Bootlegging · licensing · GEARS · teaching · family
Radio History
The radio history is more useful when it is honest about the pre-license years and specific about what came later: licensing, shared work with Krista K6KEG, GEARS service, teaching and the progression from curiosity to deliberate operating practice.
The pre-license years are history, not a retroactive license grant.
Teaching and operating
The archive includes radio instruction as well as equipment.
Childhood radio
My younger brother and I found radio as kids. We listened, experimented, and became fascinated by the sound of HF long before we understood the services, rules, or physics. Some of my early transmitting was unlicensed. I call it bootlegging because that is what it was.
Formal licensing in 2004
Krista and I later earned our amateur-radio licenses together. I progressed to Amateur Extra and operate as K6RCS. Krista is K6KEG. In the shorthand of amateur-radio culture, she was a YL when we were licensed and became my XYL when we married; the call sign stayed the same. We eventually added matching marriage certificates to the shared paperwork.
GEARS
Both of us served for more than a decade on the Golden Empire Amateur Radio Society Board of Directors, supporting local repeater systems, emergency communications, club continuity, digital activity, and HF in the North State.
Teaching
For roughly a decade, I taught amateur-radio licensing classes around the region, and I remain an ARRL instructor. I do not charge for the instruction. If teaching requires travel, I may ask for reimbursement of the actual transportation or travel costs involved. Helping new operators earn their tickets strengthened the local communications community and forced me to understand the material well enough to explain it without hiding behind jargon.
I still occasionally introduce the Virtues group to amateur radio and community service.
The boys and GMRS
Both boys, Rhys and Karden, are active GMRS users within Team Stone. GMRS gives them real practice in listening, clear speech, call signs, channel discipline, and family coordination. It is not amateur radio and the site does not blur the privileges between services.
