If you're interested in ham radio, there's no excuse to not get a license...
http://kb6nu.com/extra-class-easypass-how-everybody-can-be-an-extra/While the author outlines why he believes that there's no excuse for upgrading to an Amateur Extra license, I think the same reasoning applies to getting started in ham radio with the Technician's license.
Some sections from the article:
You don’t have to learn Morse Code (CW) any more as part of the exam process. The FCC took the CW requirements off the table a while ago, so there is absolutely no excuse what-so-ever why you can’t upgrade.
No code requirements anymore for any of the license classes. There goes that excuse.
Do Take Note of the Following…
They publish and freely distribute all of the exact questions, 738 in all, and all of the exact correct answers to the Extra Class Question Pool; fifty of which will be repeated exactly in the written exam the VE hands you, with at worst, a change in the order of the answers on your test sheet.
The VECs have weeded out and eliminated any imperfect or ambiguous questions and/or answers.
They even give you the exact wrong answers (actually called “distractors”), that are placed right alongside of those exact correct answers in order to… you guessed it… distract you. (But much more on this point later.)
You can bring along a simple calculator, which perhaps you might not even need, as there is only a moderate number of really scary math questions. (Remembering again that they give you every single one of the correct questions and answers to study beforehand.)
No longer are you herded in and out of some government holding pen by career Civil Service “professionals” who are simply counting the minutes until their lunch and/or break time. These days you take the exam in a comfortable and friendly environment, supervised by like-minded individuals who are very seriously interested in your success.
It’s “multiple guess” with only a total of four possible choices.
As there really isn’t even a fixed time limit set for the test, you could even spend a few hours taking the exam, but you really shouldn’t need more than forty or fifty minutes, and even that’s stretching it.
And finally… even if you didn’t follow the “Meat and Potatoes” found below, and have somehow actually managed to fail the exam, you can simply pay another fee, and take another exam all over again, and again, and again, if you need to, as often as you wish, as long as you can keep coming up with another fee.
Wow!!!!!!! If you don’t already realize it, the current Amateur Radio exams and testing procedures are really a gift, and the only thing I could possibly think of that could have made my test taking experience a more pleasant and enjoyable event, would have been if they had served me a cold beer and a medium well burger with fries & coleslaw while I was taking the exam :)
Oh by-the-way, that gift mentioned above is worth perhaps forty to sixty billion dollars, which is a conservative low end estimate of what the entire Amateur Radio Frequency Spectrum would bring if it were auctioned off to the commercial interests.
All the above applies to the Tech and General license too. They publish the exact question pool for the Technician and General class license as well. You know exactly the questions that could be on the exam.
Let me quote from page 1-8, section 1.4, second paragraph of the ARRL Extra Class Manual:
This study guide will provide the necessary background and explanation for the answers to the exam questions. By learning this material, you will go beyond just learning the answers. You’ll understand the fundamentals behind them and this makes it easier to learn, remember and use what you know. This book also contains many useful facts and figures that you can use in your station and on the air.”
Well written, well punctuated, well structured, concise, absolutely 100% true in its description, and a representative paragraph of a superbly well researched work detailing with every single technical, regulatory and operational area from which the entire Amateur Extra Class question pool is based. But please, do send me a stinging barbed posting, if any of you out there have ever actually managed to wade through all of those four hundred and seventy pages in just a few weeks, and managed to retain enough of it to pass the extra exam on the first shot. I would be seriously impressed if you had.
But do please take note that the above quote states quite clearly that it goes beyond what is required!
Now this is going to rattle the cages of a few of you purists out there, but here’s some further serious reality check. You are not being tested by the VEs on what you know, rather, you are being tested only on how well you know the answers to a random subset of fifty (50) questions selected from a specific set of 738 questions in the VEC pool. That’s all, nothing more.
The bar that you have to get over to pass the Extra Exam was set at a very specific and well defined level. It is absolutely unnecessary for an individual to expend inordinate amounts of valuable time and effort in preparing to go much beyond that bar. Perhaps though, some of you really do have the time and desire to do so, and this is rather commendable and I seriously admire those of you who are so inclined.
However, any extra work that is performed in the course of preparing to take the Extra Class examination for the rest of us, will at best be only a time consuming distraction from the primary task at hand, which again is to simply get thirty seven or more correct answers circled on the answer sheet the very first time you attempt it.
I can already hear the murmurs of discontent from the purists out there who will most certainly point out in sharply worded posts, as to how detrimental and destructive my thoughts are to the integrity of the hobby, or raise issues of the need for personal growth and self improvement, or go on about the technical standards which need be maintained, or perhaps even express thoughts over the preparation required to assume the roll of world wide ambassadors for the hobby.
And of course, there will also be the sad and quite melancholy thoughts which will be expressed over how much the hobby has changed from the “good old days”… rubbish… get over it… These are the “good old days” and please do try and remember that it’s a fascinating fun hobby, and not a calling to some more serious religious vocation.
Sorry, but the rules have been clearly formulated and set in place. The test taker needs only to be focused on an honest and above board process of learning all of the questions and their answers in the pool beforehand, and then pulling fifty of those answers out of their head in order to be able to circle the correct answers, nothing more.
There aren’t any requirements in place for any sort of prerequisite preparation in order to take the Amateur Extra exam, and there are no retesting or proficiency requirements anytime in the future. So any method by which an individual can honestly get to the magic thirty seven (37) is fair, good, noble, and pure of heart, and only needs to be done once. And of course, your passing of the exam helps to sustain and grow our hobby no matter what the purists might have to say about it.
So grasshopper… let me guide you on to the path of true Extra Class test taking enlightenment.
So true. I did something similar by taking several practice tests a day until I memorized enough answers to pass the Amateur Extra class.
If you're interested, do mash the above link. The second half of the post outlines a process learn enough of the material to pass the Amateur Extra exam, but there's no reason why the same thing couldn't be done to learn enough to pass the Tech or General class licenses as well, which, by the way, only consists of 35 questions and requires 75% correct to pass.
-Andy (pm me for my call sign if you're interested)
