Southern Peninsula Emergency Communications System
Meet your 2026 Board Members
Click a name to see a photo and brief biography.
vacancy, President
vacancy, Secretary
Jim Weatherford, Treasurer
Phil Hawkins, SPECS Repeater Association
Stiv Ostenberg, Community Outreach Officer, Mountain View
Walter Underwood, Palo Alto
Lea Roberts, Director, Stanford
Rick Van Mell, Director, Mountain View
Leslie Grimm, Webmaster
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
Phil Hawkins, KA6MZE
SPECS Repeater Association
First Licensed as a novice in 1980, I still retain my original call sign of KA6MZE. I have lived in the immediate area my entire life both initially in Cupertino, then Mountain View then back to Cupertino where I currently reside. Graduated from San Jose State University with a Bachelor of Sciences in Zoology from San Jose State University, then after that worked in the pharmaceutical field in Palo Alto at Incyte Genomics where I did the initial work on automated DNA sequencing and the human Genome project. I received my Master of Science degree in Molecular and Microbiology at San Jose State University and am currently employed as a lecturer at SJSU in the department of biological Science where I teach Microbiology and Evolutionary Biology. One of my lifelong interest of mine is aviation and have been a private pilot since 1992 and currently an owner/operator a Cessna 182 based at Palo Alto Airport
With my interests in amateur radio, I have been the Radio Officer and Board member for Foothills Amateur Radio Society (FARS) since 2005, and every year I am responsible for setting up field day operations for FARS up at Maryknoll. My experience in radio is from operating 160 meters, HF, VHF and UHF using sideband and CW modes on all those bands. My current radio interests are in UHF (70 cm) weak signal DXing using tropospheric ducting. Also, some of my other radio interests are: satellite communications (AMSAT) working sideband VHF/UHF satellites, radio propagation and space-weather. With emergency preparedness and communications, in the early 2000’s, I was CERT trained in Mountain View and have been a member of SPECS since around 2006 or so.
Stiv Ostenberg, K9STV
Director, Mountain View
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
Rick Van Mell, KI6PUR
Director, Mountain View
Rick is a retired Partner from PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PwC) Management Consulting Practice with primary responsibility for providing operations improvement. He has particular skills in project management, organization staffing, budgeting, information technology, strategic planning, and acquisitions. Rick took Mountain View’s Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) course in 2006, and became a Ham in 2008 (KI6PUR) and holds a GMRS license (WQGB729). As a volunteer for about 10 years from 2009 through 2019 he helped the MTV Office of Emergency Services Coordinator develop and teach the CERT class, design city-wide CERT exercises, teach earthquake preparedness for the Mountain View Whisman School District and the MTV Los Altos High School District, develop Neighborhood CERTs, and developed, using packet radio, the direct transmission of Neighborhood CERT damage assessment summary information to a projector in the MTV Emergency Operations Center. He has received many Volunteer Awards and Commendations for his service.
Rick has over 50 years of sailing experience in the U.S and abroad, and is a member of several sailing groups. He is the webmaster for www.Islander36.org. Rick has also been the Technical Director for Peninsula Youth Theater building sets for productions of Peter Pan, Seussical, Aladdin and Peter and the Starcatcher, plus technical assistant on Lion King and a Christmas Story.
Walter Underwood, K6WRU
Director, Palo Alto
Walter is the Emergency Coordinator and Radio Officer for Palo Alto ARES/RACES. He has been a volunteer with Palo Alto emergency services since 2013. He is also trained as a CERT.
Walter was first licensed in 1970 as WN5CVQ, with a non-renewable Novice license. He returned to the hobby in 2009 as K6WRU and earned Amateur Extra in 2010.
While not on the air, he received a BSEE in signals and systems from Rice University. He worked in communications systems, test instrumentation, and search engines (Infoseek, Netflix, LexisNexis) over his career. He retired in spring 2024.
Walter participates in Summits on the Air (SOTA), a "double nerd score" activity that combines peak bagging and amateur radio.
Walter has been active in Scouting as a youth, summer camp staff, a Cubmaster, and a Scoutmaster. He continues to teach new Scoutmasters and advise leaders. He is a lifetime backpacker and has completed three 50 mile treks. He has taken Wilderness First Aid training five times and even used it a couple of times in the backcountry.
Leslie Grimm, KK6EKN
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 an art club she belongs to as well as the SPECS web site. She’s enjoys gardening, swimming, and biking.