I want to move on to more interesting material in this blog. But, my CDO nature (it’s like OCD, but with the words in the right order) won’t let me do that until I recount the Extra class preparation and exam. Need to have closure and all that.
The General class preparation went well, so I used the same model to study for the Extra class exam: acquire an older test manual, study the question pool and take eHam.net practice tests until I consistently scored 90+%.
I won’t go through the process in detail, just offer some observations. First of all, the FCC expects a much deeper theoretical understanding of radio in the Amateur Extra class operators. So the exam consists of 50 questions instead of the 35 for the prior classes. And it’s out of a pool of about 750 total questions. Mastery is still the fairly low 74%, so basically you have 13 questions to give and still pass.Â
This guided my initial study since some of the theory is pretty math intensive and I refused to memorize all the band frequencies as I would learn them well enough as I operate. I was prepared to go with the 50/50 guess on these questions and assume that I had the rest of the material down to the point where the result would not be in doubt.
As it turns out, I got a lucky break on the question pool and didn’t get any questions whose math I had not mastered. In addition, the questions on operating practice that I drew were not on frequencies. Yay me.
By this time (March), my employer had delivered my PC at work and gave me enough access to actually work. So this prep cycle took a bit longer. In fact, it took exactly a month so the Maryland Mobileers Tuesday evening exam was the logical choice.
I was very relaxed for this as I had been scoring well on the practice exams and having been through the process twice recently, I felt very ready.Â
As I mentioned already, I caught a nice break on the questions and once again only missed one question. the grader was impressed, but then he was watching a guy take an hour to fail to pass the Tech exam…so in that context I must look like a genius or something. When the truth is I can just accumulate trivia easily. I’m not misguided enough to think I know anything about Amateur Radio yet. Now it’s time to get an HF rig and learn how to operate.
I didn’t upgrade my call when I passed the General since I didn’t see the point. But I would for the Extra. I hadn’t done much more than check into the nets on my local repeater, so there won’t be the problem of people knowing you by an older call sign.