Thanks to Russell Thomas for this article… we often get questions about how to get a ham radio license… I think this will answer most of your questions!
How to become an Amateur Radio Operator
After my last article it was obvious that people that are interested in becoming Amateur Radio Operators but don’t know exactly how to accomplish the goal.
Amateur Radio Operators are granted licenses from the FCC; this is accomplished by taking and passing an exam typically given by a local Amateur Radio club or group. If you need to find a group, this website will help you locate one (https://www.hello-radio.org). This website also serves as an introduction to amateur radio and goes into more details than this article.
There are three license classes:
1. Technician – 35 questions
2. General class – 50 questions
3. Extra Class – 50 questions
Technician is the entry level class, once you have this you are an Amateur Radio operator!
Each license class has a question pool of multiple choice questions and as indicated above the exam will consist of a random number of questions from that pool.
You can visit this website if you want to order books containing the entire question pool to study from: https://www.arrl.org/catalog/lm/
For practice exams take a look at this website: https://www.qrz.com/testing.html
When you are at a testing session please take some time to get to know other Amateur Radio operators because you will find they will be the best place to learn about the hobby and they can help you decide on your first radio!
