Amateur Radio Classes

One-Day Technician Study Session

SCARS will offer a one-day Technician Study Session at the Norman Public Library – Central location, 103 West Acres St, Norman, Oklahoma 73069 on Saturday, April 1, 2023. You will work at your own pace on a guided self-study of the amateur radio technician test questions. You will need a study guide containing all technician questions and correct answers. If you already have one of these, you are welcome to use it. The club has copies of this guide for $5 before the session. When you register, you will receive information on how to obtain a study guide. Sign up for the class at https://w5nor.org/classsignup/.

Online Technician Class

SCARS offers a Technician licensing class with the online videos available at this link.

Obtain an FCC FRN Number

FCC CORES: https://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/coresWeb/publicHome.do This is where you need to create an “FRN,” or FCC Registration Number. Please note that if you already have an FCC license (i.e. one in the General Mobile Radio Service), you probably already have an FRN.

Online Practice

Try any of these sites: 

The first two sites will track your progress and drill you harder on questions you miss. Presumably, some of the others do the same. Undoubtedly, these sites have improved over time, but ten or so years ago, when they first appeared, many were not sufficiently random. In other words, they might show you more questions than others regardless of your progress. In some cases, candidates would never see a few of the questions. The bottom line – use this as a supplement to study!

FCC Question Pool

The Question and Answer Pools are in the public domain, per FCC regulation, but these provide no background material to help future hams understand the answers.

The exam is a 35-question, multiple-choice exam. Questions are drawn from a pool of about 400 questions. The subject breakdown is covered in the next table.

Technician Exam Breakdown

Sub ElementSubjectNumber of
Questions on Exam
(Total 35)
T1FCC Rules5
T2Methods of Communication2
T3Radio Phenomena2
T4Station Licensee Duties3
T5Control Operator Duties3
T6Good Operating Practices3
T7Basic Communications Electronics3
T8Good Engineering Practice6
T9Special Operations2
T0Electrical, Antenna Structure, and RF Safety Practices6

Successful candidates should be familiar with the following:

  • FCC Amateur Service Rules (47 CFR 97), especially amateur radio frequency allocations.
  • Basic station operation and RF safety
  • Basic radio wave propagation (D/E/F layers, tropospheric effects, etc)
  • Ohm’s Law and other basic electronics
  • Formulae like “E = I x R”, “468 / f” and “300 / f”

Magic Circles – put your finger over the quantity you are trying to solve.

Ohm’s Law:  

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Power Law:

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And yes, you can combine those two algebraically, but it ceases to be much of an aide-mémoire at that point:

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N5UWY’s Cultural Enrichment