Greetings,

I want to bring everyone up to date on a number of things that are, or have been, occurring during the past few weeks.

BPL Court Decision – following the Court of Appeals remand to the FCC the ball has been in FCC’s hands. The FCC had two dates by which to seek further appeals action, the first being June 14, and the second upcoming in July to the U.S. Supreme Court. The June 14 date has passed without action by the FCC and there is no indication that the FCC will make any appeal whatsoever to the Supreme Court. What action we will take next will depend largely on the outcome of a meeting that Dave, Chris and I will have with Julius Knapp of FCC’s Office of Engineering & Technology (OET) on July 9. A report of that meeting will be sent immediately following.

Red Cross – We currently have two matters we are working regarding the American Red Cross. The first is the negotiation to update our SOU which is occurring now. Our expectation is to have a draft available for review by the Executive Committee at our meeting in October. The second regards the ARC’s background requirement. In November I had sent a letter to ARC’s Armond Mascelli expressing our concerns about confidential personal information required by Mybackgroundcheck.com, the ARC’s contractor retained to perform background checks for ARC. That letter was previously sent to you at that time and also posted on our web site. It took ARC six months to respond to ARRL, something that I am not pleased with. Their response was received via email (a hard copy later arrived at ARRL HQ) on Saturday morning, May 17, while we all were at the Dayton Hamvention. Dave had email access and showed the letter to me and Kay and we skimmed over the response. The response appeared to address our concerns and we took ARC at their word on good faith and an announcement was made at Dayton as well as on ARRLWeb that our concerns had been addressed. In the four weeks since Dayton, however, it has become sadly evident that all of the consent forms at mybackgroundcheck.com required for amateur radio volunteers have not been changed and are misleading, at the very least. Dave, Chris, Kay and I met on June 19 and task Chris to review the ARC response and the current form on mybackgroundcheck.com and his opinion is that what Mascelli sent is, for the most part, in the consent form being used, but it isn't actually in the consent form part. It is part of a "Disclosure regarding Background Checks" which on the web site precedes the actual consent form itself, which is called an "Authorization" There are at least two overly vague portions of the Authorization which Mascelli never showed us. A response has been drafted to Mascelli and I will send it this week and an updated story will be posted on ARRLWeb.

ARRL Washington Beltway Luncheon – ARRL hosted a Washington Beltway Luncheon last Thursday, June 19. We have hosted these periodically over the years in order to meet with the many hams in the Washington, D.C. area that work in many government agencies and capacities. Among the topics of this luncheon was the recognition of Paul Rinaldo on his pending retirement (Paul has worked closely with many of these people over the years in achieving ARRL’s objectives), an update on court of appeals BPL decision and the introduction of the fifth “Technology” pilar.

IARU Administrative Council Meeting – This week I am attending the IARU Administrative Council meeting in Konstanz, Germany, to officially present the nomination of IARU President & Vice President candidates on behalf of the International Secretariat. As has been previously reported to you, after consultation with IARU member societies in all three regions I will submit for nomination Tim Ellam, VE6SH, for IARU President and Ole Garpstadt, LA2RR, for IARU Vice President. The AC will take action on this nomination and it is expected that they will approve the nomination and order ballots to be sent to all IARU societies. The next term for the IARU President and Vice President will be begin on May 9, 2009.

Ham Radio Friedrichshafen – This weekend I will be attending DARC’s Ham Radio convention in Friedrichshafen, Germany. The event is commonly referred to as the “European Dayton” with an attendance of approximately 20,000. Our booth at Ham Radio is small although we take in quite a number of new and renewal memberships from our international members. We also provide DXCC card checking which, as you can imagine, is very popular. It also provides an opportunity for us to interface with our sister societies in IARU Region I that we normally do not have an opportunity for since ARRL has no official standing in Region I.

I look forward to seeing each of you in a few weeks at our 2008 Second Meeting. As usual, if you are responsible for submitting a report to the board these will be due no later than Monday, July 14.

73 Joel DL/W5ZN