Background

You can find most of this elsewhere, but I'm putting it all here because this is what I was looking for when I was researching it. If I think something's useful, I figure someone else may feel the same way.

When I was a kid I liked radio and I thought it would be fun to be a ham. I'd gotten a stack of magazines (I think it was CQ) and digested what I could. At that time (the 70s), there were five classes and all of them required morse code. I didn't have the patience to learn it, so it got shelved and I went in other directions.

Around 1990 the FCC dropped the morse requirement for the Technician level (which used to the 2nd level up); I didn't know theory, but thought about it on and off.

Then recently I got off my ass and took a basic electronics course. I still liked radios, and I had a project I wanted to work on and other things to try. One day I was in class, trying to explain why I'm learning Kirchoff laws at my age and differing background, and I remembered that hey, this is theory. I can get a ham license!

An Overview of the License Levels

There are currently (as of 2011) three levels of amateur radio license: Technician, General and Advanced Extra. Technician is the "lowest" level, in that they get the fewest frequency priveleges, but the test is the easiest. General is intermediate, and Advanced Extra is the most difficult, but they get the full run of the place. In the recent past (prior to 2000), there used to be a Novice class, and Advanced and Extra were separate. The FCC no longer offers the license but people who had them are allowed to keep them if they desire, so you still see them mentioned and they still show up on the band charts.

In a nutshell, Tech class gets most of the frequencies in VHF and UHF, which also happen to be the most popular. The only frequencies you can get below 28MHz is morse code only. For a lot of people this would be more than enough. General class includes all of this plus most of the lower frequency stuff all the way down to 1.8MHz, right above FM commercial broadcast. Advanced Extra includes all of these plus a little more private territory on 15, 20, 40 and 80 meters. The upside to that is the bands aren't as crowded; the downside is that there are fewer people to talk to.

An Overview of the Tests

Licenses are granted by the FCC upon passing the written test for a particular class. There is no morse-code requirement, there are no oral exams, you don't have to log x-number of hours on the air or successfully align a superhet. You pass the test, you get a license. At the time I took my Tech test I had no ham gear and zero experience and I was worried that I'd be declared a fraud and tossed out. Didn't happen. You have to start somewhere.

You have to pass each prior level to attempt the next; in other words, you have to pass both the Technician test and the General test to get your General ticket, and both of those to get the Advanced Extra. There is no time requirement that I'm aware of: you don't have to spend six months or a year as a Tech before you're eligible to try to General, etc. Theoretically you could show up and take all three exams on the same day and walk out with your Advanced Extra, having gone in with nothing.

The FCC calls the Technician exam "Element 2," the General exam is "Element 3" and the Advanced Extra exam "Element 4." For clarity, I'm going to refer to them as Technician, General and Advanced Extra.

The Tech and General tests are each 35 questions long and you have to get 26 of them correct (about 75%), which means you can miss 9 and still pass. The Advanced Extra is 50 questions but the same 75% level applies: you have to get 37 correct, which means you can blow 13! There is no grade on these tests, it's purely pass/fail. If you take the tech exam and you get all of them right, or if you pass by the skin of your teeth with 26 correct, the result is the same: you pass and that's all that matters.

As far as tests go, I would say they are somewhat difficult. They are easy in that they're multiple choice, there's never a "none of the above" choice so the correct answer is always there somewhere (though sometimes "all of the above" is the correct answer). Also, in my opinion, there are no trick questions or anything deliberately misleading.

But you do have to pay attention. They don't offer any patently bad answers that you can immediately discard, and there are answer choices that reflect common errors (example: how much power is dissipated across a resistance measuring 25V and drawing 50mA current?: A) 0.5W B) 1.25W, C) 12.5W, D) 500W). I'm missed a number of questions simply because I was reading too fast and didn't notice that we're discussing "millihenrys" instead of "henrys," or I mistook "increasing" for "decreasing," and so on.

Prepping for the Technical Exam

Most of this applies to all the exams, but in particular to the Technician because it's the entry-level and the most popular.

To my mind, there are two ways to prep: you can take a class or you can self-study. They're both viable options, particularly at this level. I went the self-study route so I have no direct experience with classes.

Taking a class may not be a bad idea—when I took my exam, I did it in a church with a group of people who had taken a class with the emphasis on emergency preparedness. Everyone who passed the class was going to buy radios at a group discount. That's not a bad deal.

If you want to try a class, check out the ARRL website, or try your local Ham club if there is one.

For self-study, there are actually a lot of options. The ARRL puts out a License Manual for each of the levels; another commonly available text I've seen is Gordon West's. They both get good reviews on Amazon and I've seen them at bookstores and flipped through them. I didn't use them so I can't comment on how good they truly are. There's also a book called The Ham Whisperer on Amazon and it's attractively priced.

Here's something important to know if you're going to self-study. Even though the tests are 35 (or 50) questions long, they're each drawn from a larger pool of questions. The Technician and General pools are around 400 questions each, the Advanced Extra pool is currently 741. They do this so that they can make tests with different combinations of questions so people can't cheat by peeking at someone else's answers.

Each pool is published and freely available from the FCC; you can download it and read it to your heart's content. That means you can see every potential question you could be asked and study accordingly. These pools are how the study guides and the online practice exams all work.

The pools change every few years. As I write this, the Technician pool is good through md-2014; the Advanced Extra changes in July of 2012, and the General changes at the end June 2011. For this reason, you want to make sure that you get the right question pool; if you buy a study guide, make sure it's for the current test. That's not such a problem if you buy them new, but it's very important if you buy used. For instance: I was studying for the General exam and was using the pool that begins in July of 2011, so I had to be careful to find an exam guide for that pool and not the current pool (which went through the end of June).

The exam guides appear to work more-or-less the same way: they go through each of the questions in the pool and present the answers, along with an explanation. It may be a quick explanation, it may be more lengthy. If you can, try to get a look at the guide before you buy it and see if you like how it's written.

You don't have to shell out money to buy study guides, however. The Ham Whisperer has a website and he has both the Tech and General course study guides for free. The website is blog-style but the courses are easily grouped together. He broke each course into a series of 35 lessons; each lesson is a video recording of him reading a powerpoint presentation, and he goes through each question in the question pool. Special note if you use this website: the General course is for the "old" pool and it was only good through June 2011. I don't know if he plans to redo it for the new pool. The Tech course is good for another few years, though.

There are some other free study guides on-line, but again, you have to be careful to get those for the current question pools; I had this problem with the tech exam early on because I didn't realize the questions changed. It's not like you're completely wasting your time with an old guide: the information may still be useful and some of the questions may still be on the test; but other questions won't be and you aren't being totally prepared.

I'm not going to link everything, but here's a nice page of resources. In particular, check out the No-Nonsense guides. What they do is go through the question pool and rephrase everything as simple, declaritive statements. So instead of asking "which of these four frequencies is on the 2 meter band: A)219.8, B) 146.0, C) 52.0, D) 2.0," it'll say something like "146.0 MHz is on the 2 meter band."

If you do use a study guide, particularly a free one, be careful to make sure it's accurate. On one of the Technician class guides (I don't remember which and I didn't keep it), the guide was wrong; there was a block diagram that you had to identify as a kind of radio; the guide said it was a Superheterodyne; it isn't—it's FM.

Once you feel comfortable, I highly recommend taking online practice exams. There are two particularly good ones: QRZ has a great one. You can pick a test number so you can get a new test or retake an old one over and over again. Two particularly nice things about it: it gives you instant feeback and you know your score as you go along, and if you choose in the wrong answer, you have to pick the right one before you can advance to the next (though it won't affect your score), so you immediately find out the correct answer.

eHam has a similar test except that it presents all the questions on the same page; you make your choices, submit it, and it comes back corrected and scored. I like this one because it mimics how the exam actually works. But you have to go through the whole thing before you find out what you got right and wrong.

Between the two of those, I think you're well-prepared.

Taking the Exam

This is the part I was particularly interested in because there wasn't that much about it when I was researching. The ARRL website has a bunch of stuff: you can look for exams in your area, and there's a section on what to bring. If you really want to know how the exam works in detail, go here and download the Volunteer Examiner's manual. There's nothing in it you won't learn by going to the exam; it just gives you heads up on what to expect.

I hadn't done that, so it was new to me. Here's my experience:

The ARRL site had a page on what to bring. You need a photo ID (i.e. driver's license). You need your Social Security number—you don't have to show them the card, but you need to tell them the number. If you don't want to do that, you have to go to the FCC's website and get a Federal Registration Number (FRN) in advance. (Note: if you already have a license, I believe you get an FRN assigned to you automatically. Check yourself in the FCC's database).

If you're getting the General or Advanced Extra, you have to show that you already got your Tech license, so bring your Certificate of Successful Completion of Examination (CSCE) or actual license form, original and a photocopy (I assume you keep the original and they keep the copy). The CSCE is the record that you passed an exam, so if you don't have a license form, that's your proof that you passed the exam.

Money: you have to pay to take the exam. The ARRL's fee is $15, but it could be other amounts. You may want to check in advance. I paid in cash. You want to ask in advance if they'll take a check or plastic.

If you fail the test, you have to pay again to take it again. When I took the test, they said you could retest immediately. I think the number of retests in a sitting depends on the patience of the examiners, and how money you have.

They say two #2 pencils and a pen. You do want a ball-point pen for filling out the forms because at least one of them makes multiple copies. For the test itself it doesn't seem to matter; pencils are nice because you can erase and change your marks, but this isn't a Scan-Tron, the #2 part doesn't really matter. When I took the exam we were allowed to use ink if we wanted, but if we wanted to change an answer on the question sheet, we'd have to make it clear what which answer was our final answer.

and finally, a calculator "with memories erased and no stored formulas." That's fair: they're trying to keep people from cheating. But this annoyed me a bit. I have three calculators: a table-top, plug-in printer model that's not appropriate for taking to exams, and two scientific models, both with stored formulas. So I went out and bought yet another calculator, just a simple arithmetic calculator. For the Tech that's no big deal because the math is simple. For the General exam you may want something that does squares and square roots. For the Advanced Extra you probably want the log and trig functions.

So I got there and I see other people with their scientific calculators, including a couple that looked more powerful than my first home computer, and nothing was said. When I read over the VEC manual, I specifically looked up the part about calculators. The main thing, again, is not to cheat. So next time I'm bringing the lesser of my scientifics. It does have stored formulas but honest-to-God, I have no idea how to use them. It's all I can do to get it to normal stuff.

Here's how it went for me. Your experience may vary.

Checked in at the door, where they signed me in (this is where they wanted my photo ID) and paid. They gave me a packet and I took a seat a table. They asked that we wait until the official start when we'd all go through it together. I took it in the gym in a church complex; I think there were maybe 15 of us taking the test—more than I'd expected.

We began by going through the package they gave us. First we filled out the actual license grant request form which would go to the FCC. Then we filled out our portion of the CSCE. If we passed the test, we'd get this back with the signatures of the examiners verifying that we'd passed. This document makes 3 copies, so having a ball-point that you can press down on is necessary for the transfers. These forms are where we needed our Social Security numbers (or FRN equivalents). If you want to see the forms, download the volunteer examiner's package and look near the back for the Quick-Form 605 Application for Amateur Operator/Primary Station License form.

Then we had the actual test answer sheet, which was 50 rows of four columns lettered A, B, C and D (the form is also in the volunteer examiner's package). We also got a blank sheet of paper to use for scratch, and a flyer from the ARRL that offered a free copy of The Operating Manual if you join the ARRL.

The test itself was in a booklet, and the booklets are keyed, so you have to write the key on the answer sheet so they can grade using proper key; it prevents people from cheating by peeking at someone else's answers.

The test is closed-book, closed-notes. Once the test started, we were stay in the testing room until it was over. If we had to leave the room to use the restroom, an examiner would have to go with us to make sure we didn't consult a crib. If we had to leave the room and refused the escort, then the exam would be considered "done" no matter where we were with it and graded accordingly. Once we were done we would hand in the test, the forms and the scratch paper, and we'd leave the room and go to a waiting area for our results.

I didn't look at my watch, but I think once we opened the package, it took about 10 minutes to fill out the forms and get ready for the actual test. Taking the test itself took about the same amount of time I took to go through an online practice exam—maybe 10 minutes (it's only 35 questions). I was the second one done. So I turned in my stuff; they had me wait while they verified that I'd filled the forms out correctly, then I left to go to the waiting area, which was just a sitting room with some chairs. I think it took about five minutes before someone came out with the test results of the person who finished before me; then a couple more and I got my results. They handed me the top copy of the CSCE with my score (I'd missed one; I don't know which) with everyone's signatures. I was good to go. Give it about a week and then check the FCC or ARRL's database. If you don't see it in 2 weeks, then follow up.

I found my listing a Thursday evening following my test (I'd taken it on a Saturday morning). Pretty fast turn-around.

Prepping For the Higher Exams

For me, studying for the General exam was a comedy of errors. It's the Tech Exam but much more so, and there was a lot more that I would have to learn.

This was the end of May, 2011, and the current General Exam question pool would only be used for one more month; in July a new pool would be used. Looking over the question pool, I figured I wouldn't be ready until after the changeover, so I ordered the new ARRL License Manual which covers the new July-2011 pool. Nobody in town had the new edition, and everyone online had it back-ordered. So I ordered it and figured I'd use it whenever it arrived.

In the meantime, I decided to make a set of flash cards. I downloaded the question pool in Word format, make a 2-column table, cut & pasted one question into each table cell. When that was done I made a duplicate of the table, and on this duplicate I reversed the columns, then deleted everything except the answer in each cell. The first table set was printed onto Avery business card stock, then printed again on the other side using the second table; now I had a set of flash cards.

It turned out to be a lot more work than I'd thought. I even thought about selling them until I priced it out and realized there was no profit in it (not at my level, anyway). So if you want my Word doc, here it is.

There are several nice things about flash cards; I could grab a handful and put them in my pocket and take them with me, then go through them when I was stuck in traffic, waiting on hold on the phone, waiting in line at the store, etc. I could (and did) put them in stacks of answers I was confident about and those I wasn't. That allowed me to drill on the hard ones only, and as I got better, I'd move the ones I learned onto the easy stack. Periodically I'd mix in some easy ones, but regardless, it allowed me to drill on the ones where I was weak. Unlike the online tests, it also let me see all the questions. If you take the online tests very much, you may notice you can take a test 10 times and see the same question eight times and another question once. That's not good if the one question is tough.

After a couple times through the flash card stack I began taking the online tests at QRZ, which now offered the new question pool. I took a ton of tests, and got my scores consistantly into the 90s (meaning I'd only miss one or two). I was ready. But it was just the first weekend in June. I didn't want to wait another month!

It was too late to cancel the license manual from Amazon—they'd just shipped it. In the meantime, I started taking the old question-pool exams at QRZ and eHam.net, and wrote notes from the General Class course at The Ham Whisperer. On Tuesday the license manual arrived (more about that below), just in time for me to quickly skim it. On Wednesday I took the exam.

All that paid off. I passed (no mistakes, though I really thought I'd blown at least one question).

Taking the exam was exactly like when I took the Tech exam; took me about the same amount of time. The only difference was that because I didn't yet have my FCC license document, I had to bring in a photocopy and the original of my CSCE (the photocopy is for the VE team, and the original is so they can compare them and make sure nothing was altered for the copy). Luckily I knew my callsign, which helped. (My FCC license was waiting in my mailbox when I got home that night.)

That done, I launched into the Extra. This time I ordered, and received quickly, the ARRL's Extra Class License Manual. I bought it new because the price drop between it and a used edition was negligable. While I waited for it to arrive, I began going through the exam pool on my own and used Jack Tiley's study guide as a backup. This turned out to be time well spent because there was something about Tiley's explanation of determining phase angles that clicked with me. I'd struggled like hell calculating phase angles when I took an electronics class; I got so I could do it but I had no idea what I was doing or why. I've tried various other resources to learn it, and this one finally got me over the hump.

The Extra class question pool is 750 questions, and if the General exam is twice as hard as the Technician's, I found the Extra 10 times as hard as the General. I found the question pool intimidating, but not so bad once I really started on it. I began with the Safety section (E0) and found it relatively easy to understand and remember. Then I went back to E1 and it wasn't too bad either, particularly E1E, which concerns the Volunteer Examination system. By the time I finally got bogged down again, the ARRL License Manual arrived and I began reading chapters, and hit QRZ's online exams hard.

I reviewed this book on Amazon: I think it's an excellent book. Unlike most of the study guides I've seen, which simply have the answers to the question pool with a few notes to explain the concepts or show the math, the License Manual is more like a textbook. They take a section (e.g. Antennas) and explain it in depth, and after each subsection, they refer you to the relevant questions in the pool (in the back of the book) to check yourself; so all of the questions are answered, but they're answered as part of a larger context of how and why things work. Each question in the pool is cross-referenced so you can look up the explanation in the body of the text. It's very well thought out and executed.

I passed my Advanced Extra exam on a pleasant Saturday afternoon (Field Day) at a park. This time I did not find out my actual score, I simply "passed."

So there it is. Take your tests and get licensed!