Southern Peninsula Emergency Communications System
Meet your 2023 Board Members
Click a name to see a photo and brief biography.
Grant Elliot, President
Jim Weatherford, Treasurer
Leslie Grimm, Secretary
Scott Overstreet, SPECS Repeater Association
Stiv Ostenberg, Director, Mountain View
Neil Katin, Director, Los Altos Hills
Lea Roberts, Director, Stanford
Jerry Thalls, Director, Sunnyvale
Grant Elliot, KK6FMQ
President
Grant is a Materials Scientist, obtaining his PhD at Stanford. He spent the bulk of his working life at HP where he published numerous scientific articles and became well known for his studies on the crystal growth of GaAs, the base material used for the manufacture of LEDs. He served for many years as President of the Western Section of the American Association for Crystal Growth and served a term as Vice President of the national society. In January of 1995 he took early retirement from HP and immersed himself in the study and practice of Fine Art Black and White Photography, doing some color work on the side. In early 2002 he began working part-time with his son’s company, CRC Inc. in Santa Clara, looking into ceramic materials for use in semiconductor processing equipment. He is still involved in that capacity. He has been an active CERT in Palo Alto since the sixth class of PANDA training in 2001. He got his ham license in July of 2013 and became involved with the AERES/RACES activity in Palo Alto. You can usually find him on the air Monday nights checking into or acting as net control of the Palo Alto and North Section of the SPECSNET. Grant and his wife Sharon are avid cyclists and actively involved with emergency preparedness/resource conservation in their neighborhood. Both their children live nearby, their son in Cupertino and their daughter in Ben Lomond. Their seven grandchildren range in age from 11 to 27.
Jim Weatherford, WU6K
Treasurer
Jim is a retired EE who worked on many hardware development programs as a Design Consultant for various companies. As an engineer, he understands the need to double-check the accuracy of inputs and calculations.
Shortly after Jim was licensed in 2014, he became involved with Mountain View ARES, and is now an Assistant Emergency Coordinator. He is a member of the Silicon Valley Volunteer Examiners team and helps administer ham license exams.
Jim also enjoys volunteering with food sorting and distribution for Second Harvest of Silicon Valley, and ushering for the Mountain View Center for Performing Arts and Theatreworks productions at Lucy Stern Theatre. He is a new member of SPECS and looks forward to learning more about the organization while serving as Treasurer.
Leslie Grimm, KK6EKN
Secretary and Webmaster
Leslie is retired from a career of creating children’s educational software, though her original education was in biological science. She got hooked on emergency radio communications when she was training for CERT and observed that the radio position was the coolest one! She is the Emergency Coordinator for Mountain View ARES. She enjoys participating as a radio operator at public events in the area. She currently is webmaster for two of the art clubs she belongs to as well as the SPECS web site. She’s a student of watercolor, and also enjoys hiking, swimming, and biking.
Stiv Ostenberg K9STV
Director, Mountain View
Community Outreach Officer
Stiv worked in the Tech Industry as a Field/Sales/Operations Engineer. He picked up a ham license when it turned out some radio gear for a quadcopter he built had not been FCC approved but could be operated with a ham license. After getting his license, he found out about RACES/ARES and has been drifting into it ever since. He retired in 2018 and lived 6 months in South Korea and two years in a van travelling the U.S. The van has now been turned into a ham van, as he dreamed of having the first time he participated in a CERT drill.
Lea Roberts, WA6ITV
Director, Stanford
Lea is the Emergency Coordinator for Stanford.
Jerry Thalls, KG6HI
Director, Sunnyvale
After retiring from a career in the semiconductor industry, Jerry became active in SARES. He served as the SARES Emergency Coordinator from 2013 to 2021. In addition to serving on the SPECS board he is a past president of the SARES-Repeater Group which owns the K6SNY Crystal Peak repeater located in the Santa Cruz Mountains near Loma Prieta. When not engaged in ham radio activities, Jerry and his wife enjoy traveling, hiking, TheaterWorks plays, watching movies and attending adult education classes at Santa Clara University.
Neil Katin, K2LL
Director, Los Altos Hills
Neil is a relatively recent ham, having gotten his license in 2014, as encouraged by his local CERT group. He is active in Los Altos Hills CERT and Emergency Communications committee, and is in the county ARES/RACES MAC program. Neil graduated many years ago with a EE degree and has been a software engineer in the valley ever since. He has three kids and lives in unincorporated land between Los Altos and Los Altos Hills.
Scott Overstreet, N6NXI
SPECS Repeater Association
Scott got started in radio back in his grammar school days - crystal sets and radios using O1A tubes. Radio clubs and shops in his high schools (Oakland and Sacramento) got him into high performance receivers, teletype and audio which then led to his being employed in the hifi business - sales, installation and repair - in Sacramento for awhile. All this was a warm up to his earning a BS degree in electronic engineering at Cal Poly (1960) and the following 35 years with Sylvania in Mt. View designing electronic equipment for the government military and surveillance services.
Scott got into ham radio in the mid 80's when he joined SPECS. He then joined the SPECS Repeater Association (SPECSRA) in the mid 90's, and this eventually led to his designing and building the present W6ASH repeater system, which was completed several years ago. He, Dave Platt (AE6EO) and Keith Amidon (KJ6PUO) work with Peter Griffith (WA6VAQ), the senior member and station trustee, all of whom together make up the present SPECSRA.
Also, along about 2001, Scott led the founding of the Los Altos Hills Town Emergency Communications Committee to participate with SPECS, as the Los Altos Hills member group of the SPECS organization. Scott and Jim Abraham (W6EB) shortly thereafter formed the Los Altos Hills Emergency Group to establish the W6LAH repeater, which was designed to improve communication in the Hills, both in support of the operations of the Committee and other Hills hams.
As a sideline activity, Scott has for years headed up the collection and sale of donated electronic equipment which is sold at the ASVARO Electronic Flea Market at De Anza College for the benefit of SPECS and the SPECS Repeater Group.