Hello all.. I was considering getting my ham radio license. I kinda dropped out of the hobby completely after my divorce several years ago. I used to have a Tech + ticket for several years.

The other day I was digging around and found a bunch of my old stuff. Mainly HT's, power supply, and misc stuff. This all was expensive as I recall. Has me thinking that I could get back into the hobby again. But, I did not renew my ticket and it's been over 10 years maybe?? So, I'll need to go and take the Tech exam and start over and go from there, if I decide to go for it again. I liked 2M / 440 mhz & APRS stuff the best, back many years ago. Although 10 meters was sometimes fun also.

I originally got into the hobby through my government job. Emergency communications for local government, in the unfortunate event, a hurricane or other disaster hits here. Now that I've found these old radios.. and hurricane season approaching.. I'm already planning to do this locally through a local club.

I would suggest some online study and take both the Tech and General exams.  You might even be able to still pass the Tech without studying, but I am sure with just a little effort you could nail both and be a mile ahead of where you were 10 years ago

Buy a study guide and highlight the answers. Read it and take online tests. When you are regularly passing the randomized tests with 80% or higher grades then go take the test. You are GTG at that point.

I recall, the first time that I took the test. It was with my old local gov job. The local government was extremely concerned with the 800 mhz radio system going down in a major hurricane. This was after hurricane Andrew. So, they asked any county government employee, who was interested, to try and get their amateur radio license. That exam is harder than many employees thought.. Most failed as I think nobody studied for it. I passed it without studying. But, I do recall that  passing that 5 wpm morse code test (years later) was a challenge! Haha..
All in all I enjoyed it as a hobby at home. Eventually was in charge of all  emergency communications, for all the stuff (vhf/uhf & other commo) for a large section of the local government.

Well, no code test anymore of course.  As you were a tech +, if you had kept your license up to date you would have been "grandfathered" to General as you had the code element and the element 3 test was the same for tech and general at the time.

But all of that is water under the bridge now, and you wil need to start over.  But as noted above, taking both tech and general written tests is not all that difficult.

hamstudy.org is your friend. Study both tech and general, and you can get your general ticket in a month just studying while on the shitter. If you are full of shit, maybe 3 weeks.

Study for both your Tech and your General.
Be aware that HF can quickly become habit forming. Sunspot Cycle 25 is just ramping up and the upper HF bands are coming to life.
I've worked a bunch of DX stations running 5 Watts CW into a simple dipole antenna.

Yes.. water under the bridge.
I'm dreaming of my old antenna farm of Cushcraft.. Loved the 2 meter vertical and dual band beams from that company.
Mainly I see it more as an invaluable communication tool. Ham radio does not go down. If a serious hurricane, or other disaster hits.. ham radio is the commo that can and does get out.

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I second the hamstudy.org  I used the hamstudy app on my phone to pass all three tests (not at once....lol) Good Luck!

If you once knew CW, picking it back up again shouldn't be that hard. It offers a lot of advantages over 'phone because a lot can be done with moderate power and simple antennas.

CW is interesting. I've never tried it. Back before the changes took effect, on the code testing, I had a desire to study the 5 WPM, to be ready for the next level of exams.
There is a testing date and location coming fairly soon and I'm leaning on calling or emailing the VE team to see if I can just walk in and take it. According to their website it states 'walk ins welcome'.

You should definitely do it. Get your Extra.

Use hamstudy.org in the (free) STUDY mode. Forget practice tests. Just keep hitting the questions in Study mode. Why do it this way? Because it will tell you instantly if your answer is right or wrong. If wrong, you click the upper corner of the question and it will give you the full explanation. It keeps cumulative track of how you are doing.

First, go to the FCC website and register for your "FRN". You'll need an FRN one way or another and having the federal registration number ahead of time will expedite things for both you and the exam team.

If the exam team in your area allows walk-ins, then yes, you can just show up and take the exams.

Our VE Team also encourages walk-ins, but that is because we don't want anyone to not feel welcome, or to think it's too much trouble to take the exams. Truth is, you can help us help you more efficiently by pre-registering for the exam session. This will speed things up at the exam session because the member of the exam team that does registrations can have everything ready ahead of time and not take up valuable exam time with mundane paperwork.

Our general rule is that if a candidate passes the Tech exam by a good margin and tells us they have studied for General, we will let them try the General exam during the same session. If one barely passes the Tech exam and has not really studied for General, it will likely be a waste of time for all involved and we would probably not allow them to take the second exam. Try to remember that we are all just unpaid volunteers devoting our time to try to help you get licensed.

Be advised that there is now a $35 fee for your license. We as a VE team do not collect this, we simply administer the exams and turn in the results, then the candidate has 10 days to log onto the FCC site and pay for it.

Thank you and good information. I had not thought of the FRN number in advance. Might go for the General ticket also (just to have it).. But, I do not have an HF rig now. Maybe HF one day.

Getting your general will be that little push necessary to get an HF rig.

And one more vote for hamstudy.org from me.

I told my VE team that I hadn’t studied at all for Extra and in fact shorted my tech studying to switch gears to general when I heard of a short notice test session.  They strongly encouraged me to take the Extra anyhow.  I might pass they said and if I don’t I get a look at it and get a little experience. I forget my score now but it was 26 out of 50 iirc. . I did tell them I didn’t want to waste their time going for the trifecta.  They still pushed me to take it.  

I passed Extra 2-3 months later at the next session.  I did study a lot though as I was burning off my vacation time prior to retirement.

+1 on ham study.  A great resource and I preferred the format.

My method I tweaked for extra that I recommend;

- get the ARRL book(s)
- read a section or two in the book
- do the hamstudy drill down methods question just for those sections until you are solid on them, don’t do the random questions for the whole test yet
- do a other section or couple sections as you see fit, drill down those sections and review the previous set of questions if you aren’t fresh on them
-after you get about a third or half way through the book start taking an occasional practice test to gage your progress, tI would take one in the morning with my coffee and another at night after studying.  Seeing your practice grade progress helps your confidence.


Doing that way and you well memorize the test by repetition.  Hopefully you are learning the material or even better remembering what you learned years ago.  

For you with your background I think getting to General is a slam dunk.  None of this is really new and at least with the current modules General is just a modest expansion of the Tech module series.  I felt it merely fleshed it where it should have been instead of the Tech skim level of coverage.

Easy Peasy for you.  If you have time to study all three go for it while the info is in your head and your brain in switched on to study mode.   I strongly suggest to at least do Tech and General together in one sitting as they overlap so much.   Then if you don’t have time to study Extra for the trifecta test session at least stay in study mode and study extra for the next appropriate test session!  If you wait most normal people will dull their last batch of knowledge if they don’t keep studying.  Wait two years to go for extra and you likely will have to brush up on the concepts in Tech and General.  

Then again just being moderately active in General HF and a lot of things will just get inside your head by doing.