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Written by Kevin Hester
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This is a micro syllabus - how to pass your Ham radio technician test with one hour of practice. It is not about teaching you all the stuff you need to be a ham, just enough to be legal. It basically comes down to learning a few formulas and then taking a practice test over and over until you can get 85%. Once you can reliably get a score like this the odds are very high you'll be able to get 70% when taking the real thing.
You'll want to practice on the following site:
http://aa9pw.com/radio/technician/
Tests are given every couple of weeks in the bay area, you'll need a pencil and $15. I think you are also allowed a calculator. To find a test site, see here:
http://www.arrl.org/exam.html
The test questions are approximately divided as follows:
20% Ohms law
13% Power vs current
33% Frequency vs. Wavelength
23% Misc rules
10% Crap to guess on
- Ohm's law ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohm%27s_law ) is just the relation between voltage (volts), current (amps) and resistance (ohms). The formula is current * resistance = voltage. So to answer "What is the current flow in a circuit with an applied voltage of 120 volts and a resistance of 80 ohms?", you'd plug in these numbers and get 1.5 amps.
- For Power vs. Current questions you just need to know that Power (watts) = voltage (volts) * current (amps). The test has a bunch of questions where they will give you two of these values and you need to give them the third.
- There are a bunch of questions about the relation between frequency and wavelength. You just need to know that the formula (approximately) is 300,000,000 / frequency (Hz) = wavelength (meters). So for "Which amateur band are you using when transmitting on 146.52 MHz?" You'd plug 146,520,000 in for the wavelength and get back 2.04 for the wavelength - so the multiple choice answer is "the 2 meter band".
- If you don't know the answer, just eliminate obviously bad answers and guess. You only need to score a 70%
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 14 June 2009 )
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