side scan sonar Images from low resolution 220khz home made fish.

Here is an image taken using the sidescan sonar, now fully functional for the first time!!

The software has saved the images a little bright so work is needed but you can clearly see the wreck of the blazer shortly followed by the serica along the right hand side from centre to bottom left.

HMS Blazer was an armaments tug of roughly 280 tons. She sank on the 10 November 1918 close inshore near the Conger ledgers just off the garisson walls on St Mary's the Isles of Scilly. She is mostly broken up but still lies in a ship like shape with her bows whole and her hull showing up on the sonar as boat shaped.

The Steam ship Serica foundered on Serica rock just off the Steval off the Garisson walls St Mary's, Isles of Scilly on the 24 November 1893. She had just avoided sinking and was taking shelter in the roads.

We are now viewing several weeks worth of data taken of the whole of Scilly and will return with a high resolution 700kHz version of the same fish design shortly. Inspiration for the fish came from Sture Hultqvist, now not with us but his tales of engineering and sonar hunting lead me to build my own.

The side scan sonar is towed behind the boat and looks out each side to left and right. It misses directly under the boat because of this but gives an image in the same way light does with a sundial giving a shadow except using accoustics. The lower th efish th ebigger the shadow and the brighter the reflections. The higher the frequency the higher the detail so long as the fish is long enough. short arrays do not always give high detail.

CLICK FOR BIGGER IMAGES

SS SERICA


HMS BLAZER

Back now

Im back for now to edit films, repair sonar equipment and earn some money.
Ill keep this site up to date with news of the next trip or expediton when I can and post some photos and videos in due course.
Thanks for looking
Robin

Dolphins and Basking sharks!

The two days before I left for home I was lucky enough to see a bottle nose dolphin riding the bow waves in front of our boat. I filmed it in 720p HD and 1920x1080 full HD. A stunningly beautiful and friendly creature.
Following this the day before I came back we were surrounded by Basking sharks.
I started to film them from the bow and had an idea to try and film them underwater.
Although my camera was not set up and needed cleaning and adjusting I threw it together in seconds and jumped in.
Several hours of frustrating and tiring swimming with a large camera the size of a microwave oven was had trying to film the creatures but they were accompanied by juveniles who were scared by the boats of us and now several dive boats getting closer and closer. We left them alone prefering not to drive to close. On spotting another about 28-25 ft long we tried a new tactic of sitting and waiting. We got closer and observed them but swimming in the open water with these graceful freight trains of the sea even with a snorkel and mask is hard. The final attempt eventually paid off when we found a lone pair away from the islands towards Samson less perterbed by the company. using my 3m inflatable tender we used the 2.5HP engine to quietly and slowly get closer to them and I slid in at the last minute.

The following was grabbed from my video camera and shows how magnificent they really are.


The most amazing experience of my life then occured as they swam towards me out of the gloomy green water hoovering up the plankton with their large open mouths.

At least twice my size they looked tiny in the viewfinder of the camera but the amazing Fathom lens of my video camera captured them from full wide to up to six inches from the lens! Daunting enough was the fact I was swimming several miles out to sea with a snorkel and just a single boat within 100m. To follow was the imense size of these miracles of nature, perfect in every way and gliding through the water with minimal effort irrespective of the drag from their open mouths and size close to two cars.

If I had been prepared I could have done much better but the split second decision to jump in with my kit was one of the best I have ever made giving me new respect of the oceans creatures and admiration for their grace and beauty in the water.

Thanks to todd and carmen for hours of patience, good boat handling, local knowledge and determination to help.

Foggy day.

Today is drizzle rain fog and mist. Not good but after several weeks of oven like temperatures its a welcome change. Knowledge of me and the london divers long suspected piracy has spread and is now a humorous talking point by everyone. Walking down the street I was accosted by over nine people one giving me a jolly roger flag! Im also popular with the police who ask about the latest stories of wrecks and treasure!

Yesterday was fun!

The diving was great and weather hot but on returning back I got a call from the police. Apparently some uneducated locals had reported me for diving an historic protected wreck site called the Bartholemew. The site of the Bartholemew is reported to be a fifteenth century cannon site which I have dived on a license before. We were actually diving a wreck we found last year called the Magdeleine. A steam trawler probably of nineteenth century origin with huge boilers and winches which, are not normally found on fifteenth century wrecks! After I explained some history and the historic wrecks act of 1974 they were happy and went off to resolve the matter with the individuals unaware of the charts and rules. Diving was amazing and the guys were pleased to see something close to the harbour with lots of interesting things to investigate. We have some interesting things to reseach and a few artifacts to report and clean up for the museum or a display.

Wreckage from the magdeleine

Brass wheels from a telegraph or control lever. On the end is lots of small chain and a lever like a bike brake handle. Spotted by the London dive team, this was being battered and sandblasted by rocks and shail and had big marks on so we though we would lift it to see if we could find any makers identification marks.

Dredging pendrethen

The water pump in the inflatable tender is used to pump water down to the sea bed to a venturi pipe. This sucks up the sand gently as it is wafted up by hand and leaves the items behind to draw, photograph and measure. The site we were looking into here was the Pendrethen wreck site and Inisidgen cannon site.

Side scan sonar towed array on the boat.

The side scan sonar fish, as it is known, is towed behind the boat at speeds of three to eight knots. It digitises the sea bed and produces an image up to 400m wide called a swathe. Higher frequencies give increased detail or resolution but less range. Today we found some good hits but enterpreting the data takes a lot of time. Eventually we will mosaic the data to give a coverage of the whole area for analysis and archives.

This one was developed by Myself and a few friends I used to work with.

It is a 220kHz system using a programmable processor to digitise signals and send them to the PCs USB port. The software gives lots of tools for analysing th data, recording it, zooming and measuring whilst correcting radiometric and geometric errors.

porthole maybe from Schiller?

Bishop rock lighthouse. Next stop America

What looks like a brass deck drain

Diving off the retarrier ledges this was concreted into the bottom. There are several wrecks here most notably the Schiller, a German transatlantic steam packet wrecked on the 7th of May in 1875 with a loss of 335 lives. It was coined the victorian Titanic in recent times and is well broken up by harsh tides and heavily salvaged by visitors and locals alike so archaeology is difficult. It holds some nice cutlery and rumours of coins with good examples of engineering from Glasgow and England! All in all a nice find with something to report to the receiver of wreck on returning.

Off to the western rocks.

London spidge SAC out deciding where to dive while trying to avoid seasickness. A great bunch and a good laugh. After fixing their boat a few years ago we became friends and now have a regular meet each year.

A hedgehog looking for scraps of food was one of several noisily snuffling away and gathering scraps of food.

Good food cooked on a barbecue on the camp site.

Burgers, pitta bread, spare ribs, onions, salad and chili sauces. Well earned. The RIB or Rigid hulled inflatable boat is moored in the harbour and the kit set up so more diving tomorrow.

Barbecue with divers.

Scilly day 5 breakfast!

After a few days relaxing im just finishing breakfast while waiting for a group of divers from london to arrive. The plan is to look at a few sonar hits, dredge a site to uncover the extent of the wreckage to see if we can identify it and have some fun making a new DVD. It will be good to see them again. I made friends a few years ago after repairing their boat engine and have kept in touch as we all have a great time and similar interests. The weather since has been very inclement over the past few years but we are hoping for better this year. Fingers crossed this but so far so good!

A stunning evening.

After two dives and some wildlife watching the light put on a stunning show for us where cormorants, razorbills, puffins and shags gracefully glided over the ironed sea and the sun reflections glistened off the rocks and wavelets. I am having problems with my phone key pad but will try to sort tonight.

Me

Stunning day

1 knot wind blue sky warm absolutely perfect

Filming.

Well we started filming on among the western rocks for a new film and will be diving later. There are a lot of puffins seal pups and cormorants around.

Sunset

The bay of Porthmellon on St Mary's with its seaweed and volcanic stone coloured white sand. The sailing center is just out of picture to the right and with a low tide the water is almost ready to start flowing in again.

Exploring wrecks and filming puffins with pieces to camera off the western rocks

Calm day after sonar tests

After testing the sonar successfully a walk to old town for food and drink seemed a good idea.

Quiet and green

Welcome to base camp

Chez Robin is complete

Garisson walls

The entrance to the garisson which surrounds the campsite and star castle. Gun batteries of cannons similar to those from colossus are scattered around it at strategic locations.

My peaceful hq for 3 and a bit weeks

Now my luxury accomodation is sorted I need to sort dive kit.

Eventually up

What a mess!

The sun has gone in and im having trouble remembering the instructions!

SCILLY !

Arrived in glorious sunshine ready for four weeks of diving, sonar testing and surveying, dvd marketing and production. Home currently feels like Scilly after being here more than where I live this year.

Scilly !

Arrived with tones of rubbish ready to dive relax and enjoy life

Scillonian bridge

Off to Scilly

The Scillonian 3 steams across smooth seas.

A stunning day

Sun and sea with sand on the way.

The sun and sea.

Its such a flat calm beautiful day. The sea smells lovelly and am starting to relax. I have just been told by the captain they saw basking sharks and dolphins yesterday.

Penzance!

Its six fourty five and im very tired but after parking the car in town I now wait to load the boat.

Leaving in the dark

When I left at two am it was pitch black with the only sign of life a vixen and her cubs playing in the road.

Finally a website I can be proud of is uploaded and hopefully I can keep it updated regularly using my mobile phone.
After giving my design ideas, some photographs, 3D artwork, text and links to Chris Wilsdon, fellow experienced web designer and photographer he has done a great job of taking my design ideas and engineering what I wanted, adding his own icing on the cake. Thanks to Chris for a good job and a good creative eye.

Sonar repair for Andre is complete. A revamped sonar originally built by Sture Hultqvist (sadly no longer with us) and similar to mine but using his own hardware and software.
The original connectors were not underwater rated and had corroded preventing the surface unit from triggering the fish. As a result the TVGA(time varying Gain Amp) was not triggered and the sonar was missing the most vital piece appart from the transducers.
This was repaired and a refurbishment undertaken to allow Andre to use his fish reliably whilst looking into the possibility of upgrading it to my software and new hardware to digitise his fish.
this is now a future possibility.

I am off to The Isles of Scilly in two days for 3 weeks and 4 weekends, to start hunting for some wrecks testing my improved sonar and filming for various projects. I will also finish filming the Isles of Scilly Travel PR work and my Explore Scilly DVD all being well.
As per usual I expect to be repairing things for locals, playing music and having a few barbecues too. Cant have all work and no play!
Thats it for now.

Old and new fish

New fish

Seaconn plug

Seaconn Plug

Testing

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