There are a lot of study guides and resources to help you prepare for the Amateur Radio License exam, ranging from outrageously expensive to absolutely free.
The exam you need to take has a subset of questions from a large question pool. The question pool is readily available, and if you are very good at memorization you don’t need to learn anything about amateur radio in order to pass the exam and receive your license.
I suffer from KRS (Kaint remember stuff) so I had to study so I could pass the exam.
Here are several free resources I used to prepare for the Technician and General exams.
The “No-Nonsense Study Guides” were the most useful for me. These guides use each of the exam pool questions in a sentence or two with additional explanations. The guides are most useful after you gain some basic knowledge of radio. Free pdfs are available as well as paid versions for Kindles & whatnot.
http://www.kb6nu.com/tech-manual/
Colorado.edu has an excellent course on amateur radio and makes their course materials available for free. The slides will teach you almost everything you need to know about radio and the “questions” PowerPoint presentations provide all of the exam questions, the multiple choice answers, and the CORRECT answer. A lot of exam study guides only give you the correct answer and leave out the other answers.
http://ecee.colorado.edu/~mathys/ecen2420/notes/index.html
Sierra Foothills Amateur Radio Club Online has a good free course but it refers you to the not-free The ARRL Ham Radio License Manual. The best resource on this site is the complete question pool with “Hints”. Again, the hints document only works as a standalone guide if you either know what they are talking about (preferable) or a good memorizer!
http://www.hsdivers.com/Ham/
I get bored watching videos so I did not use these, but I believe the Ham Whisperer series is very good for those that like this type of training:
http://www.amateurradio.com/courses/technician/
Start taking practice exams at QRZ.com as soon as you can – you might be surprised at how much you already know and how straight-forward the exam questions are. One recommendation I saw was to keep track of the questions you have problems with and focus your study time on these. I kept a spreadsheet of my problem questions and crammed these right before the exam. QRZ keeps track of your progress for you.
http://www.qrz.com/ht/
Speaking of cramming, this is a good cram course:
W9PE's FREE: HAM CRAM TECHNICIAN LICENSE COURSE, EXCEL BASED VIRTUAL DEMONSTRATION LAB and/or CW MORSE CODE COURSE
http://w9pe.us/
The exam you need to take has a subset of questions from a large question pool. The question pool is readily available, and if you are very good at memorization you don’t need to learn anything about amateur radio in order to pass the exam and receive your license.
I suffer from KRS (Kaint remember stuff) so I had to study so I could pass the exam.
Here are several free resources I used to prepare for the Technician and General exams.
The “No-Nonsense Study Guides” were the most useful for me. These guides use each of the exam pool questions in a sentence or two with additional explanations. The guides are most useful after you gain some basic knowledge of radio. Free pdfs are available as well as paid versions for Kindles & whatnot.
http://www.kb6nu.com/tech-manual/
Colorado.edu has an excellent course on amateur radio and makes their course materials available for free. The slides will teach you almost everything you need to know about radio and the “questions” PowerPoint presentations provide all of the exam questions, the multiple choice answers, and the CORRECT answer. A lot of exam study guides only give you the correct answer and leave out the other answers.
http://ecee.colorado.edu/~mathys/ecen2420/notes/index.html
Sierra Foothills Amateur Radio Club Online has a good free course but it refers you to the not-free The ARRL Ham Radio License Manual. The best resource on this site is the complete question pool with “Hints”. Again, the hints document only works as a standalone guide if you either know what they are talking about (preferable) or a good memorizer!
http://www.hsdivers.com/Ham/
I get bored watching videos so I did not use these, but I believe the Ham Whisperer series is very good for those that like this type of training:
http://www.amateurradio.com/courses/technician/
Start taking practice exams at QRZ.com as soon as you can – you might be surprised at how much you already know and how straight-forward the exam questions are. One recommendation I saw was to keep track of the questions you have problems with and focus your study time on these. I kept a spreadsheet of my problem questions and crammed these right before the exam. QRZ keeps track of your progress for you.
http://www.qrz.com/ht/
Speaking of cramming, this is a good cram course:
W9PE's FREE: HAM CRAM TECHNICIAN LICENSE COURSE, EXCEL BASED VIRTUAL DEMONSTRATION LAB and/or CW MORSE CODE COURSE
http://w9pe.us/
