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Comment by fosco | Hacker News Reader

I am interested in getting my HAM Radio license.

my grandfather had a license, does anyone know a way to lookup call signs by name to see what he had?

The Technician level license (Essentially it's all amateur frequencies above ~50Mhz, you do get some morse-code on a few lower bands, but they're hardly used by Techs) is very simple to get; there's a lot of "Ham Cram" classes, this is how I got mine. Essentially you study all morning interspersed with a quick primer on Ohms law, common-sense rules and regulations, etc...

There has been a proposed enhancement to the Tech level to give them some lower frequency privileges that's causing a rift in the hobby since the new comers welcome it and the old-timers think it'll kill the hobby* and turn everything into CB radio.

* Common amongst the old timers is that EVERYTHING that isn't morse code (CW) is killing the hobby.

https://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/searchAmateur.jsp

I had to search "Lastname, Firstname" to find myself. Also note the "expired" checkbox.

There are many ways to go about getting your license, but if you decide you want to go the self-study route, I highly recommend using https://www.hamradiolicenseexam.com/. I used this tool for a few months before taking my exam at MIT. Also, it's worth studying for the higher class licenses - when I took my exam, the instructor offered and encouraged everyone to take the exam for the higher class for free immediately after.

I would put a vote in for http://hamstudy.org as another good resource.

In addition to having the question pools available and giving practice tests it also has user-contributed explanations of how to arrive at the correct answer for each question which I find very helpful.

I'd also highly recommend the Gordon West ham radio study books, they do an excellent job of teaching you both the answer, and the theory behind the answer.

That's how I studied for my exams:

1. Read through (and understand) West's book. 2. Go to qrz.com and take the practice tests until I could pass with a 95% multiple times in a row, and I had answered every question in the test database correctly at least once. You only need 85% to pass the real exam but I wanted a margin of error.

I passed my tech, general, and extra exams on my first tries. That's the most prepared I've been for a test in decades.

> You only need 85% to pass the real exam.

Current requirement is lower. Only 74% (26/35 or 37/50) to pass.

One other thing to know is that the exam questions are split in to sections (35 sections for Tech/General, 50 for Extra) and only one question from each section is selected. This means that you don't need to worry about getting multiple questions from sections you struggle with and dragging down your score.

Yikes, you're right. It was 74% when I tested, too - not sure where I pulled 85% from. I still pushed for 95% to have the wide margin of error though.

Thanks to you both for the additional resources. I wish I knew about these sooner.

Aside from the FCC database link someone else posted there's also https://www.qrz.com

Archive.org has scanned several old "callbooks" which you can try searching in: https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22callbook%2...

You can try: http://www.arrl.org/advanced-call-sign-search

I don't know if they include inactive licenses though.

thanks for both links -- seems I cannot locate him, likely LONG expired appreciate the info!

The FCC have a commercial partnership with Best Copy & Print Inc, who can manually search through the FCC archives on your behalf to retrieve and duplicate old licensing documents. A fee is charged for this service, but it's quite reasonable.

http://www.arrl.org/call-sign-research

If your grandfather's callsign is not in current use, you may be able to apply to use his old call sign through the Vanity Call Signs program.

http://www.arrl.org/vanity-call-signs

thank you! I think I may buy this service much appreciated!

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