As you recall I recently traveled to Washington for the purpose of meeting with the FCC and also to update and evaluate the status of our effort on the Hill concerning our legislative objectives for the 110th Congress..

In a nutshell, neither Dave or I have been pleased with the progress that has been made since our board meeting with Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee's office in introducing our antenna bill. I had planned to visit Jackson-Lee's office during my trip, however my departing flight was severely delayed due to weather which, in turn, produced a late arrival in D.C. just in time to make a scheduled FCC meeting, so the meeting with Jackson-Lee will be rescheduled. Since this time Dave and I have had numerous discussions with John Chwat and the result has been a refocused effort on the Hill. Recent work has already been reported to you by Dave and our latest word is that the bill will be dropped this coming week. Once that is done, Dave and Dan Henderson will be working with you and your DLAC's to further advance the bill.

A very important part of this activity is that the sponsor as well as some of the original co-sponsors that have signed on this past week are members of the Homeland Security Committee which will give a really good profile to the bill. I refer to the bill as our "antenna bill", but just to make sure we're all on the same page the actual name of the bill will be "Amateur Radio Emergency Communications Enhancement Act of 2009".

Our visit to the FCC, unfortunately, went as we assumed it would. Chris had arranged a meeting with Julius Knapp, Chief of the FCC's Office of Engineering & Technology (OET) for the purpose of reviewing progress on the FCC's action to address the U.S. Court of Appeals remand in our BPL case. Julie is a very cordial and pleasant person to meet with, however progress in the areas we deal with them on has been non-existent. This isn't necessarily his fault, but a reflection of the immediate past environment at the FCC.

As usual, there was a "team" from OET in the meeting but this group was larger than usual with Julie having an additional nine OET staffers in the meeting. Chris and I jokingly commented that they must think we're a couple of real dangerous guys given there were 10 of them and 2 of us! The "extras" don't actually add anything to the meeting, rather just usually "nod" in agreement with Julie when he makes a pronouncement! After discussion with the EC at our last meeting, we were instructed that if there was no action on the part of the FCC in the matter of the Court's BPL remand, Chris and I were to put them on notice that we would submit a Freedom of Information Act filing to obtain the material the FCC redacted from their Court filing that the Court ordered them to produce, and also to file a Petition for a Writ of Mandamus with the Court.

What we were told is exactly what we expected....."Yes, we know it has been a long time since the Court's order and we understand your concern but we want you to understand we're not just sitting on this, it is in the process". Our response was as noted above to which they acknowledged and noted they expected that. After a brief discussion of a couple of other unrelated matters of no significance the meeting ended and we departed.

Dave and I instructed Chris to file the Freedom of Information request, which he did, and the deadline for a response is Tuesday, April 28. We expect to file the Petition for a Writ of Mandamus after that for a couple of reasons. One, if the FCC doesn't respond to our FOI request then that will add to our petition with the court. If they do respond, there may be some information in the response that could prove useful in our petition. April 25 was the one year anniversary of the Court's ruling.

So, we'll see what happens Tuesday. The Petition for a Writ of Mandamus is something that Chris is very capable of handling and it will not require the services of Wilmer Hale. It will not require an appearance before the court, rather just a filing with the Court Clerk.

The following day Chris and I traveled to the FCC office in Gettysburg, PA for a meeting with Laura Smith. The purpose of the meeting was simply a cordial arrangement for the ARRL President and the FCC Special Counsel to meet. The meeting was scheduled for one hour, and quite frankly on the drive up Chris and I expected the meeting might be over in 15 minutes. Once we actually sat down in Laura's office and began to chat I became not only pleasantly surprised at Laura's professionalism but extremely impressed with her knowledge of Amateur Radio, her history of amateur enforcement prior to and during Riley's tenure and her grasp on the outstanding enforcement cases that needed to be addressed. Laura told us there were about 400 outstanding issues that she inherited when she assumed the job. These had accumulated during the vacant period post Riley - pre Laura, and she said there were about 50 that had been logged since she took over.

Make no mistake about this - the fact that Laura does not have an Amateur Radio license in no way effects her ability to perform her job. During our conversation it became readily apparent to me that she knows more about amateur radio than half the people who do have a license! She is extremely knowledgeable in spectrum and frequency allocation, she understands the modes we use, amateur repeaters and you name it, she has a handle on it. So, my advice to her for a response to the next person that made a snide remark about her not having a license (to which she has already received a few!) was to simply tell the person "Yes, that is correct. I do not have an amateur radio license.......but I can take yours away if you cross the line!!" She liked that.

One topic that we discussed was the Amateur Auxiliary and the OO program. Laura noted that she had already received the assistance of the AA and was extremely commendable of the program. I noted that it had been sometime since we last reviewed the program and that now would be a good time to do so. She noted that one area that could use some OO training emphasis is what type of activity is actionable as opposed to what is not. She said there seems to be a small lack of understanding among some of the OO's, that not being a negative thing in itself just something she felt could use some additional emphasis. Laura agreed to assist us and work with us in any effort we may pursue in this area.

Our meeting ended after about an hour and ten minutes.....pleasantly well beyond the 15 or so that we feared my occur and frankly we could have spent at least another hour discussing numerous topics related to the Amateur Radio Service. In this area, the relationship between ARRL and the FCC continues to be very strong and productive.

Following our meeting, Chris and I had lunch with Riley Hollingsworth. There was no particular agenda, rather an invitation was extended given we were in town. This was the first time I had the opportunity to visit with Riley since his retirement and the first time I had the opportunity to buy his lunch since he was no longer a government employee! It was a pleasure for me to do so. During the lunch I mentioned to Riley my thinking that it was time to conduct a review of the Amateur Auxiliary. Riley agreed with the timing, again not that there is any particular issue to address but rather a timely review to update the program if needed. I told Riley I envisioned this being an Ad-hoc Committee consisting of some form of Board or Standing Committee members, but wanted to know if he would be interested in serving as a member. He gladly agreed to do so if we moved forward, or offered to assist ARRL in any way possible. I might add that Director Edgar has appointed Riley an Assistant Director of the Atlantic Division (where Riley resides, of course!)