Ground balance in the detector - it's worth it or not?

Since the dawn of our hobby, seekers tear various objects out of the ground. Usually their attention is focused on that, what the bottom line is, and not him as such. This is a mistake - you must know for good results, what the nature of the search area is and how to make it, so that for us and our detector it would be the least possible obstacle on the way to hidden treasures.

A lot of us, apart from an exploratory hobby, fishing. This passion, despite seemingly complete differences, has many common factors and personally I really like the analogies between these passions. If all the water in the pond was drained, then all the fish could be chosen by hand. Similarly, if the soil from the entire field was sifted through a sieve, the detector becomes redundant. Is it possible? In practice, no - we are faced with the amount of water and land. We must therefore resort to remedial measures.

In the event of a search, the detector has to deal with the ground. The situation is so embarrassing, that the ground is very heterogeneous, variable even in small areas. The detector is a sensitive device and the influence of the ground on the quality of detection is crucial. Therefore, a solution called ground balance was developed in the detectors.

Most of the searchers know this term, however, the majority are unaware of its importance and possibilities, provided by the detector with the possibility of correcting the ground balance. Unfortunately, not every detector has it and it mainly concerns slightly more expensive equipment. So does the cheap detection have no balance at all?

Without eliminating the influence of the ground on the signal, working with a detector is essentially impossible. Hence even if we do not have a balancing knob, doesn't mean it, that the ground influence detector does not reduce. It is equipped with a factory setting, you can say exemplary. This solution has one major drawback - the model ground is like the statistical Kowalski - in practice it does not exist. Therefore, if you have a detector with a rigid ground, you will have problems with the quality and depth of detection on soils that differ from the standard characteristics for a given model.

Here I have to digress a little, because I was struck by the trend of detector sellers to call the factory balance settings "automatic tracking". I don't want to believe, that the detector dealer doesn't know, how detectors work, so in my opinion this is knowingly misleading the buyer, because the option of automatic tracking of soil properties is reserved for more advanced detectors. Remember, so as not to be fooled by the wonderful offers of detectors without manual / automatic ground balance correction. If the detector does not have them, chance for it, that while it has automatic tracking it is actually nil.

There are many types of soil in Poland, hence, I highly recommend purchasing a ground balance detector. Modern equipment performs this process practically automatically, it is enough to perform a simple action at the beginning of exploration and repeat it when soil conditions change. This will not only give us better ranges, but above all, more reliable readings of the signals we want, measurably influencing our results.

Here again, let me make a fishing analogy. Many anglers complain, that there are no fish, because they don't catch anything. Likewise, many complain about the spots, that there is nothing and nothing can be done, shouting around, that only the seat reservation matters, while skills and equipment have minimal impact. So I will ask a rhetorical question - are nowadays record-breaking fish are pulled out by anglers with a rod from a stick and a line from a string, fishing haphazardly?? Is it, that they do not fish is due to the abundance of water, or lack of their preparation and skills? Coming back to the search, it does not matter how wealthy our seat is, if we cannot approach it correctly. Only a prepared seeker, who knows what to do and how to look will achieve satisfactory results, even if the search area is not saturated with phantoms. I can multiply many examples from my own experience - my friend is the most important, who pulled out only the coppers, because in his "canary" he cut most silver coins with discrimination. He described the field as weak, and it, having entered there by prospectors prepared to fight, gave away a lot of very interesting silver coins, and my friend, after a little improvement in technique, changed his approach to the spot. Another culprit was on the lookout for the HS-3 militarka, however, he did not get acquainted with the principles of ground balance and stated, the new detector seems to be broken, because he howls and there is no range.

Returning, however, to the topic (digressions, something gives a lot today), let's remember that, that the ground is our work area. Without a proper approach to it, we have no chance of getting it out of our places and equipment, what we could. So let's get acquainted with the tuning characteristics of our detector and remember about this function when searching and check the effects. Unless air tests show it, that's the findings in the form of finds for sure.