A lower bound for the minimum weight of the dual 7-ary code of a projective plane of order 49

Existing bounds on the minimum weight d ^⊥ of the dual 7-ary code of a projective plane of order 49 show that this must be in the range 76 ≤ d ^⊥ ≤ 98. We use combinatorial arguments to improve this range to 88 ≤ d ^⊥ ≤ 98, noting that the upper bound can be taken to be 91 if the plane has a Baer subplane, as in the desarguesian case. A brief survey of known results for the minimum weight of the dual codes of finite projective planes is also included. Dedicated to Dan Hughes on the occasion of his 80th birthday.