Ham Radio For Dummies - H. Ward Silver

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Each license manual should clearly show its “expiration date” on the cover.

      

I go over some useful ways to study for the questions in Chapter 5.

      Taking your license exam

      In the Olden Days, hams took their licensing tests at the nearest FCC office, which could be hundreds of miles away. I vividly remember making long drives to a government office building to take my exams along with dozens of other hams.

      Today, although the FCC still grants the licenses, it no longer administers amateur radio licensing examinations. In the United States, these exams are given by volunteer examiners (VEs); some VEs even file the results with the FCC. This process enables you to get your license and call sign much faster than in the days when the FCC handled everything on paper.

      In-person exam sessions are usually available a short drive away at a club, a school, or even a private home. Beginning in 2020, “fully remote” exam sessions can be conducted online and monitored by teams of VEs. Digital signatures and other state-of-the-art tools are used to insure the quality of the exam process.

      

See Chapter 6 for full details on finding an exam session near you or online and taking your test.

      Volunteer examiner coordinators

      A volunteer examiner coordinator (VEC) organization takes responsibility for certifying and coordinating the volunteer examiners (VEs) who run the exam sessions. The VEC also processes FCC-required paperwork generated during the session. Each VEC maintains a list of VEs, upcoming exam sessions, and other resources for ham test-takers. It can also help you renew your license and change your address or name. There may be a small fee charged by the VEC to cover expenses of the volunteers and maintaining the exam program. As of mid-2020, the maximum fee was $15 to take an exam for any of the license tests.

      The VEC with the most VEs is the group run by the American Radio Relay League (ARRL-VEC), but 13 other VECs are located around the United States. Some VECs, such as ARRL-VEC and W5YI-VEC, operate nationwide; others work in only a single region.

      

You can find VEC groups that conduct exams in your area at www.ncvec.org.

      Volunteer examiners

      VEs make the system run. Each exam requires three VEs to administer or proctor the session, certify that the test was conducted properly, and file the necessary information to process the exam results. VEs are responsible for all aspects of the testing process, including providing the meeting space and announcing the exam sessions. (For remote communities, exam sessions can be administered online by a VE team with local volunteers. This is discussed in Chapter 6.) If they incur any expenses, such as for supplies or facility rental, they’re allowed to keep up to $7 per person of the test fee; any left-over fees go to the VEC to cover its expenses.

      VEs are authorized to administer license exams for the same class of license they hold themselves or for lower classes. A General class VE, for example, can administer Technician and General exams but not Amateur Extra exams. Extra class licensees can give exams for Amateur Extra, as well.

      

General, Advanced, and Amateur Extra class licensees can become VEs by contacting one of the VEC organizations and completing whatever qualification process that VEC requires. The ARRL-VEC, for example, provides a booklet on the volunteer licensing system and requires applicants to pass a short exam. VE certification is permanent as long as it is renewed on time with the VEC.

      

VEs are amateurs just like you; they do a real service to the amateur community by making the licensing system run smoothly and efficiently. Don’t forget to say “Thanks!” at the conclusion of your test session, pass or fail. Better yet, become a VE yourself. It’s fun and rewarding. As a VE, I’ve given dozens of exams to hams as young as 10 years old. You can be a VE for more than one VEC, too!

      Each license that the FCC grants comes with a very special thing: a unique call sign (call to hams). Your call sign certifies you have passed the licensing exam and gives you permission to construct and operate a station — a special privilege. If you’re a new licensee, you’ll get your call sign within a few days of taking your licensing exam.

      Your call sign becomes your on-the-air identity, and if you’re like most hams, you may change call signs once or twice before settling on the one you want to keep. Sometimes, your call sign starts taking over your off-the-air identity; you may become something like Ward NØAX, using your call sign in place of a last name. (I have to think really hard to remember the last names of some of my ham friends!)

      

Hams rarely use the term handle to refer to actual names; it’s fallen out of favor in recent years. Similarly, they use the term call letters only to refer to broadcast-station licenses that have no numbers in them. Picky? Perhaps, but hams are proud of their hard-earned call signs.

      Chapter 7 provides full coverage of call signs. In this section, I give you a brief overview.

      Call-sign prefixes and suffixes

      Each call sign is unique. Many call signs contain NØ or AX, for example, but only one call sign is NØAX. Each letter and number in a call sign is pronounced individually and not as a word — “N zero A X,” for example, not “No-axe.”

      

Hams use the Ø (ALT-0216 on keyboards) symbol to represent the number 0, which is a tradition from the days of teleprinters and typewriters. It avoids confusion between capital-O and zero.

      Ham radio call signs around the world are constructed of two parts:

       Prefix: The prefix is composed of one or two letters and one numeral from Ø to 9. (The prefix in my call sign is NØ.) It identifies the country that issued your license and may also specify where you live within that country. For U.S. call signs, the numeral indicates the call district of where you lived when your license was issued. (Mine was issued when I lived in St. Louis, Missouri, which is part of the tenth, or Ø, district.)

       Suffix: The suffix of a call sign, when added to the prefix, identifies you, the individual license holder. A suffix consists of one to three letters. No punctuation characters are allowed — just letters from A to Z. (The suffix in my call sign is AX.)

      

The ITU assigns each country a block of prefix character groups to create call signs for all its radio services. All U.S. licensees (not just hams) have call signs that begin with A, K, N, or W. Even broadcast stations have call signs such as KGO or WLS. Most Canadian call signs begin with VE. English call signs may begin with G, M, or 2. Germans use D (for Deutschland) followed by any letter; almost all call signs that begin with J are Japanese, and so on.

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