This was the (Rock) Location (QTH):


And this was Emil's Operating Position:


Emil operated about 7 hours on 20 meters CW, until the waves got so high that water began coming into his tent:


Emil quickly packed his equipment in a water-proof bag and called for help.

He was rescued by the Water Police who threw him a rope to enable getting safely off of the Rock.  He left his tent and the antenna behind on the rock.


Here is the team that pulled him off of the rock:


The next morning, Emil returned to the rock to retrieve his tent and the antenna.  He had to jump from the boat and swim to the rock.


When Emil reached the rock, he found his Spiderbeam 10 meter Fiberglass Pole was gone.
He was able to save the tent and the bag that had held the pole.

The photo above is a screen shot taken from a video showing Emil jumping from the boat and swimming to the rock.  It is posted on Facebook.

And this is his QSL card for this expedition:


Another view of the setup:


Emil, just minutes before beginning operation... smiling like a kid in a candy shop:


We can only speculate what happened to the Spiderbeam pole.

I'm guessing the fish thought it was a fishing pole and removed it overnight. 



Now it is: "way down, below the ocean, lost in the deep blue sea!"


One of Ham Radios most adventuresome and challenging One-Man Expeditions.


EA5/DL8JJ/p Video and Slide Presentation:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP-2A8wLCks


Emil's presentation was hosted by the Pennine Ham radio club in the Pennine hills of Northern England, with Nick G4IWO moderating the session.


The first 5 minutes are an introduction by Nick.


Emil's presentation begins with some slides at about the 5 minute point in this video.


Emil's own video of his adventure begins at 24 minutes and 24 seconds into the main video, with thrilling views of the waves splashing against his operating position...


Emil's own video is followed by more slides and explanations.


THE ANTENNA:


As you see in the photo on the left, we didn't have much space for an antenna, nor were there any elevated tie-off possibilities.


Emil wanted to work 40-10m. 


The challenge was to build as efficient of an antenna as possible, for this unique and difficult location.

THIS is the antenna we came up with:

The concept was to use a λ/4 "Inverted-L" for 40m - the lowest band required.


Since there was no elevated support for the end of the horizontal segment, we had to slope it down, at an angle of about 50 degrees to the pole.


I have often used this configuration when working portable and called it a "Lazy Inverted-L".


The "Radiation Resistance" of a λ/4 vertical is 36 Ohms. "Ground Resistance" of the counterpoise was unknown.  Assume it is somewhere between 5 to 20 Ohms, resulting in an overall feedpoint impedance 41 to 56 Ohms.   Quite OK! (on 40m)


THE PROBLEM: On 20m the radiator is λ/2 long, resulting in a feedpoint impedance of about 3k Ohm - a difficult impedance for most tuners to match.  Even if Emil's tiny MFJ-902 tuner could find a match, the efficiency would be low due to the limited capacitance of its  variable capacitors.

THE SOLUTION:  We extended the radiator by 20% (2m), presenting a much lower impedance to the tuner on 20m, while remaining in a reasonable range on 40m.


Of course all of the above is speculation, since we really did not know the "Ground Resistance" of the underwater counterpoise.


Like always, we needed to test the antenna, so a trip to Emil's QTH was unavoidable.


Next Page:  Testing the Antenna