I’m Josh.

I live in a little mountain hamlet called La Honda, at the north end of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Our “town” consists of one neighborhood of a couple hundred homes, a small market, a post office, one bar, and the all-volunteer fire brigade. As rural as “La Honda proper” is, I live outside of town in a mountain canyon where cell phone service is non-existent, the power goes out in both winter and summer, and our telephone line has been spliced and patched so many times it acts more like an old-school party line. (If you get that reference, you just dated yourself!)

I moved here about two years ago from a tiny townhouse in the suburbs. We wanted a slower life for our family, a life with more hard work and more freedom. We sure got it. My wife and I volunteered as firefighters with the local all-volunteer fire brigade. I quickly saw that amateur radio played a large and integral part of our rural emergency response infrastructure, which got me interested.

So I decided to get a license and start learning something new. An amateur radio license. From the Federal Communications Commission. While it sounds complicated and a little intimidating (what government bureaucracy isn’t complicated?!) it was actually way easier than a trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles for a driver license renewal.

I have two daughters, ages 15 and 6. Part of my motivation was a desire to create opportunities for my girls to be involved in STEM (science, technology, electronics, and mathematics) projects. After a few months of studying for my radio license exam, I learned just how many opportunities it would create — way more than I anticipated!

I plan to use this blog to document my adventure into amateur radio, the role ham radio still plays in rural emergency response, and how I (hopefully) engage my daughters in science, technology, and math. Join me on this journey and lets learn together.