Foundation Licence Study
The entry level qualification to Amateur Radio is the Foundation License. It is designed to get you involved in amateur radio as quickly as possible. However, before you are allowed to transmit unsupervised it is important that you demonstrate that you know a little bit about how your radio works, the dangers of interfering with other radio users, how not to upset your neighbours or your parents (if you are a young person) and the rules and regulations of holding an Amateur Radio transmitting license.
This knowledge can be obtained in one of two ways; through self-study, or a taught course. BVARS holds classroom sessions where you will be taught the technical and operating procedures and learn the practicalities of operating an Amateur Radio transmitter through a series of practical assessments.
The training is simply to ensure that know how to run your station safely and in a manner that it causes as little interference to other users of the radio spectrum – remember, radio waves can travel right around the world and beyond, so those users could be on the other side of the globe, or even out into space.
All of our classroom sessions are run in a friendly informal atmosphere by experienced radio amateurs to put you at your ease.
Foundation Licence Examination
The examinations are held at the club on a Tuesday evening and we ensure that an appropriate Tuesday is selected to suit you and is a multi-choice test based on what was learned on your course, covering the basic concepts of radio operating on the amateur bands and the licence conditions. Examination papers are marked at the Radio Society of great Britain (RSGB) who will inform you and Ofcom (who issue the licence), this can take approximately ten days.
Once you have received notification that you have passed the practical assessments and test you will be able to contact Ofcom to arrange for a callsign to be issued to you.
In the unfortunate event that you are not successful, your practical assessment results will remain valid for one year. This is to give you enough time to revise your theory and retake the test without having to undertake the practical assessments that you successfully completed the first time around.
Once your new callsign has been issued to you will be able to operate an Amateur Radio station, in accordance with the rules and regulations applicable to Foundation Licence holders, without supervision.