I work in financial services and my oldest brother has been a ham operator for over 30 years (N8LPZ).  I studied for almost a week every evening using mostly online (and mostly free) resources.  I used Dan Romanchik’s No Nonsense Technician Class License Study Guide.  I found HamStudy helpful because they offered explanations of why the right answer was correct.  I also went through the Roanoke Valley Amateur Radio Club slides and material, which helped flesh out detail and provide more context.  I ended up doing all my practice exams at eHam.net There are probably a lot of options there, but I like the review options of just wrong answers or the whole test, which helped on unsure answers.I tried to take the tests in sets of 3 to gauge my progress since the questions appear randomly and there are so many questions in the pool.  When I felt I had a good grasp of each test, I started taking the 3 tests back-to-back (Technician, General, Extra) to make sure that I could handle the entire pool of questions and to make sure I could complete them all in an allotted time. As I reached a point of comfort, I dumped all my study material into a (very long) Word document.  Then, I would delete sections I felt I had mastered so after each subsequent edit, I was having to peruse less and less material, focusing in on the trouble spots.  Not having a background in electronics or radios left me with some sections that I just had difficulty comprehending and they eventually came down to a memory exercise that I hope I’ll understand more about when I get my hands dirty.  Of course, since you can’t use a radio until you’re licensed, a lot of the information to do with bands, power constraints, and FCC rules just come down to memorization anyway. In the end, I was pretty lucky, so now the real learning begins!

Duane Cutlip (KY4EC)