Direct Connection with a VM-560
Hi, my name is Royce with Indepth Utility Solutions. And today I'm going to show you how to do connective locating on the VM-560 line locator. So what we're going to do is that we're going to take this, lay this receiver to the side, we're going to come in and take the ground rod, and we're going to try to find good soil to stick it in. I prefer to go at a 90 degree, although in this location I have a lot of asphalt in the way. I'm going to take the connector from a set of Vivax-Metrotech direct connection leads, plug it up into the transmitter, and then I'm going to take the black lead, place it on the ground, connect it to the ground, the red lead to the tracer wire. Then I'm going to turn the transmitter on, and now I'm going to… I have three frequencies here at 512, 8 and 480. Let me turn the volume down, I'm going to cover it up so you can hear me.
And so right now the utility line locator is on 512 Hertz and usually I find that for trace wire, 512 Hertz can work for direct connection. But if you have any kind of resistance, it may not run very well for you. I've had great success most of the time, using 8 kilohertz, so I'm going to switch it over to eight. And then right here it's showing low power, but I could also select a high power of the transmitter. But I feel like on this tracer wire that low power is probably going to do me a good job. So I'm going to take this transmitter and I'm going to move it out of the way.
And while we're here, a question I get asked a lot is why do we have three different frequencies. Well, frequencies react differently in different situations. So if we have a lot of resistance on the cable, or on a pipe, we might find that 480 kilohertz will run a lot better. But when we go to a really high frequency, the chances are that it could also jump off on to something else. So that would be using 480 when you're directly connected, only if you have to use it, because you can't get it to run in the other two lower frequencies. And what I find with the 512, a lot of times it's too low, and if there's any resistance, it doesn't make it run. Where 8K is a medium frequency and it'll usually have great success with it going down the cable.
So now I'm going to take the receiver, I'm going to cut it on. So it comes on, and right now it's in 60 Hertz, and so I want to change that frequency to 512... Excuse me, 8 kilohertz. So I'm going to hold the target button down for about two seconds it's going to... I didn't hold it down long enough. Hold it down for two seconds and it's going to go into frequency mode, and I can use the plus and minus keys to toggle until I can change and select the frequency I want.
Now if you notice that 8 kilohertz is picking up the signal from the transmitter here, I'm going to hit the target button and now I'll have it selected. And if you see down here in the screen it's selected. Now right now the transmitter is putting out a lot of signals since we're really close by, and the receiver is pegged out at 99. So I'm going to hit the gain, and it's a semiautomatic gain, which means it will adjust about 50%, just to lower it so we have less signal coming in.
So now I have less signal, which I know that this pipe is running out toward the road, which is facing that way. I'm going to come over here, I'm going to lower that volume down, now I'm pointing the antenna down so it's pegged out more. So I'm going to lower the gain down again to about 50% signal, and I'm going to do a circle or a semicircle, all the way around. So I picked up something there, now I'm not picked up anything else, so I'm going to walk back around. I can hear the receiver is picking up, you want to get out on the other side of this tree, I'll show you what the screen looks like.
You can see that on the pavement side mark, and I'm looking for the highest number. Come over here and show them the screen. So it's going down, now it's going back up, now it's going down. So it appears to me that probably people just slightly mis-marked this sign by a couple of inches. So the best reading is right there. Now the gains not all the way pegged out, so we're still good. So I'm going to hit the target and it's going to give us a depth. This unit will give us depth in either 5, 12 or 8 kilohertz, 512 hertz or 8 kilohertz. And it's at one foot nine inches, so I can pick the unit up, as the antenna gets further away from the line it's going to have less signal coming to the receiver.
No, I can walk, and as you can hear the instrument, it's still picking it up. We'll do a low gain right here again, and then I can just do the process all over again. I can check the depth, and it's two foot one, and if I want to know the direction and I can spin the receiver, I'm going to spin it this way so we can get a better... And when it goes to the lowest point, which is about right there, that's the direction that that tracer wire is running. Now I can just walk around this vehicle, and just keep walking. And this signal will go a good distance on this tracer wire. Notice I'm not swinging it like this, I'm holding the receiver pretty much straight down as I swing it. Thank you for watching. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at the information in the description below.
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