Learn
From no license to your first contact, and onward.
- Question pools & practice exams
Every exam question, free to read, download or practice. - Your license
FRN, fees, renewing, the grace period, upgrades and call signs. - Clubs & nets
Find a club or a net near you. - Get on the air
Field Day, Parks on the Air, Summits on the Air and contests.
Tools
Free, no sign-in, nothing to install.
- Callsign lookup
Name, class, location and grid square. - Vanity finder
Calls free now, calls coming free, and a check for the one you want. - Radio horizon
How far a VHF/UHF signal can see over the curve of the Earth. - Antenna length
Starting lengths for dipoles, verticals, end-feds and loops. - Grid square & distance
Find a grid square, and the distance and heading between two. - Coax loss
How much power reaches the antenna, cable by cable. - Morse trainer
Learn and practice copying code by ear, at your speed. - Privileges
Which bands, modes and power your license class may use. - Gray line
Live world map of day, night and the twilight band, with your sunrise and sunset.
Reference
The look-it-up material, in plain English.
- Q-codes
QTH, QSL, QRM and the rest. - Dictionary
Ham words, defined in a sentence. - Band plans
Every band as its own chart, with the printable all-bands sheet. - States & call areas
Which state is in which call area, and what WAS asks. - Signal reports
The phonetic alphabet and how RST works. - Prefixes & DXCC
Which country a callsign comes from. - National licence lists
Where each country publishes its own amateur licences. - Gray line
Why sunrise and sunset open up the low bands. - Part 97 guide
The FCC rules for hams, section by section in plain English.
Articles
Longer reads: how-tos, explainers and history, written for hams.
- Bill Rinker, W6OAV
Longtime Elmer, and writer for many amateur radio club newsletters in Colorado and California. - Getting started
- Antennas
- Operating
- Digital
- Equipment
- History
- Attic HF antennas
- Don’t worry about high SWR!
- Question of the month: how do long dual band verticals develop gain?
- Testing portable, stealthy HF antennas
- Remember when? Crystal calibrators and the art of finding your frequency
- NVIS: working the next 300 miles
- Ferrites and common-mode chokes: stopping RF where it starts
- Antennas when you can’t put one up
- A Guide to Portable Amateur Radio Power
- Inside a working shack
- Analyzing antenna gain specifications
- Your SWR meter might be lying to you
- Getting started with FT8
Modes
CW, phone and digital: what to send and what you need to send it.
- All modes
Filterable index of every mode. - Software
WSJT-X, fldigi, Direwolf, BPQ32 and the rest. - Interfaces & TNCs
Getting the radio and the computer talking. - CW keys
Straight keys, bugs, sideswipers and paddles. - Packet
Packet radio: getting started, nodes and BBSs, history. - Digital voice
DMR, D-STAR, Fusion, AllStarLink, EchoLink, hotspots, and getting on with no outside antenna.
Radios
Which radio suits which job, curated rather than catalogued.