Arado IBA95?

[Ionburn]

Hi folks,

This is a real long-shot but does anyone know anything about the operation of the Arado IBA95 VLF detector possibly early 1980's vintage? See attached image and sorry about the poor quality.

This is a very old detector and was given to me for "doner parts" but being curious I put a fresh set of cells in the detector and it appears to function after a fashion. The detector has only four controls marked "Sensitivity", "Discrimination", a toggle switch marked "foil" and "nails" plus one other unmarked control on the end of the handle which I would guess might be ground-balance?

Unfortunately the detector seems erratic in operation and I am unsure if this is due to an age related fault (dry electrolytic etc) or simply because I am setting the controls incorrectly. In particular the operation of the "unknown" control seems to make little difference to the detector response.

The detector seems to respond to metal objects (any metal object) but seemingly without any discrimination. Some of the circuitry is "potted" so the detector may not be serviceable but before I scrap the detector for its coils and stem I thought I would ask.

Regards,

Openfields.

[sinclairuser]

some of the older guys in the 80's swore by these arado's, if they had been unstable they would not have been popular.
try replacing caps all devices of that vintage seem to suffer cap degradation, there cheap so worth a shot, if that fails try replacing any crystals in the unit as long as they are not an unusual type, i have seen crystals degrade over time, these do appear on ebay from time to time too so picking up a known working one shouldn't be hard.
a detector that's erratic is worth having a go at fixing, good luck.
aly.

[kt315]

did you ask in compass forum too?