Test field I: Minelab Manticore detector on the forest trail

From the first moment I got my hands on the Manticore, it was clear that, given the detector's setup options, it will be necessary to test the detector and fine-tune some more personal settings and try out all the modes.

After some time I had enough clarity and experience to start testing the detector and draw some meaningful conclusions.

Since there was no manual available at that time, I had to figure everything out myself and sendtest and check if my results were correct, but on the other hand at least my judgment is not influenced by the description in the manual (note: I have no idea what I'm doing: at the time of writing this article I did not have the manual yet).

Anyway, it was clear from the beginning that the detector would have to be walked and tested in multiple environments and on a wide variety of targets, and that I would not be able to walk only my favorite beaches and water all the time. :D

That's why there will be 3 articles in total, focusing on forest, war and beaches. Today it's the turn of the first article, the search in the forest..

First I took the detector to my favourite, but already much walked forest full of narrow paths that were full of the typical old square wrought iron spikes that often successfully camouflaged coloured targets. As I was now properly trained with Manticore from messing about in the water, I decided to test to see if any more of the old well-trodden paths would let go and play my favourite game of ball and line graph :D :D.

After trying out all the modes, the choice fell on the classic exploration mode, namely All terrain: General, so nothing special.This is the mode that is most suited for exploring all kinds of locations and goes reliably absolutely everywhere. It is basically the equivalent of the number one modes (Park1 and Field1) known from Equinox 800/600.

Due to the expectation that the smaller Ag coins, of which there have been more found in the past, may be deeper, it was necessary to modify mainly the lower adjustment curve to leave a little more room on the graph in case the target is buried deep and the ID calculation is already a little biased.

Next, I experimented quite a bit with the audio. It went very well in deep audio with the 40-45/60 setting (min pitch/max pitch), shallow targets were nicely identifiable by sound and one could even estimate the size of the object by the rise of the VCO signal. Anyway, this setting can be individual for everyone and they recommend to try what works best for you.

It's definitely still worth trying the Enhaced audio, it was good to walk around in that too, however as I said the choice of audio is likely to be quite individual and there are a plethora of options so everyone will find what suits them best.

Enough with the setup, now for something about the search: D

The first one after about half an hour was a smaller silver grebe that fell quite deep, on the chart it came out a little below the midline, this is due to the depth of the fit, however still safely in colour. The next interesting find was a silver button, all on the way to the knothole where the fun only just began. Iron at every turn, gradually fell quite interesting 3krejcar Silvius Fridrich, which was in the same hole with the iron, unfortunately it is a little damageda little bit damaged by the movement on the road in the past, then another small bent Agco fell on the road and a little bit around the silver kreutzer of Leopold I.

Then on the way back I found a nice Prague groschen of Vladislav of Jagiellon. Further on, from another forest, a somewhat unusual find is worth mentioning, namely the death token of Johann Ernst 1627, unfortunately with a hole + another Agčka. Still missing in the photos are 10 FJI kreutzers. More coppers fell, but a beautifully preserved large 1816 krejcar and a FJI button made me happy.

Conclusion. However, the detector settings need to be adjusted a bit from the factory values, especially the iron limits settings and the speed needs to be backed down a bit.

The sensitivity can be easily set to around 23-24 in clear woods and good ground conditions for a search with no ringing.

Jaccob

Forest settings to start with, according to Jaccob

Sensitivity: here in clear forest I was in the 22-24 range most of the time. On the road I always pulled down to 22.
Mode: All terrain general - here, at least in the beginning, there is no need to juice the detector right away in low conduct modes (analogy of the twin modes in EQ). Besides, I found in my testing that even in this mode the detector is sharper on small targets than the classic park1 at EQ.
GB: I always pumped in the woods, once in a while I pumped via the programmable button
The volume and treshold settings are strongly individual, so I guess it's up to each person.
Personally, I had volume 25 and treshold 8
Recovery speed: I've used 3 in open areas, on the road, and if I have a higher number of targets I've chosen 4, rarely 5. For those who don't want to redo anything, speed 4 is probably the most versatile.
Discrimination: in the woods I do not use,I walked All metal.

Ferrous limits: Here you need to reduce the presets slightly so that the ball has enough room at the bottom of the chart in the case of deeply deposited small Ag coins.
The fastest way to get to this setting is to adjust the FL preset.
Audio: You can stay in normal, but it's very nice to go to enhanced and deep (deep I had the variability set to 60/40).
Tonearm: I've walked in either 2 tone (iron/color) or multitone with relatively little variability, however I reckon the Audio and tonearm settings will be pretty individual.