DiggerDave68 said:
mbasko said:
I never heard of anyone running a QED like that (at least prior to the last updates) especially in "extremely variable & mineralised ground".
Might be what was making ol' grumpgold (& his other alter egos) so grumpy.
Apparantly some machines run those settings with GB cranked right up. (i Know mine won't!) ?? See recent dunolly find on fb page, gb 296 or something. As a newbie it just confused me, so I'm not going back on fb till after lockdown as it's frustrating not being able to turn the machine on, let alone compare settings.
Once the lockdown is over you might benefit from a QED training day?
GB (ground balance) isn't a setting you crank up. It needs to be set &/or adjusted to suit the ground conditions of the area you're detecting. Some areas might balance ok at 296 others at 254 or 199 or 163 & so on. It's not something that you can "crank" up as such (it can be adjusted to be a bit "hot" but not advisable unless experienced IMO).
In some areas ground conditions can change pretty quickly so ground balance needs to be adjusted to suit the changes. Don't let the GB numbers confuse you - listen to the machine & adjust it to run as smoothly as possible over the prevailing ground conditions. From my experience different QED's can give different ground balance numbers on the same area so forget what others have theirs set to. Adjust yours to suit!
Prior to the latest update ground balance on the QED was 0-200 & updated QED's are now 0-300 giving wider ground balance adjustment.
For smooth operation I found running your Threshold B (bias) close to neutral was best - only slightly adjusted up (large targets) or down (small targets) for target bias. Neutral bias can differ on different QED's too so adjust bias to suit yours - don't use someone else's settings. For instance, depending on coil used, my neutral bias was anywhere between 48-52.
Mode is dependent on the coil being used. Generally speaking smaller coils (6 - 11") pre update seemed to work better at modes 3 to 5 & medium/large coils 4/5 up. The modes were also updated & I believe mode 1 is now closer to what mode 2-3 used to be. Lower modes are also better for small gold - higher modes larger gold.
Threshold A (volume) I found at high levels could make the QED a bit erratic for want of a better word. I found & have seen others agree that set at 30 to 50 seems to be good but it is probably something that is a personal preference.
Pre update, & in my experience + feedback from other users, it was very rare to hear anyone successfully running a gain as high as 6 in most cases. Usually I could only run gain at 3 or 4. I believe the new update has improved this too with improved GB allowing higher gain?
In short, pre updated QED as those settings were, running in "extremely variable & mineralised ground" with Threshold A 70-80 & gain of 6 with an 8" coil in mode 6 to 8 would have been erratic & counterproductive IMO. I doubt even with the new QED updates that those settings would be ideal in that ground type either.