Young ham wins youth achievement award from radio club of america

Last month, Austin Schaller, KD0FAA , gave an award winning talk on “Fractal Antennas” at the Radio Club of America. You can now see his talk as a three part video on the following links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAJ1S90noa4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-aLnXHNZsM&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2ZEC3VSL4Q


Congrats to Austin!

73,
Chip W1YW

 

Congratulations, Austin!

This young man has a future in front of him.

Chip, are you his mentor? If not, perhaps you could offer?


73.

 

At the time I saw them:

The number of views for the first video ~90

The number of views for the 2nd video ~60

The number of views for the 3rd video ~30

What does that progression tell us?

 

Nope. Austin did this all himself. Great job.

I did give him permission to use the pix and diagrams. All the NEC sims are his.

I've got an intern program at work that's very successful. Austin is still in high school so its still a bit early. But he's welcome to build and test fractal antennas here.

Of course, fractal antennas are common foir VHF, based on relative sales. And needless to say, I use them at HF/MF.

It looks like the edu program at RCA does a fine job. Wish I was a member--couldn't find a sponsor sometime after I first published the fractal work. Let me put it this way: no one would sponsor me.

I have heard they are more inclusive these days. but at this stage of my life, coming in as a regular member after that experience would be awkward for my sense of self worth. I know nothing about the club in 2011. I assume its just fine.

Anyway, Austin did his homework: he even dug out my cancer treatment patent application.

73,
Chip W1YW

 

Viewing is quantized in groups of 30.

 

I was going to say the presentation got more technical as it progressed, but video 3 is questions from the audience.

 

Thank you all for your kind words and support! My family, BARC Jr., Jerry, N0UI, and Carole, WB2MGP have been most supportive (give them a cheer), and I am pleased to announce that the RCA "TechSymp" is now looking for kids who would like to present on technical subjects in the future. The youth are our tomorrows, and it is important for me that other kids will have this opportunity as well.

As K4WGE pointed out, the videos get more technical (and interesting) as you progress. The second and third videos include my approach to designing fractal antennas from a practical standpoint and also the results of a few of my experiments.

The presentation was a lot of work, and I was tentative about my simulated results and final antenna experiments, but it all worked out well in the end and the simulated results seem to be relatively accurate. Originally, I had my "Fractal Antenna Generator" repository on Github (now on Bitbucket as a private repository) that could be viewed publicly, but after conferring with a few of the participants at the RCA TechSymp, they advised me to keep it private for IP reasons. Fractal antennas are exceptionally interesting, and after talking with my grandfather and reviewing a few of the questions at the RCA TechSymp, I have realized that there are a multitude of ideas to try out (the simulator will be key in these areas).

If you are interested in seeing what I am up to (with PIC microcontrollers, etc.) please visit my Bitbucket/Github repos:

https://bitbucket.org/aschaller

https://github.com/ElectroNerd


Chip, I am surprised that you found my YouTube videos! You have inspired me to advance in my studies and contribute to the world of Ham Radio as well as RF, thank you!

Austin, KD0FAA

 

Congratulations from China.

 

Good job, Austin!

 

Austin,

Great job! Your presentation was excellent. Congratulations to you as well for the RCA Achievement Award... As always, we are proud of you and your accomplishments.

73,
Jack Ciaccia, WMØG
President, Boulder Amateur Radio Club

 

congratulate

 

I didn't: they were pointed out to me But I knew about the talk as two of my customers heard it & congratulated me on it--they assumed from most of the images (that they had seen in my publications) that we had worked together on it . I was happy you used them--and everyone now knows you had my permission

'Inspire' is a loaded word; be careful with it. People who are dead , historical, or inaccessible are 'inspiring'.

A little story. The first time I went to lunch with Mandelbrot I told him he 'inspired' me. He then swore at me in Yiddish (with a French accent--most Americans got this impression that Mandelbrot was arrogant (he wasn't); I just thought he was being French and told me where to place 'inspire'. Polymaths have amusing ways with malapropic metaphors: they actually gain something in translation. He made me pay for lunch.

I am alive. I mentor(as NL7W pointed out.) With fractal electronics exploding as we speak, that's a pretty coveted position ;-)

You know where to find me. But you'll pay for lunch

And congrats again on the excellent presentation and work;-)

73,
Chip W1YW

 

Of course there is quite a bit of IP already that covers the bases on fractal antennas. Having spent well over a million dollars on the IP, I can vouch for that.

There's also a fair amount on automatic antenna design (Here's one: US patent app 20030229861) . Not sure why anyone bothers...method patents from software are essentially useless because the claims are so dependent on the phrasing. There's a famous case where someone got around a method-software patent by doing one of the parts of the claim outside the US and then doing the rest here. That's why I never sought a patent for fractal genetic optimization (FRAGO), which was published in 1997 (in Proc. ACES) and shown as a working system in 2002 in the ACES proceedings.

My company toyed with the idea of becoming a 'boutique' house 10 years ago. People would send in a design problem, we would solve it on a Beowulf system, and then send the gerber file/DxF. In fact several VC backed stabs have been tried at that with other startups--most notably at RFID. They all failed (and thus I am glad we didn't do it). The reason they failed is that there is a deep, dark secret with antenna simulations--they don't work with the precision needed in real applications in real environments. They still don't. You have to make and tweak them as real honest to God hardware, rather then manipulating bits like a computer game. That's one of the things I do daily with my colleagues--make and tweak--in real environments such as packaging and cases, with a huge collection of reference designs , most computer based: close but still needing that hardware human touch;-)


Speaking of which, you need to learn the fine art of fiddling with copper tape, utility knives and Dremels. All the antenna and RF people reading this know what I mean
73,
Chip W1YW

 

Doing your own, limited experimentation would be difficult to present as patent infringement. You know that I actively encourage folks to do such experimentation. There's little going on in ham radio, but there's a buzz of activity with young people (for example) experimenting with fractal HDTV antennas. Kinda surprised me. But its cool.

If you are referring to something novel, I suggest you find someone willing to proffer a few minutes of free lawyer time: even that may not jive with the reality of what goes on in a courtroom, but it probably is better than that from non-patent attorneys.

For example, as a non-patent attorney, my assumption is that the work is published when it goes online, and thus is invalid for foreign patent filings. In the US you have one year to file upon 'publication'. My son got the same advice when he decided to submitted for his first patent (he was in high school) and waited until after filing to divulge. You might check out the new 'first to file' rules, that have various dates that apply and are pretty non-straight forward.

73,
Chip W1YW

 

There really is nothing that needs to be protected in my repository because most of everything I've done has been done before, as you have indicated. I'm hoping that my second revision will change this, as I have some altogether different ideas I would like to integrate in the future. However, I may change my mind and have it as open source.

For those of you who are interested, you can view my repository here. It is a modest first Python project, but it serves the purpose.

At my work, they have used copper tape to test for any RF that escapes from the shielding of their radios. There seem to be quite a few uses for copper tape, and I can see where constructing higher frequency fractal antennas (or any higher-frequency antenna, for that matter) would be possible (cutting it with the X-Acto knife, etc.). That is something I should experiment with. I appreciate your advice, these pearls of wisdom will be valuable in my future career.

73,

Austin, KD0FAA