Getting Your License

In order to be a ham radio operator, you must be licensed by the FCC.  There are three current classes of ham radio licenses: Technician, General, Amateur Extra.  Each class gives increasing operating privileges and frequences you are allowed to operate on.  For local emergency communication a Technician class license is good enough, and what this page will focus on.

The test for a Technician license consists of 35 multiple choice questions (out of a pool of of about 650).  All the questions and answers are publicly available.  The pool of questions changes every four years.  The technician pool was last revised mid-2022.

There are many ways to prepare for the test, but most people take one of two paths: a Ham Cram, or Practice-makes-Perfect.

A Ham Cram is a day long class that goes over all the questions on the test and the right answers, and then gives the test at the end of the day.  There are two local organizations that give ham crams:

• Los Gatos CERT give four sessions a year.  Their sessions are instructor led and they typically have a 90-95% success rate.  Contact Peter Hertan (K6PLH@yahoo.com) for info about upcoming sessions.

• BAEARS (Bay Area Educational Amateur Radio Society) has three or four sessions per year.  The sessions are self-study from the materials they provide.  See their web page for more info

The other technique is what I call 'Practice-makes-Perfect'.  It's completely self paced.  Its basically:

• Take a practice test

• Look up questions you got wrong

• Repeat until you reliably pass

• Take an online test

There are many apps and web sites that help with practice tests.  Two I recommend are hamexam.org and hamstudy.org (which charges $4 for their app).

Every question in the question pool has an ID (for example: T0A02).  You should look up the explanation for any question you get wrong.  There are a few reasonable ways to do this.

• Dan  Romanchik publishes the No Nonsense Technician class license study guide.  The PDF version is available for free.  Search for the question id you missed and read the explanation.

• The ARRL (amateur radio relay league) publishes a Ham Radio License Manual.  The LAH County Fire District has kindly purchased a few copies of this manual for local hams-to-be to use to prepare for the test; the County Library system has three copies on order (as of Mar 2024).  This book has an index with every question in lexical order, and a link to where in the main body of the book that concept is described.

It is now (post-Covid) much easier to take the test: there are many virtual test providers.  I have a soft-spot for our local test group (the FCC calls them Volunteer Examiners [VEs]): Silicon Valley Volunteer Examiners.  They give tests twice a month, and also are the test givers for the Los Gatos ham cram.

Another great resource is hamstudy.org, whose platform is used by many VEs.  There are typically 5+ exam sessions every day.