Chris (et al) –
Board confidential.
I have an active high-level clearance and
a secure telephone on my desk at work. If appropriate with folks on my
end, and if the Air Force is willing to extend need-to-know (the biggest
challenge since a clearance, no matter what kind, means nothing without NTK), I
would be happy to engage in communications with them.
73,
Brian N5ZGT
ARRL Director, Rocky Mountain Division
From: w3kd@aol.com
[mailto:w3kd@aol.com]
Sent: Friday, February 08, 2008
7:20 AM
To: arrl-odv
Cc: dhenderson@arrl.org
Subject: Pave Paws Radars -- QST
Article
Greetings. Dan Henderson asked me to edit his article on Pave Paws
Radars for QST. I did so and he has now completed the piece and sent it to
production.
I think Dan has done a bang-up job of candidly telling people what is going on,
what ARRL's role is in this process, the difficulties we have had in
addressing it, and our ultimate reliance on FCC to protect the low level of
entitlements of Amateur licensees here. I thought you should have a
copy of it right away, and Dan sent the final version along so you could be
alerted in advance. Please keep this article to yourselves until it is
published in QST, but you must of course be able to respond to inquries about
the issue, and this should help you do so.
There are ongoing negotiations with the Air Force, of course, not all
of which are discussed in this piece. We are scheduled to have our
next conference call with them next week. We have candidly told them of our
concern with their processes, and Fred Moorefield at the Air Force Spectrum
Management Agency has pledged to calm the waters for us somewhat. We will see.
The only other aspect of this that is not in the article (and please keep this
entirely confidential) is that we have asked Moorefield to consider
whether or not the fact that two of our incumbent Board members have high-level
security clearances might allow the Air Force to provide to them some of the
details of the radar's interference susceptibility. While they could not
disclose that information, we would of course accept their assurance that the
interference mitigation called for by the Air Force is actually necessary in
the case of each repeater. We are in no position to accept that assurance !
from the Air Force directly.
73, Chris W3KD
More new features than ever. Check out the new AOL Mail!