On the evening of May 8 I traveled to Washington for the purpose of a meeting at the ARRL Technical Relations Office with Sumner, Rinaldo and Imlay in the morning, to be followed by a meeting at Chwat & Company with Dave tagged with a late afternoon meeting with Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor at his office to discuss introduction of the Senate version of HR 462. On May 9 at 8:20 AM I met with CEO Sumner, CTO Rinaldo and General Counsel Imlay to review and discuss RM-11306. Our purpose was to review the comments generated as a result of both the original petition and the ex-parte filing and evaluate the concern expressed among the amateur community. The result was a new draft that still focuses on our objective of providing a regulatory framework to promote development of new technology and also protect existing modes and neighborhood user groups as well as the opposition comments with the exception of those that just said they were opposed to change for no specific reason. The draft write-up is still being completed and I hope to have it to you in the next two weeks. My idea of what I would like to accomplish in July is first to decide if you want to re-file a new petition at some future date. If the board decides to do so, then we should debate and finalize a draft to be submitted for review by the membership. It would not be my intent to approve a new petition for re-filing at this meeting, but rather move forward with the idea of doing so in January 2008 so as to allow input during the time between July 2007 and January 2008. At 2:00 PM Dave and I arrived at the office of Chwat & Co. in Arlington, VA to review and discuss our legislative agenda. We discussed and outlined a 60-day plan to move forward with our BPL bill as well as our antenna legislation. The intent was to focus on an increased effort to obtain additional co-sponsors for HR 462, but also concentrate on key Representatives that sit on the House Energy & Commerce Committee. Shortly you will receive an email calling our grass roots program to action to address the objective of this plan. At 4:00 PM, Dave, John, Janet and I made the very short trip from Chwat & Company to the Hill where I had a previously scheduled meeting with Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor. My purpose was to further discuss the Senator's introduction of a Senate version of HR 462. We have been working with the Senator's staff for a few weeks, and progress had stalled. I spoke briefly with Senator Pryor and his Chief of Staff, Bob Russell but spent the majority of our 20 minutes with Senator Pryor's legislative assistant. Senator Pryor's staff had contacted Entergy, the major utility in Arkansas, about our proposed bill. This was neither surprising our alarming to me. I expected this would occur, however Entergy has been sensitive to the interference issue and the concerns of radio amateurs. Entergy does not have a subscriber BPL installation in Arkansas but they do have a test installation in Little Rock for the purpose of monitoring commercial electric usage. Prior to the installation, they contacted the ARRL Arkansas Section Manager to schedule an in-person meeting to review and discuss matters. To date, this open relationship has worked well and Entergy's response to Senator Pryor's inquiry was to ensure the bill was not opposed to BPL. Of course, we made it clear to the Senator's staff that our opposition is not with the utilities or BPL, but interference to licensed services, spectrum pollution and the FCC's refusal to base the rules on sound technical data. We left with the understanding that in the next few days the Senator's staff would work with us to revise our draft text of the bill to incorporate our findings and move forward. As of this writing, we are still involved in that process. Following the meeting Dave headed to the airport for a late flight. I was unable to schedule an evening flight so I departed on a 6:00 AM flight the following day. I will be out of pocket until May 31 but will be happy to address any questions you may have upon my return. 73 Joel W5ZN