As I just shared on our Antenna Design slack channel, I was fortunate enough to pass the Extra exam yesterday. I had some top-notch instructors – Skip Ferguson/K5LLR and Keith Dutson/NM5G, who invested their time with a bunch of us over two weekends to help pull us up from the General to the Extra level in order to pass the test.
They also introduced me to the HamTestOnline.com test, which I highly recommend. I could not have aced the Extra exam without it. As you can see below, I started off failing the simulated extra exam at first, and within one week and two Saturday instruction sessions, passed the exam with flying colors. It took a commitment and a lot of testing, studying and retesting to get there, as you can see by my HamTestOnline journey below.
I started out failing, after weeks of self-study and taking the QRZ.com free simulated test, reading Gordon West’s book (also highly recommended). Then I enrolled in Keith and Skip’s Extra Class, and discovered HamTestOnline.com. As you can see below, my results improved immediately. That’s because HamTestOnline reinforces learning as you go in many different ways. It shows you the correct answer at the top of the screen after each question is answered, along with the right answer, reinforcing your learning as you go. When you miss a question, it provides links to the study material, formulas and actual calculations (where applicable) in context, saving an enormous amount of time vs. thumbing back and forth to the books. As you can see below, I used a combination of Simulated Exams (just like the actual FCC test), coupled with studying my “weak areas” with exams comprised of primarily questions from the exam areas I was missing, then periodically I mixed in a Random test (randomly chosen questions vs. number of questions per category), along with occasionally testing against the “Unseen Items” (questions I had never seen yet).
I fully expected to pass the test when I took it, because I knew for certain I was ready based upon taking the test 58 times during a one week period (plus the QRZ.com test runs not shown here). That’s an average of more than 8 times per day! That kind of constant testing, learning and reinforcement and cramming for the test using the book plus superb tools like HamTestOnline are unbelievably powerful. Note that these tests are also available for Technician and General.
Very glad to have my Extra license. The additional bandwidth will be interesting. Mostly just glad it’s over and I can check this one off the list!
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