There was a bit of a discussion going on on Fbook about Fixed vs Tracking, with fans on both side of the fence.
Me personally, I use Fixed maybe 70% of the time, but have no hesitation using Tracking if the ground or my obvious lack of concentration dictates.
Last time out, I was detecting with the 5000 and 14x9" evo, I went from some pretty warm ground down into some bad ground, real ironstone playground, and the coil was struggling. I dropped Rx Gain from 13 - 11 which helped but ground balance was still a bit touchy. I would normally just drop it back from Fine-Gold into Enhance, but wanted to experiment a little. I did a Specific ground balance and left it in Tracking. This worked an absolute treat, except when going over a shallow bit of trash, the ground balance would get knocked out of whack and I had to do another re-balance, which when you are in Specific you can't do with the green button.
So after a few re-balances I went to the normal tracking, and then when going over some shallow junk I just re-balanced with a quick press of the Quick-Trak with the little "bip" sound. Anyway I was going up a narrow track and got a nice little signal, two sweeps and I was ready to dig but I stopped myself. I tried to track it out by repeatedly going over it, and while the signal response faded maybe 60% it never fully tracked it out. Then i tried Fixed, ground balanced about 40cm to the side and went over it, and the signal response was good, and consistent and didn't fade. BUT, here's the kicker. I walked back 10m to where I started struggling a bit, re-balanced there and walked back up the track without re-balancing. That target was invisible! So what's the conclusion? If you are going to run Fixed, make sure you re-balance regularly which really means as often as practical. If you get lazy or are forgetting to re-balance, then let the detector do it for you and flick into Tracking. Oh, target was a tiny square bit of brass which took way too long to recover.
Me personally, I use Fixed maybe 70% of the time, but have no hesitation using Tracking if the ground or my obvious lack of concentration dictates.
Last time out, I was detecting with the 5000 and 14x9" evo, I went from some pretty warm ground down into some bad ground, real ironstone playground, and the coil was struggling. I dropped Rx Gain from 13 - 11 which helped but ground balance was still a bit touchy. I would normally just drop it back from Fine-Gold into Enhance, but wanted to experiment a little. I did a Specific ground balance and left it in Tracking. This worked an absolute treat, except when going over a shallow bit of trash, the ground balance would get knocked out of whack and I had to do another re-balance, which when you are in Specific you can't do with the green button.
So after a few re-balances I went to the normal tracking, and then when going over some shallow junk I just re-balanced with a quick press of the Quick-Trak with the little "bip" sound. Anyway I was going up a narrow track and got a nice little signal, two sweeps and I was ready to dig but I stopped myself. I tried to track it out by repeatedly going over it, and while the signal response faded maybe 60% it never fully tracked it out. Then i tried Fixed, ground balanced about 40cm to the side and went over it, and the signal response was good, and consistent and didn't fade. BUT, here's the kicker. I walked back 10m to where I started struggling a bit, re-balanced there and walked back up the track without re-balancing. That target was invisible! So what's the conclusion? If you are going to run Fixed, make sure you re-balance regularly which really means as often as practical. If you get lazy or are forgetting to re-balance, then let the detector do it for you and flick into Tracking. Oh, target was a tiny square bit of brass which took way too long to recover.
