Yesterday, I mentioned to you that Rinaldo and Imlay attended a meeting at NTIA (National Telecommuncations Information Administration) regarding the amateur allocation at 5 MHz. Please keep the specifics of this information CONFIDENTIAL, as we continue to pursue expansion of the amateur allocation at 5 MHz.

Paul & Chris were met by Steve (Stephen) Veader, N4DXS, who is an active HF ham (mentioning that he was looking forward to the upcoming CQWW WPX). He has taken Russ Slye's place at NTIA. He is a good ally, in the same mold as was Russ Slye before Russ retired.

There were quite a few people attending the meeting. Some of those best known to Chris were Ross Merlin from FEMA (a longtime acquaintance from Chris' Montgomery Amateur Radio Club days a long time ago now); Jim Hollansworth from NASA, and Merry Jo Gamble (who remembered Chris from his previous meetings at NTIA). Paul knew everyone there; the usual attendees at ITU Geneva meetings and on the U.S. delegation to the WRCs.

The following IRAC (Inter-department Radio Advisory Committee) members were in attendance:

Defense
Justice
Homeland Security
FEMA
Energy
NASA
Navy

Rinaldo presented a power point presentation on amateur usage and future needs at 5 MHz. The response was considerably better than expected. No one had hard questions. This was probably because Paul had decided ahead of time to use the "hat in hand" approach, thanked them for their willingness to let us have some channels at 5 MHz, acknowledged their need to protect their operations and still accommodate our secondary needs there, and to be entirely candid with them. This strategy clearly worked; Paul handed out not only the tabulated data from our 5 MHz survey, but also the raw data.

The comments attempted to categorize our goals into short term and longer term goals. The short term goals they agreed to discuss and address among themselves were as follows:

1. The replacement of the channel receiving interference, 5368 kHz;
2. An increase in channel bandwidth to, for example, 3 kHz from 2.8 kHz;
3. A power increase from 50 watts ERP to 100 watts ERP; and
4. Mode expansion, such as data, OFDM and CW.

With respect to data, they seemed interested in allowing some form of data, since they too have data needs. Merry Jo Gamble noted that this was being addressed in WP 9C, which Paul was aware.

As far as our long term needs, Paul and Chris discussed a desire for a domestic allocation of an unchannelized band, perhaps 50 kHz, secondary to government uses. We were asked what our horizon was on that, and Paul responded that we might ask for an international allocation around 5 MHz, but that would be a subject only introduced at WRC-10. There followed a series of suggestions that we should hurry up and get something on the WRC-10 agenda, but Paul indicated that it would be a placeholder item, to consider an agenda item for an allocation at a future WRC after 2010.

Understand that no one has promised us anything. Chris' favorable impression of this meeting is, rather, based on the attitudes of the participants, and the magnitude of what we are attempting here: to gently pry HF spectrum from all agencies at once, which they actively use all the time. That is huge. And if NTIA agrees to improvements, it should be easy for FCC to get the job done. The other impressive thing was the difference between the channel allocation in the first place and this effort to improve the situation. Earlier, the agencies were defensive. This is probably because we went to FCC first, and FCC, without asking NTIA, proposed a 150 kHz band at 5 MHz, which was never achievable. Steve told us that FCC does that all the time, acting as though they don't have any idea what the bands are being used for at all by the agencies.

Again, nothing has been promised or given, but this is a very big step in the right direction for expanding the amateur allocation at 5 MHz and was a result of Paul's presentation and Paul & Chris' scheduling the meeting with NTIA before talking to FCC, and the fact that we presented them the raw survey data that showed them we have nothing to hide in our effort.

It also helped that Ross Merlin and Steve Veader are active hams and gave us "feeder questions" that they knew the answers to!