Education and Testing:  Class Details | License Testing | Auxiliary | On-Line Resources | 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 (VEs).

Our club's Education & Testing team has begun using Exam.Tools to help us be more productive and serve people better.  55% of all ARRL VEC licensed were processed using Exam.Tools. Other VECs also use exam.tools for in-person and online testing.

Some new ARRL VEC procedures regarding the paper exam booklets and answer keys will take effect July, 2025.

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.

We have addressed many concerns getting started using exam.tools for our exams including supporting bring your own device, paper answer sheets and OCR grading, purchasing and supporting a number of hardware tablets (perhaps limiting our peak capacity), ensuiring reliable Wi-Fi at exam locations and taking time to register applicants for a session. An exam.tools PIN is provided to validate the test session. The FCC FRN number requirement remains the same.

Many of our candidates have told us they prefer to walk into our sessions without advance notice. Some people drive great distances to do so. We are training our VEs to address this need.

Volunteer Examiner Coordinators

Did you know there is more than one? The official list of VECs shows fourteen groups organized like the ARRL that help the FCC proctor and submit exam results in the US. Questions for all VECs and exams are the same. They come from question pools available from www.ncvec.org. The Technician, General and Amateur Extra pools are updated in alternating years, effective in July.

The ARRL conducts the most exams and is what our club uses. We have started using exam.tools.

The Benicia Ham Class uses w5yi-vec.org of TX for their exam sessions with exam.tools (thank you Bob W6RBF for many details) with exam.tools as does the Gwinnett Georgia Amateur Radio Society.

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

The online exams of the Greater LA Amateur Radio Group glaarg.org VEC also use exam.tools.

Traditional Exam Benefits

There are some advantages to conducting exams in-person. In person exam sessions enable meeting at least three (often several more) hams interested in helping newly licensed hams, especially the three who sign your Certificate of Successful Completion of Exam (CSCE) with their name and call sign. You may also want to strike up a conversation with them after your exam session though noise levels must be kept to a minimum for other testers. Our club holds monthly exam sessions before each of our monthly general meetings.

Session Locators

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

Hamstudy.org also has a session locator: hamstudy.org/sessions