Great Syed,
I will ask every one to give me some feed back about running this Antenna competition and then I will draft up a letter to potential sponsors and run it past you.
So Far the potential sponsors I was thinking of writing too are.
AMSAT (Ask for free memberships)
UK-AMSAT
RTL-SDR.com (Hardware.)
NOOLEC
United Launch Alliance. (Space memento souvenir etc.)
SpaceX (Space memento souvenir etc.)
Inmarsat.
and others.
We will, of course, broadcast all designs.
9 Jan 2017 Draft Proposal for a Inaugural World Wide Outernet Receiver L-Band and APRS Antenna design Competition.
Draft Antenna Competition Time-line.
January 15 Competition Officially Announced.
February 15 Sponsors, Rules, Catagories and Prizes Confirmed.
April 15th Final Date for submitting Entry.
April 30th Entries Close Judges Begin Judging.
The following Categories could be available.
Prize for each Category could be
at least a Outernet 1.0 Receiver engraved with the names of all Outernet staff and a framed Award.
Subject to AMSAT agreeing a AMSAT 1 Year Membership.
Subject to UK-AMSAT agreeing a One year UK AmSAT membership.
Low Cost/ Home Component Antenna Categorie, Has $100 already pledged and Possible $200 subject to interest in competition.
Possible Sponsors I intend to write to.
AMSAT (Ask for free memberships)
UK-AMSAT
RTL-SDR.com (Hardware.)
NOOLEC
United Launch Alliance. (Space memento souvenir etc.)
SpaceX (Space memento souvenir etc.)
Inmarsat. Piece of L-Band satellite equipment etc.
Iridium
Thaliya
CHIP
and others.
More detailed Category description.
1 Low cost antenna / Home available components.
Less than $5.00 SNR Equivalent or better than current Patch Antenna.
$100 has already pledged to (Home Available Components) and Possible $200 subject to interest in competition.
2. Best Mobile Car / Boat / Plane / Vehicle antenna-Hardware combination.
Must maintain a L-Band Outernet signal Lock on a moving Vehicle.
Can be Passive or Motorized.
180 Degree Hemispherical reception.
Possible technology Hard disk stabilization, Multiple directional antennas combined, Robotic directional , Omni-Helical etc.
3. Best General Purpose antenna. Must be weather Proof.
Highest SNR Antenna direct to RTL Dongle.
Experiment Antenna that is not practical to build commercially but displays a new property or technique in L-Band reception.
ie Floating, Plasma arc antenna, High Mass antenna, Miniature etc all would be acceptable.
Does not necessarily have to be demonstrated working .
We will be judging Concept and attempt.
APRS / Outernet Combi Antenna.
Since APRS return path is a intrinsic part of Outernet Skylark. A combination with both antennas will be very advantages.
Must demonstrate Up-link APRS, down-link Outernet.
Best Overall / most popular. Antenna.
This will be a community Judging based on all antennas submitted.
Smallest Antenna.
Smallest antenna that can consistently receive a Outernet signal for 24 hrs at the Outernet Headquarters in Chicago.
Best contribution to L-Band / APRS Antenna software.
ie L-Band propagation tables, Antenna Calculator etc, APRS Transmit predict software.
Best Outernet Hardware Modification. (Optional Category subject to Syed)
Rules
All Antenna applicants must put up a thorough description of their proposed antenna design and agree to interact with all request for information advice etc.
All submitted designs must be open sourced and be available to every one.
Antenna Competitions submissions can be in Video (preferred) , Impress, PowerPoint , Web-page, or PDF.
All Antenna submissions must document the reception report say over a 24 hour period if possible ( ie In experimental category this may not be possible)
Hi Syed and Everyone else could you look at the above Competition outline and give me some feed back.
It is so exciting hat we already have $200 in prize money committed for the Low Cost/ Home available component category.
This is awesome. What is the best way to get the word out? What usually motivates people to submit entries?
Post it to the tips line at hackaday.
They love a good contest.
-C
Syed
What usually motivates people is appreciation and recognition.
The contest already appears off to a great start.
ki4its has agreed to sponsor
āI am willing to sponsor $200.00 US Dollars to the best DIY designed L-band antenna that can be made of readily available materials found in most households. I would like 100.00 of it to go to the winner and the other 100.00 to go towards buying a DIY kit from outernet to be given to someone in another country that could not afford one otherwise.ā
I think this is very generous.
Plus he has offered up to a additional $200 if the competition generates enough interest.
I think we are generating interest,
These home made helicalās are amazing and every one is getting involved.
Plus the amazing 3D printed servo Outernet Patch Antenna on RTL-SDR.com it just blew me away as a contender for the mobile Antenna Category. http://www.rtl-sdr.com/outernet-patch-antenna-pan-tilt-servo/
So the next step is for you Syed to sit down with your Outernet Team and confirm to us, the User community that you are happy with the 10 Categories I have suggested. and secondly you need to confirm that Outernet at a minimum will provide ten engraved Outernet receivers as the Minimum prize for each category and a Plaque. and Thirdly we need to roughly agree on the dates of the competition.
And then I will start writing letters to sponsors.
I suggest once the dates are decided we put a banner add on top of the Outernet webpages. With a link to the Antenna competition web-pages. (I will be calling on volunteers to help with the competition web page layout and design and construction.)
Seasalt
Agreed!
Confirmed!
The previously proposed timeline looks great. [quote=āSeasalt, post:27, topic:2960ā]
And then I will start writing letters to sponsors.
[/quote]
Let the games begin!
What a lot of fun 
As I am constantly moving around I prob wonāt get a chance to sit down & work on some of the ideas I have ( I LOVE building antennas BTWā¦ mostly HF though!)
I may do a ābrain dumpā here on the forums of the things I have in my head that maybe someone else ( with the time) can pick up & prototype.
Thatās exactly what we want Neil, people with more experience feeding back and those with more time building antennas.
In the mechanics of running a competition department, Iād suggest it be super clear what exactly is the submission and how they will be kept track of and organized for review. (Iām basing this on experience both as applicant and juror for various art and academic opportunities.) There are a bunch of systems out there which could work (https://www.submittable.com/ for example ) but finding one which is free/cheap and which are more open-source would be niceāthat is where all the submissions could be reviewed by everyone, potentially. At least one category is by popular voteā?ā
I think it has been deleted as I canāt find the example, but I participated in a symposium thing recently where the submissions were through Github. There were specific questions to be answered in a simple html format which was pasted into a github issue text field which was submitted to a repository. It had a lot of upsides: it was free, it could contain websites or documents placed elsewhere but this centralized the resource, and you could see all of the other submissions in the repository. Downside is having to have a github account, but maybe thatās not a high bar for this interest group. Anyway perhaps github or something like it would work to manage applications?
Github would be great central repository for competition information. @Seasalt The following repo would make a good starting point. Itās a public repo.
Thanks Syed.
I have been hijacked the last few days but will be more involved in competition next week.
My feeling on Antenna Competition web site is it needs to be a repository and store the following for each entry in the competitionā¦
Name of Entry
Category
Brief description.
A main Photo.
Detailed description.
Video or more photos.
Any additional info ie 3d printing plans etc.
I am just posting a Work In Progress picture of the mount for mobile/marine use. This is the gimble system that will be keeping the antenna level no matter the tilt or pitch of the base platform. It is 3D printed and uses skateboard bearings for the rotation axis support. If you can get to a printer all up cost should be $5 for print materials and another $10 for a box of bearings.
I am working on the heading tracker now. @Syed or @Abhishek, would it be to hard to add the I2C and PWM pin access back on the CHIP and put the utility packages back into the distro? That way I would not have to add an external ESP or Arduino to track and point the heading.
Thanks!
-Cecil
Which utility do you need? Give me a link.
I think the distribution for I2c is just the APT package i2c-tools. I am not sure on the hardware PWM, I am looking through the CHIP docs for that info.
-Cecil
i2c-tools is already in the image.
I found them, how about the calculator bc?
-C
bc canāt be added - it will also need supporting libraries and float support in bbox as well.
for any binaries that are missing, try copying them from the CHIP debian image into the user storage area and add that to the path. Including these in the image is tough as the image size is a critical constraint.
ok thanks for checking.
-Cecil
