. . . you definitely need access to your own copy of an .htaccess file. While HoF can technically keep a master copy in a higher directory, it'll be difficult to manually override it to make changes... (and I have a ton of edits in mine because I've changed how urls look in several places). It's quite possible that your copy exists but can't be seen with whatever file management program he's using. Some FTP programs will also auto-hide .htaccess files (which is more unhelpful than not). So I wonder if yours is really there or not?
In any case, I've done what I can, the rest will be up to HoF for him to puzzle over.