre-set, as it is with the 250. Happy Huntin, Tabdog

TD, you are missing the point about the ground balance. There IS ground balance, as they clearly admit, it's just not manually adjustable. It is not preset - what do you set it to? - evidenced by the fact that there's not a different model for each soil condition.

With all that in mind, I wrote to the factory and asked about it. This isn't in the manual so those who are religious about the manual and don't care about other information should ignore my advice here. But it did come from the very engineers who designed the unit as opposed to those who simply want to turn it on and go. You of all people should know about eking out every nuance of a detector's capability. You work miracles with your Compadre.

I am intending to buy an Ace250, a pair of them actually, in the near future so I have done my research. I am an electronics design engineer by training and career so I speak the language of the engineers at Garrett. With proprietary information at stake, I was careful with my wording but the answer is simple. The machine ground balances to the first proximity to soil mass. This is no easy feat but the ground balance is set that way. Not to a factory preset condition but to the first proximity. In their manual, rather than go through the process I outline, they simply suggest the easy solution. Turn down the gain - which is the sensitivity control. That reduces both the target depth detection and hides the annoying warble of trash or mineralization.

If the treasure hunter were to stride out to the salt water laden area and turn on the machine, it would tune to those conditions from the start and when they move to dryer sand, they'd be tuned for the wrong conditions. Since there's no audio to indicate that, the consequence is missed targets. When you know you have moved, you should use the retuning procedure I outlined.

This is clearly a case of the old adage of "know your machine" rather than just use the manual. Even Windows has hidden features and a whole bunch of programmer inserted jokes within the operating system. Shocked? Why? They have a sense of humor too and have embedded a list of the entire programming branch names right into the operating system. Is that in the manual? Hehehehe. Right.

I get sick to death of trying to convince those non-believers here and I wasn't totally convinced at first even after getting a reply from Garrett. I went out to the local detector shop and rented one for the day. I gave it a real workout recording my results to aid me in my decision to invest the $500.00AU to buy one. Yes. Customs and shipping to Australia is brutal. But I want to buy two and that's a significant investment.

Those who disbelieve this can just disbelieve. I only wish they'd stop telling anyone that what I propose is incorrect. In fact, I have to wonder about their motives. After all, it's not as if I am selling the Ace250. I am merely trying to tell people how to maximize the machine in the field. My advice is harmless if they are right but an absolute treasure if they are wrong. Outback has admitted he is a former user of his Ace250. If he weren't so adamant about the failings of his machine, I'd advise him to give it another chance.

Thanks for your interest in this thread and your input, TD. Just think about how you make your Compadre sing while others consider it a dud of a machine. That, by the way, is a comment I got here from a dealer. Instead, I took your words and decided that I too can make my Compadre sing when it arrives in the mail. Can't wait for it to get here. I bought it for the wife. Yeah. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

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		Quote:			Posted by tabdog
	Does that mean that all VLF detectors ground balance? I am corn fused

GroundHog ADS did and that one is over 30 years old. VLF/TR, it was. It had both manual and automatic ground balance. The DeepSeeker did, too.

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		Quote:			Posted by Beachcomber
	The ACE 250 has a FIXED, FACTORY SET ground balance THAT WILL NOT CALCULATE, TRACK oor ADAPT ITSELF to ground conditions

Not it does not. The ground balance is calculated from the first proximity to the ground as it powers up.

		Quote:			Posted by {author}
	Thought I had made it clear in another post.

Clear as mud but not true. You were wrong. You are still wrong.

		Quote:			Posted by {author}
	While some lose time in childish discussions, the grown ups find good stuff, incl in the wet sand, with specialty detectors.

Then do tell everyone why you continue to participate in such a "childish" discussion. Enlighten us as to your weakness and how you are compelled to become so childish yet again.

		Quote:			Posted by {author}
	Getting bored of those vain discussions. If you can't read a simple product catalog, it is very sad.

You mean the one that says it uses automatic ground balance? That one?

This is where you should look:

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See bullet item number two - second from the top. "Power on the detector with the touch of a button. Ace250 auto-adjusts for ground minerals and is ready to search!"

That is from Garrett and their catalog. Can you read that? Do you understand the "auto-adjusts" part? That is not pre-set. That is auto-adjust.

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