This did not seem to go through the first time I sent it. Pardon me if this is a dupe. 73, Chris W3KD Christopher D. Imlay Booth, Freret, Imlay & Tepper. P.C. 14356 Cape May Road Silver Spring, Maryland 20904-6011 (301) 384-5525 telephone (301) 384-6384 facsimile W3KD@ARRL.ORG -----Original Message----- From: Chris Imlay <w3kd@aol.com> To: arrl-odv@arrl.org Cc: ehare@arrl.org Sent: Tue, Oct 12, 2010 10:32 am Subject: ReconRobotics; an Update for the Board ATTORNEY-CLIENT PRIVILEGED COMMUNICATION Greetings. It is past time I brought the Board up to speed on the status of the ReconRobotics proceeding, and distributed the latest documents. This proceeding is getting complicated, so let me try to simplify the situation as much as possible. The Executive Committee has been getting the “play-by-play” details of this (and has been asked to approve all ARRL filings in advance), so this is not news to them. There are three “theaters of war” at the FCC that we are involved with simultaneously in this one proceeding (this is a matter of necessity, frankly, as you will see). The first is a combination of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau and the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau together. The second is the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau alone. The third is the Office of Engineering and Technology. This matter started with the filing on January 11, 2008 by ReconRobotics (RR) of a waiver request aimed at the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau. RR asked for waivers of three Part 90 rules so as to allow the filing of an application for equipment authorization and for RRs customers to license and use the Recon Scout device (RS) in portions of the 420-450 MHz band. The Waiver was placed on public notice in May of 2008, jointly by the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau (WTB) and the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau (PSHSB). WTB and PSHSB also jointly issued the February 23, 2010 Order that granted the waiver. ARRL filed its Petition for Reconsideration of that Order on April 6, 2010 and a reply to RR’s Opposition to it on April 16, 2010. Our Petition for Reconsideration (and one other filed by a Mr. Whedbee of Missouri) is pending now with no action yet by the Commission. We asked, among other things in our Petition for Reconsideration that the two Bureaus stay the effectiveness of the Waiver Order pending the Reconsideration, since sale and licensing of the RS device by RR would cause the harm complained of in the Petition for Reconsideration. That action is entirely discretionary with the Bureaus. No action has been taken on that request yet. In the meantime, a total of 85 applications were filed in the ULS at FCC by individual applicants (public safety organizations) for licenses to use the RS. These applications were all in fact prepared by and filed by APCO, which is the Public Safety frequency coordinator for Part 90 licensing. APCO is a friend of ours and should not be looked down upon because it filed these applications. They essentially had to do this, though of course they charged a fee for it, probably paid by ReconRobotics rather than the individual applicants themselves. But the license applications were glaringly and seriously in error. They were at variance with the terms of the granted waiver, and they specified an emission designator that was about as far wrong as could be imagined. So, Ed Hare and I collaborated on a Petition to Deny that was approved by the EC and then filed against each and every one of these 85 applications. Without getting too specific about these petitions to deny, which we filed electronically through the FCC’s ULS system (administered by WTB), we have already done some good. This is because, though RR filed oppositions to the Petitions to Deny, APCO went into each application and amended it in order to substantially reduce the frequency range on which the applicant could operated the device (from 433-445 MHz to 436-442 MHz). APCO also reduced the number of units licensed from several in some cases, to one. These APCO changes were in direct response to our Petitions to Deny, but the amendments did not, moot our Petitions to Deny. We still have several arguments that RR has not adequately rebutted which should cause these applications to be held up for a very long time. Without doubt, the applications will have to be substantially amended again before they could be granted. But to amend them as they should be amended would require changes in the grant of equipment authorization (certification) of the RS device. The bulk of the problems with the 85 applications were due to inaccurate information in the April, 2010 grant (the grant was issued by one of several private test labs working contractually with FCC called “TCBs” or “Telecommunication Certification Bodies”) of equipment authorization for the RS. As but one example, the applications for equipment authorization, and the TCB grant, show an emission designator indicating a 100 kHz necessary bandwidth. This is for a 6 MHz wide channel bandwidth (!) and the emission is an NTSC (analog) AM modulated black and white television signal with no sound. The necessary bandwidth of this signal should be around 5.7 MHz, not 100 kHz. We took Ed Hare’s engineering exhibit (an excellent analysis of the serious flaws in the application for, and the TCB grant of equipment authorization) that we had used in the 85 Petitions to Deny, and re-filed it with the FCC’s laboratory, which is run by the Office of Engineering and Technology. We did this on October 4. A copy of our Letter to the OET Lab (which is headed up by Dr. Rashmi Doshi, who is well known to both Ed and me for different reasons) is attached to this memo. Our nemesis, Mitch Lazarus, filed on behalf of RR a typically nasty response only four days later. A copy of this is attached for your review also. Fortunately, it is incredibly weak (and on the procedural rules, notably in error) and so Ed and I plan a reply in the next few days that will, we hope, be effective in convincing the lab to rescind the TCB grant of equipment authorization to the RS device. Then the pleading cycle should pretty much be over and FCC will do whatever it is going to do. I will keep you better posted on our tri-theater battle against ReconRobotics as this continues. I have not been optimistic about our chances of success here, because the PSHSB is behind the waiver grant. From this FCC, PSHSB typically gets what they want. However, our arguments are just and solid and RR has been sloppy on their engineering since the beginning (unusual for a Mitch Lazarus client in my experience), so perhaps our chances are improving. Thanks to Ed Hare for expert engineering once again. 73, Chris W3KD Christopher D. Imlay Booth, Freret, Imlay & Tepper. P.C. 14356 Cape May Road Silver Spring, Maryland 20904-6011 (301) 384-5525 telephone (301) 384-6384 facsimile W3KD@ARRL.ORG