Mind blown and plans now up in the air after hearing that skipping the first two license levels may be an option I research the requirements for the Advanced amateur radio license. I find a few limited sets of example questions and it seems doable with a lot of study. I started a four year Associate Diploma in Electrical Engineering course back in the 80’s which would be a huge help to me. I manage to find my old text books. My beloved HP 41C calculator that I bought for my study is still around somewhere but I can’t find it so I go on Ebay and buy an old HP 15C. Justin VK7TW had recommended a remote study school called Radio and Electronics School (RES) run by Ron Bertrand VK2DQ so I purchase their study book and enroll in October 2021.
The RES Advanced course consists of 20 assignments that work their way through the book, chapter by chapter, 14 Revision sheets summarising what I’ve learnt and 6 trial exams using made up questions, not real ones from the exam pool. I’m assigned Eric VK2VE to guide me through the course remotely. I can thoroughly recommend this course. Just like the uncle who gave me my CB back in the day, Ron’s course goes back to basics and ensures you have a thorough understanding of the principals rather than just craming you with exam questions and answers. It really suited me and my way of learning. I tried to maintain a rate of one assignment a week but that slipped and I felt a bit burnt out at one stage so took a break. It ended up taking me five months to complete the assignments, others may do it quicker. I began the revision late March 2022 and smashed it out finishing in mid April 2022. The trial exams start with open book and finish up as timed closed book to simulate the real thing. This took another month.
I sat the actual exam in May 2022. This was done with Eric as he is an approved assessor remotely via Zoom. Because I skipped the first two license levels I actually had to do three exams one after the other. I chose to do the multi choice Advanced theory exam first. Eric would share his screen and show me the question and I would fill out the answer on an answer sheet I had printed. It was very stressful but thanks to the structure of the course I was reasonably confident of a pass. I then had to do another multi choice exam on the ACMA regulations in Australia governing amateur radio. The third exam was a practical. Eric would ask me how I would connect up a home station, we did a simulated radio conversation and stuff like that. I then scanned and returned my answer sheet to Eric.
At the end of the three exams I was expecting to be given my result but unfortunately the assessors are not allowed to do that. I felt from the cheery disposition of Eric after it was all over that I may have done OK but I had to wait for him to submit my responses and for the Australian Maritime College who have the contract to conduct exams to mark them.
Two weeks later the email appeared, I had passed!
I’d requested the callsign VK7ID. VK for Australia, 7 for Tasmania, and ID are the initials of the uncle who got me started on this journey back in the 70’s by giving that CB radio. Unfortunately uncle Ian had passed away some years prior but I would like to think that he would have been proud of me. It took another two weeks for ACMA to issue my license allowing me to finally get on the air as VK7ID.
VK7ID 