Technician Exam Guide
The Technician exam (Element 2) is 35 multiple-choice questions drawn from a published pool of 409. You need 26 correct to pass, which is 74%. Every question and answer is public before you sit the exam, so the fastest way to pass is to study the pool itself.
What's on the Technician exam
The pool is split into ten subelements, and each subelement into groups. Every exam takes exactly one question from each group, so the number of questions from each topic is fixed; only which question you get from each group changes.
| Subelement | Topic | On the exam | In the pool |
|---|---|---|---|
| T1 | Commission's Rules | 6 | 68 |
| T2 | Operating Procedures | 3 | 37 |
| T3 | Radio Wave Propagation | 3 | 35 |
| T4 | Amateur Radio Practices | 2 | 23 |
| T5 | Electrical Principles | 4 | 50 |
| T6 | Electronic and Electrical Components | 4 | 46 |
| T7 | Practical Circuits | 4 | 44 |
| T8 | Signals and Emissions | 4 | 47 |
| T9 | Antennas and Feed Lines | 2 | 23 |
| T0 | Safety | 3 | 36 |
What the Technician license lets you do
All amateur privileges above 30 MHz, which covers the VHF and UHF bands used for local repeaters, satellites and emergency nets, plus limited HF: voice on part of 10 meters and Morse code on parts of 80, 40, 15 and 10 meters.
No prior license is needed. Technician is where almost everyone starts.
How to study for it
Weight your time by the table: Commission's Rules (T1), Electrical Principles (T5) and Electronic and Electrical Components (T6) alone make up 14 of the 35 questions.
Practise little and often. Short daily sessions beat one long cram, and repeating the questions you miss is what moves your score.
Take full 35-question practice exams once you have seen most of the pool, and book your session when you pass them comfortably, not just barely.
Try the Technician questions
See real questions from the pool with their answers, then create a free account for 20 questions a day with flashcards, quizzes and full timed exams.
Ready to book? How to get your ham radio license covers finding an exam session, the FCC registration number you need first, and the fees.