Amateur radio license
An FCC-issued Amateur Radio License is required for operating a ham radio station in the US. Three license classes are available: Technician, General, and Amateur Extra. The Technician license is the entry-level license; it allows use of the VHF and UHF bands (where the vast majority of repeaters operate), and some limited HF access. The General license allows access to portions of all HF bands, as well as VHF and UHF. The Extra license allows full access to every ham band.
Exams
Obtaining a license requires taking a written exam, administered by Volunteer Examiners (VEs). A Morse code test is no longer required. There are 35 questions on the Technician and General exams and 50 on the Extra exam. (Each license class has a pool of several hundred questions; the 35 or 50 questions on the exam are randomly selected from this pool. You will not know which questions will be on your exam before you take it, so it is necessary to study the entire pool.) The minimum passing grade is 74%; this is 26 correct answers on the Technician and General exams and 37 on the Extra exam.
The exams must be taken in order; if you do not have a license and want to obtain an Extra license, skipping Technician and General, you will need to take all three tests at once. Similarly, to skip straight to General, you must take both the Technician and General tests; if you have a Technician license and want to upgrade to Extra, you will need to take the General and Extra tests together.
