Chris Imlay and I had a fairly productive day in Washington Friday although we didn’t come away with any guarantees. I put together several folders of material for our meetings, each consisting of: * a one-page briefing memo; * the IARU four-color booklet describing amateur spectrum requirements at 7 MHz; * excerpts from a 1995 NTIA spectrum requirements document acknowledging our 300-kHz worldwide requirement at 7 MHz and noting that it was consistent with U.S. proposals for WARC-92; * bar graph showing the increase in U.S. amateurs licensed to transmit on 40 meters from 1979 to 1992 to 2002, with a projection of a further dramatic increase before 2007, the probable implementation date of WRC-03 reallocations (the dramatic increase comes from the likelihood of a codeless HF license); * my analysis of the use of 7300-7600 kHz already being made by broadcasters, which concludes that the spectrum is already not very useful for fixed and mobile operations; * the FCC WRC Advisory Committee’s draft proposal, which conforms to Method A from the CPM Report; * the Draft Inter American Proposal that was introduced by Canada and is supported by the Dominican Republic and Argentina, and for which additional support will be sought at the CITEL PCC.II meeting in Orlando by the IARU Region 2 representatives, which is similar to Method D from the CPM Report; * the NTIA memo to the FCC advising of the NTIA’s objection to a proposal for this agenda item; * the Amateur Radio Today CD-ROM Our first meeting was with Bryan Tramont, FCC Chairman Powell's Senior Legal Advisor, who handles wireless and international issues for the Chairman. This was a fairly easy meeting, in part because we were there to ask the FCC to keep doing what it’s doing and in part because Bryan is such a quick study. He read the briefing memo, asked a few good questions, and asked us to let him know how the meeting with Nancy Victory went. We left feeling that we had an ally. Our luncheon with Frank Williams of the Department of State was cancelled because Frank had a snow emergency in his neighborhood that kept him home. (Frank is N4FK and is one of the four people who came up with the plan for the 10, 18 and 24 MHz bands back in 1974, when he was with the FCC.) Frank kindly fed me some ideas by telephone. With our luncheon plans cancelled, Chris and I called John Chwat and John invited us to come down to his office in Alexandria. I had not seen his new office, so I was glad to have the opportunity. Derek Riker joined the three of us for lunch and we discussed strategy on 7 MHz as well as on the reintroduction of our legislation in the 108th Congress. John discouraged us from pursuing Congressional or White House pressure on the 7-MHz issue at this point because in his view there was a high risk that this would cause NTIA to solidify its position. With regard to our legislation, Derek reported that the spectrum protection legislation is ready to be reintroduced in the House and Senate. He and John recommend that this be done in the next couple of weeks. The CC&R legislation is a bit trickier because of politics. Our original sponsor, Steve Israel, is in a district that was targeted by the Republicans last election. He won re-election, but the word is out from the Republican leadership that Republicans aren’t supposed to do anything that might help him in the future. This is complicating the question of who should reintroduce the legislation. There’s more work to do on this and Derek and John are now thinking in terms of a March introduction. On the bright side, they have a good lead on a possible Senate sponsor and it may be possible to arrange a coordinated introduction in the House and Senate at the same time. After lunch Chris and I headed to the Department of Commerce. On our way into the building (through the tunnel under 14th Street that connects it to the Reagan Building across the street) we ran into Jim Vorhies, who was on his way to grab a cup of coffee before the meeting. (We’ve known Jim a long time; he is an NTIA veteran with prior FCC experience.) We knew he was involved in the issue but didn’t know he would be at the meeting until then. Chris and I went ahead since we had to clear security and wait for an escort to Assistant Commerce Secretary Nancy Victory’s office (she is NTIA Administrator); this took so long that we arrived at about the same time as Jim despite the fact that her office is at the farthest corner of the huge Hoover Building and that Jim uses crutches to walk. We still had a few minutes to wait before she was ready for us, though. A few minutes after we got started Deputy Assistant Secretary Michael Gallagher joined us. Following our presentation most of Assistant Secretary Victory’s questions were directed to Jim. She was trying to get a clear statement of the nature of the agencies’ objections, which was a difficult question for Jim to answer because he knows as well as we do that the real problem is that they haven’t taken the time to study what their real requirements are and whether they could be reaccommodated elsewhere. (The agencies don’t appear to have given the matter much attention until June 2002, two years after the item was put on the WRC-03 agenda.) Again, Chris and I felt that we had a friendly audience – Nancy described how her 4th grade teacher, Mr. Kelly, had brought his ham rig into the classroom and Mike studied the IARU booklet quite carefully. He congratulated us on having such a large percentage of the amateur licensees as members; he said they seldom see an association that represents "nearly a quarter" of the potential number. Jim told her (and us) that the final decision is scheduled to be made in March. (This is consistent with word we have received separately from the Department of Defense, where there is a lot of activity on the issue.) The first set of U.S. proposals is slated to be submitted to the ITU on or shortly after February 7, but additional proposals can be submitted up to the opening of the conference. Jim Vorhies said the agencies were viewing the 7 MHz agenda item, 1.23, as being linked to 1.36, which is to examine the adequacy of broadcasting allocations between 4 and 10 MHz. I have mentioned in QST editorials that this agenda item was going to cause us trouble; HF fixed and mobile users are reluctant to agree to relinquishing anything at 7 MHz when they may face additional pressure elsewhere in the 4-10 MHz region. Aside from that it appears that our principal problems are the Department of Justice and the Coast Guard; I will discuss with Paul Rinaldo whether it would be desirable to try to schedule meetings there. We will also consider whether additional FCC visits would be helpful in solidifying our support. Chris is drafting followup letters to those we met with. The briefing memo is attached for your information. David Sumner, K1ZZ