Tag: amateur extra class

HamStudy.org to study for the amateur radio license exams

~ Josh, K6KNX ~ Leave a comment

The license exams for amateur radio licenses aren’t open book, but the question pools are public. The question pools are decided upon by the Volunteer Examiner Coordinators (VECs), revised every few years, and published on the internet. Nothing on any of the exams should be a surprise.

Some people buy the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) books for each license class and actually learn all the material. Some people learn a fair amount of material in the question pools, memorize enough of the answers, and still pass the tests. The latter approach works well for the Technician and General class tests, with question pools around 400 questions each. I’m not sure it’d work for the Extra class test.

HamStudy.org is an excellent resource. The website allows users to read the question pools and answers, quiz themselves flashcard style (with an “Explain” button if you want to learn more about a particular answer) and even take full-length practice tests. HamStudy.org also has a mobile app, so you can study and take practice tests anywhere.

The website and app even track how many questions you’ve seen in a given pool and your “aptitude,” or the percentage that you tend to answer correctly. Since these values are cumulative, you can even temporarily “reset” your history to do a study session as if you were brand new, which gives you a much more accurate aptitude measurement, since you aren’t fighting against all the wrong answers you gave when you started.

My plan is to study and do practice exams for the Technician question pool until I’m passing those practice exams in the high 90% range, and then start on the General-class pool, with an occasional foray back into the Tech practice exams just to stay sharp. Once I can pass both practice exams on a consistent basis with 90%+ score, I’ll try and get into a remote format test, since I don’t anticipate this COVID lockdown ending any time soon.

(Follow up postscript: the benefit to using HamStudy.org (or the HamStudy app) and then testing with W5YI (or anyone else using the ExamTools.org site for testing) is that the interface will look very similar. The exam will feel like just another practice exam.)

How licensing works

~ Josh, K6KNX ~ Leave a comment

License classes

In the United States, amateur radio licenses are regulated by the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC. There are currently three classes of license available, which grant progressively greater privileges on more of the amateur radio spectrum. The current license classes are Technician, General, and Extra. Each license class requires a separate test, anywhere from 30 to 50 random questions from a pool of several hundred possible.

Technician-class licenses grant privileges on the VHF (very high frequency) and UHF (ultra high frequency) bands, but only very limited privileges on the HF (high frequency) bands, which are usually used for long distance communication. VHF/UHF frequencies are pretty local, but a Technician-class license gets you access to a whole network of amateur radio repeaters, which allow for longer-distance communication (more on repeaters later.) Interestly, the amateur radio satellites use the VHF/UHF frequencies, so any Technician can use satellites to communicate with others, often thousands of miles away!

General-class licenses grant the operator access to all modes, on some portion of all bands. This is the first step to long distance communication via HF radio waves. (Yeah, fellow radio nerds, I know Techs get some privileges on 10 meters, but it’s limited in spectrum and power.)

Extra-class licenses just add a bit of extra spectrum on some bands. And bragging rights, since the Extra-class exam is significantly more technical and detailed, and longer, than the General exam. (I have a General, and I’m studying for my Extra, but it is definitely a lot to learn for someone without a background in either telecom or electrical engineering!)

Testing

“Ok, ok! I’m convinced. How do I get one of these fancy government permission slips?”

It’s really not all that hard. Just study, make an appointment with a Volunteer Examiner Coordinator (VEC), and go take the test! Back in the dark old days, you had to walk uphill both ways, through the snow, to an imposing FCC field office to take the test in front of a cranky, tenured FCC examiner. Old hams still tell tales of those days, usually as they’re lamenting the fact that you no longer have to pass a Morse code test and how FT8 is going to be the death of ham radio.

Those days are over.

Amateur radio is one part of the world where the participants actually do a pretty good job of policing themselves, so the FCC farmed out testing to organizations called Volunteer Examiner Coordinators, or VECs. These VECs accredit Volunteer Examiners (VEs) who are just licensed hams who have agreed to proctor license exams. The VEs run the tests and submit passing tests to the FCC to get licenses issued.

Obviously, this being May of 2020, we’re in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and pretty much everything in person is closed, so most VEs haven’t been doing in person testing. Fortunately, the resourceful and dedicated people at both the Anchorage VEC and W5YI VEC have taken to administering tests remotely or in the case of W5YI, completely online. As of right now, Anchorage still requires an in person proctor, who doesn’t need to be a licensed ham, but they can’t be related to you, and must have one of several occupations (firefighters, police officers, doctors, nurses, and a few others) that are licensed, background checked, or otherwise generally considered “trusted.” Obviously, given the shelter-in-place orders, this could still be tough.

It looks like I’ll be taking my exam through the W5YI VEC. The test is administered through a combination of a Zoom call for monitoring and an online testing platform called Exam Tools, so no in person proctor is necessary. I’m going to try to pass both the Tech and General exams in one sitting. I’ll let you know how it goes!