Amateur Question Pools
The Question Pools are developed and maintained by the Question Pool Committee (QPC) of the NCVEC by FCC instruction and Part 97 Rules & Regulation : Subpart F: ยง97.523 Question pools All VECs must cooperate in maintaining one question pool for each written examination element. Each question pool must contain at least 10 times the number of questions required for a single examination. Each question pool must be published and made available to the public prior to its use for making a question set. Each question on each VEC question pool must be prepared by a VE holding the required FCC-issued operator license.
The question pools are normally valid for 4 years and the current Question Pools are as follows:
Element 2 - Technician - Effective July 1, 2018 until June 30, 2022
Element 3 - General - Effective July 1, 2019 until June 30, 2023
Element 4 - Extra - Effective July 1, 2016 until June 30, 2020
Each FCC Element or question pool consists of at least 10 times the number of questions required for a single examination and is released to the public normally 6 months prior to becoming effective for use in examinations to allow pleanty of time for publication and study. Each element or pool has a syllabus that is broken down into main subelement sections(normally 10) and an unlimited number of sub-topic sections under each subelement. Each subelement is numbered with a prefix designating the Element number, example T1, T2 etc, followed by the subtopic letter for the section of each subelement, example T1A,T1B, etc.
The 3 parts of a Question Pool Element Syllabus are:
- SubElement ( T, G, E )
- SubTopic (T1A, G1A, E1A etc)
- Questions and Answers ( T1A01, G1A01, E1A01 etc)
The actual questions are numbered in a format that reflects the element, subelement and subtopic section of the syallabus where the question is found, example: T1A01 etc. Each pool is released with the exact questions and 4 multiple choice answers and the correct answer for each question is designated in ( ) just after each question ; Example: T1A01 (D) some with a rules reference [97.xxx] after the correct answer letter. On the actual exam, the correct answer letter in parentheses, and any rules citations do not appear with the question number.
The Question Pool Committee invites submissions for use in all Amateur Question Pools. Currently the QPC is reviewing and developing a new Element 2 - Technician Class question pool to become effective July 1, 2010. To provide comments or actual questions for consideration to the QPC please use the Feedback/ Input form on the ncvec.org web page or by email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
When submitting actual questions for QPC review please provide the following in plain ASCII text.
(1) Questions must have no more than 210 characters, including spaces, or a maximum of three 70 character lines.
(2) Answers must be no more than 140 characters, including spaces, or two 70 character lines in length.
(3) Each multiple choice question must be accompanied by 4 possible answers. The answers may be in any order, but the the correct answer must be indicated.
(4) Provide resource or Part 97 rule to support correct answer or explaination of the correct answer for QPC review
