Exam.Tools


The FCC used to administer all exams. As the volume grew, conducting exams was delegated to a number of Volunteer Exam Coordinators (VECs) including the ARRL and their Volunteer Examiners. Our club's Education & Testing team is exploring the use of online systems to help us be more productive and serve people better.


Exam.Tools

Exam.Tools aka examtools.org and its sister site HamStudy.org have been used by people to practice exam questions and pass exams. The system is sponsored by SignalStuff.com. A number of VECs use it to administer online and in-person exams.

Online session locator: hamstudy.org/sessions/remote


Volunteer Examiner Coordinators

There is more than one! The official list of VECs show a number of groups organized like the ARRL that help the FCC proctor and submit exam results in the US. Questions for all VECs and exams come from question pools available from the www.ncvec.org. The Technician, General and Amateur Extra pools are updated in alternating years in July.

The ARRL conducts the most exams and is what our club uses on paper so far. We are exploring using exam.tools.

Benicia uses W5YI-VEC.org for their exam sessions with exam.tools.

Some people associated with Google use the Laurel VEC larc-vec.org with exam.tools. Laurel-VEC does not require any exam fee.

Traditional Exams

There are advantages to how our club conducts exams now. In person exam sessions enable meeting at least three interested hams, the three who sign your Certificate of Successful Completion of Exam with their name and call sign. You may also want to strike up a conversation with the in your exam session. We hold monthly exam sessions before each of our monthly meetings.

You can find our club's sessions and many other exam sessions at: arrl.org/find-an-amateur-radio-license-exam-session