About The NorCal QRP Club

NorCal was founded in May of 1993 by Jim Cates, WA6GER and Doug Hendricks, KI6DS. Its purpose was to promote QRP. The club has grown beyond all expectations, and now has members all over the world.

Membership in NorCal is free. All that you need to do is say that you would like to be a member and you are one. We don't have a journal, we don't have regular business meetings, but we do have regular social meetings every month. The reason to be for NorCal is to have fun with radio. There are no dues, no membership requirements, no treasurer's reports, no secretary's minutes at our social meetings, just good old QRP fun!!

The club is probably best known for its many kits, which started with the NorCal 40, designed by Wayne Burdick, N6KR, that is credited with giving the club a huge boost when we were getting started. Wayne later designed a couple of other famous kits for us, including the 49er and the Sierra. We have kitted antennas, antenna tuners, transmitters, swl receivers, ssb transceivers, simple receivers, QRP amplifiers, paddles etc. The club has broken new ground by establishing benchmarks for quality manuals and kits. The club will continue doing kits, with the profits made from them all being used to promote qrp as we give back to the hobby.

Jim Cates, WA6GER, one of our co-founders, became a silent key in April of 2004. He is missed by all, but the work that he started will continue with the club. The club is now in the hands of Doug Hendricks, KI6DS, Paul Maciel, AK1P, and James Bennett, KA5DVS. We will continue to produce our kits, we will continue to host our annual QRP Forum in October during Pacificon, we will continue to have our monthly meetings and we will continue to have an active web site.

We plan to have monthly reports with pictures from the meetings, we will have manuals for all club projects here, and we will have featured articles from past issues of QRPp. Plus, if you have a project or an article that you would like to put on the site, we would love to have it. Contact Dean or myself for information at our email addresses listed below.