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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.

Plus, we will be selling our kits on this site. The club will accept orders by mail, and also Paypal, so be sure to check the kits page often for new offerings. It is exciting to have the NorCal Page active again, and I look forward to having lots of qrp fun with all of you. 72, Doug, KI6DS

Contact Doug at: ki6ds@dospalos.org
Contact Paul Maciel at: ak1p@earthlink.net
Contact James Bennett at: jwbennett2@earthlink.net
Contact Dean at: deandavis@alpinesoft.com

News

The following are the most recent events of the Northern California QRP Club.

• November 23, 2004:
  Added the 49er construction manual to the manuals page
  Also added the K8IQY Iowa QRP 10 Transceiver to the Projects area.
• November 22, 2004:
  Added additional manuals to the manuals page
• November 19, 2004:
  Added additional manuals to the manuals page for the 49er and NorCal Paddles.
• November 17, 2004:
  Several of our members asked if we could print out some of the web pages without printing the left hand menu and other web stuff. Several of the pages now have a "Printer Friendly Version" button at the top for this purpose. Check out the November NorCal Meeting for an example.
• November 15, 2004:
  Added a new page for manuals both current and past If you have any manuals not liset here please let me know (email address at the bottom of this page)
  Added NorCal Doublet Antenna Project
  Added Pacificon 2004 report along some outstanding photographs from AL7FS, KE6RS and K6ESE
  
• November 9, 2004:
  The new and improved Northern California QRP website is now online. Please excuse any pages that may be missing during the construction phase. If you feel that I have missed something please email me at the address at the bottom of this page.