INTRODUCTION

Greetings and thank you for deciding to participate in these amateur radio lessons I hope you will find them interesting, informative and helpful. My name is Bill and my amateur radio call sign is WA6OHP.

Ham radio has been an exciting part of my life for 50 years. I want to express my appreciation for Mac K6BJV and Jim K6KRL for their help and mentoring so that I could get my license; I also want to acknowledge and Ed W6CC and Vern W6CGJ for proctoring the tests so I could get my early license. Mac, Jim, Ed, and Vern are now silent key but I refuse to let their legacy die by passing on to others what they have passed on to me.

During these 50 years I have helped many to get their amateur radio license by teaching ham radio classes, mentoring individuals, and working as a Volunteer Eliminator. I want to help as many as possible across the United States who would like to get their ham radio license. To accomplish this goal I developed these lessons and placed them in blog format.

Those of you in other countries please understand that it is not that I do not want to help you get your amateur radio license. I would love to help you but I can’t. Every country has different requirements and I only know the requirements here in the United States. I welcome everyone to the study and even if you do live in another nation there should be some information that would help you and I invite you to ask questions about these lessons or any other questions about ham radio.

To get the most out of these lessons make them interactive. By interactive I mean I want your input and questions. If you do not understand something in the lesson e-mail your question to wa6ohp@yahoo.com be sure to include “hamslife” or “Ham’s Life” in the subject line so my spam monster will not eat it. You can also use the comment box at the bottom of each session and ask your question but because I do not check this blog each day it could go missed for a while.

I make mistakes and though I have carefully studied each lesson before publishing it. I do not have a proof reader though I desperately need one. So if you find something you believe to be an error please let me know either by e-mail at the previously mentioned address or comment in the comment section. The test questions below the text are copied directly as they are written in the question pool and some of them are not grammatically correct but I wrote them just as they will appear on the test.

If you have a ham related question or radio related technical question that is not part of the question pool please go to http://hamslife.com and use the comment box to ask your question and I will try to answer your question on that site.

Suppose you took a class and the instructor gave you a list of 396 questions with the answers and told you that the final exam will consist of 35 questions selected from the questions and answers he gave you. If you can visualize that scenario then you can understand exactly what getting your ham radio license requires.

The Technician class question pool consists of 396 questions with answers. The Technician class ham radio test has 35 questions taken out of those 396 questions. The questions on the test will be exactly the same as they are in the question pool. You have to get 26 questions correct to pass the test.

Each lesson will consist of text which will discuss the information you will need for that portion of the technician class amateur radio test. This will be followed by questions from the test pool. The answers to all the questions in a section can be found in the text that precedes the questions. Then at the bottom of the questions I give an answer key to those questions which will look something like this A, B, C, D, A. This means that the answer to question 1 is A and the answer to question 2 is B and so forth.

A letter, a number, a letter, and a number before each question identifies the question’s location in the question pool. The identification looks something like this T1A01. The breakdown of the group goes like this: T technician class, 1 means the first group of questions of that subelement, A the first sub-group of questions, and 01 the first question in that subgroup. A few questions from one sub-group will appear in another subgroup because I thought, for study purposes, the question fit in that group better then it did in its original location.

The lessons do not start out with question T1A01 because the section T1 deals with rules, regulations, definitions, and other things that may prove difficult for some people to remember because they do not understand some of the terms used in the questions: terms such as Frequency, Auxiliary station, meter band, CW, SSB and several others. The Lessons starts with SUBELEMENT T5 – Electrical principles, math for electronics, electronic principles, Ohm’s Law. This way I can introduce you to terms and explain them so when you get to the questions about how the FCC governs their use you will understand what they mean.

I moderate all comments before I display them. Only comments I consider appropriate will be posted. This site is to be appropriate for all ages and I will not publish anything I consider inappropriate for any age. If you would like to receive a personal email and leave your email address it will be removed before it is viewed by others if it is published.

I would appreciate knowing you are out there so please use the comment section of this post and let me know your name or even respond anonymously if you wish.

When you have passed your Technician Class exam please let me know if these lessons helped you.