Studying for the amateur extra class

This is the new introduction to my Extra Class study guide. The Amateur Extra Class license is the highest class of license in the United States, and perhaps the world. Many hams—even hams that live outside the U. The Extra class license, as we know it today, was created as part of the license restructuring, that also created the Novice and Technician Class licenses. Although it gave an operator no additional privileges, to get an Extra Class license, one had to:.

Over the years I've helped tens of thousands of students get ham radio licenses and upgrades. Here are some things I've learned along the way. Treat the exams like removing a band-aid, and get them over with quickly. There seems to be a minimum threshold, typically around minutes of study per day depending on your memory , at which the rate of forgetting things is equal to the rate of relearning things, and students stop making forward progress in the courses. You're going to forget things you learned weeks or months in advance, but you will remember a surprising amount of the material you see in the last couple of days. If you were studying for an arithmetic test, you probably wouldn't read biographies of famous mathematicians.

Just a few short years ago, lots of people thought that the hobby of ham radio would be almost completely dead by now, but the opposite has happened — ham radio is officially more popular than ever, and nearly a million people in the US have an amateur radio license. Many people thought that the internet would kill amateur radio, but it actually helped it grow, by increasing the number of things you can do with a ham radio license, and by making the information on how to do it accessible to all. There are probably millions of people out there who had never heard of ham radio until they learned about it on the World Wide Web.

Just a few short years ago, lots of people thought that the hobby of ham radio would be almost completely dead by now, but the opposite has happened — ham radio is officially more popular than ever, and nearly a million people in the US have an amateur radio license. Many people thought that the internet would kill amateur radio, but it actually helped it grow, by increasing the number of things you can do with a ham radio license, and by making the information on how to do it accessible to all. There are probably millions of people out there who had never heard of ham radio until they learned about it on the World Wide Web. In order to pursue the hobby of ham radio, a person needs a license from the federal government. There used to be six different kinds of licenses, but a while back the licensing process was streamlined, and now there are only three — Technician, General, and Extra.