The Canadian amateur licence exams are of two levels, called qualifications. Generate practice versions via this page: www.ic.gc.ca .
Forty years prior, in progressing through General, Advanced, and Extra, I studied by thumbing through Post-It bookmarks where I had highlighted passages in Schrader’s textbook Electronic Communications. Doing that before bed every night. More recently, in 2019, I studied for my FCC commercial T license, mostly by re-listening to self-made MP3 files. This while driving to and from work.
Then, exactly three years later, on 2022-09-28, I also passed both qualification levels for a Canadian amateur license by doing the same thing again. Presently I await in hopes of being awarded call sign VA7KYD so as to somewhat match my US call sign KY8D. Would that I could have got the numeral 8, except that my sister-in-law Janice and her husband Steven (from whose home I shall operate while visiting, and near to whom we might possibly move) are not sufficiently obliging so as to relocate from beautiful Pender Island, British Columbia instead to the frozen tundra of Northwest Territories. Alas and alack.
Below I share those same self-made audio files. Accept them for free as a gift from me. But know that they come without guarantee. Also with no rights held in reserve, so do with them whatever you please.
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Canadian equivalent of FCC Technician/General Class. Updated: 2022-07-20
Canadian equivalent of FCC Advanced/Extra Class. Updated: 2022-07-20
It is my understanding that a newly issued question pool remains valid for five years. Which is to say that a prior quesiton pool will still remain valid even though a newer pool might have been issued. Which isn’t to say that the topics will change, nor the base material. Wordings however, might be notably different. Such as asking which is false rather than which is true, and like variations. The values supplied for calculating resonance and/or Q may also vary.
Thus, for the Canadian test, memorization of answers to specific questions will not be the best way to go. Whatever you do, read every question completely through. It would be a mistake to think you have recognized a memorized question from having read it just only half way then leap upon the answer you have memorized for it. It might turn out to be the same question asked instead backward, or even sideways. Prepare for that by knowing the meaning behind every question. Hence a great study advantage in re-phrasing questions instead as plain statements for your study.
Just double-click on either file, and it should play. Or download instead for transfer to an MP3 player. Both files share an album tag, and each file bears a track tag. Each is a bit more than one hour long (65-ish MB @ 128kb/sec).
As for myself, I prefer the Android app Smart AudioBook Player, which is rated 4.8 stars on Google Play. I listen to lots of audiobooks, and have used this app through two different Samsung smartphones across several years.
The question pools themselves are from June of 2022, and so not due to change anytime soon. But it wasn’t my goal to create yet another crutch to mere test-format memorization. Rather I wanted (both for myself and others like me) an audio format more like a lecture. To obtain that, each question-and-answer I reformat into a straight-forward statement. Every which-is-false question I try to replace with a true counter-statement.
Prior to passing both exams on 2022-09-28, I had re-edited the files several times. This I would do when encountering anything at all that might irk me. I would re-edit the text, then feed it once more into the on-line text reader, meanwhile recording the playback. Then I would re-upload the file.
This process is now at a halt. Before very long, I shall begin on audio study tapes for FCC commercial GROL exam. That, of course, will be a whole other page, not yet published.
Here is how I make for myself the study materials shared above.
Here is how I make for myself such audio files as shared above.
As an alterative to Audacity, others might prefere to purchase a premium membership to TTS Reader so as to enjoy letting the program make audio files for later downloading.
As you re-listen to the audio file, some topics burn themselves into your memory sooner than others. A waste of time to keep rehearing those parts again.
So clone the original text, renaming it Short.txt or similar. Delete out those blurbs already memorized. Create from it a Short.mp3 file for listening to a further five or ten times. And so on again. And again, and again, each time making shorter and shorter audio files. You get the idea.
I chanced to note that at least one entire segment of the question pool is identical to a portion of the FCC exam for Extra Class. Wording exactly the same, correct and false answers the same, order of questions the same.
As it’s been 40-plus years since I passed for FCC Amateur Extra, discovery of this exact correlation was made quite at random. I dropped one confusingly worded Canadian question into Google, and to my surprise, obtained a link to a study guide showing part of the question pool for FCC Amateur Extra. That one question, plus all those preceding and following. All showed themselves as word-for-word exactly the same, multiple choice answers included.
That, to me, is a rather curious thing. Do both derive from the ITU? Or did one borrow from the other? It's not a big deal in the least. Even so, I’d still like to know.
In closing I’d like to offer my especial thanks to Ian Sparling, VE3ZIS of London, Ontario, who cheefully arranged to administer my exams on a day of my own convenience no regard at all to his own. Also to the St. Mary’s ARC SMARC , in which Ian is senior member.
In Canada, I was happy to learn, a single Volunteer Examiner alone may administer such exams. Ian supervised my exam at the Sarnia Public Library on a Wednesday at 10AM, a time and place very convenient to me as my Canadian wife and I were to be there for just only the one single day, the return leg of a trip to visit her uncle on the further side of Toronto some hours away.
I had made this arrangment with Ian via email and SMS text after several repeated failures to make contact with the one and only VE listed for Pender Island in British Columbia, very much nearer to the valid address in Canada associated with my license application. Silly me, I had thought to be in contact with a member of the Lambton County ARC, which would have been more immediatly proximate to Sarnia. I remember having entered Sarnia into a seach engine for volunteer examiners and being provided a list of three. Then after emailing all three, it was Ian who responded both first, and also most helpfully. And so, thank you Ian, even more than I initially knew, for driving 20 minutes to meet me.
Without Ian’s cheeful assistance, my alternative might have been a remotely administered exam at somewhat more cost and quite a bit more inconvenience. This would have involved setting up via WiFi at the Comfort In in Sarina such that the Bluewater bridge...as seen from the Canadian side...was visible through the window behind me. That or some other readily identifiable location on Canadian soil, as was explained to me in an email while contemplating a fallback option. Lastly, I’ll note that meeting Ian was fun in itself. I’ll surely hope to hook up with Ian again come our next expedition to Ontario to restock the pantry with those goods which my wife Karin sadly can’t find this side of the border. Essential items such as Wagon Wheels (superior in every way to American moon pies), Smarties candy (completely different), British black treacle, and butter tart crusts. Thos plus also properly spicy ginger beer such as Grace Island Soda and Harvey & Vern’s, these for myself.