About 73·STUDY

73·STUDY is a free study site for the three US amateur radio license exams: Technician, General, and Amateur Extra. It's built and maintained by 73·STUDY Editorial, a small independent project with no ties to NCVEC, the FCC, ARRL, or any commercial test-prep company. "73" is ham radio shorthand for "best regards," the sign-off you'll hear at the end of most contacts.

Where the questions come from

Every question, answer choice, and figure on this site is transcribed directly from the current NCVEC question pool for that license class, the same public-domain pool every VE team draws exam questions from. We do not modify, paraphrase, or reorder the official question text or answer options. When NCVEC issues an errata revision, we re-parse the pool from the updated source document rather than hand-editing individual questions, so the question text on this site should always match what you'll see in the exam room. Pool versions, effective dates, and source URLs for each class are public in this project's own source log.

How explanations are written

The explanation under each question is original writing, composed from the underlying technical concept or the specific FCC rule behind it, not copied or paraphrased from any manual, textbook, or competing study site. For every explanation we ask a simple test: could this sentence have been written by someone who'd only ever read the primary source (the FCC rule text, or the basic electronics concept it's testing) and never seen anyone else's explanation of this exact question? If a phrase or framing feels like it's echoing something rather than derived fresh, it gets rewritten before it ships.

Where a question tests an FCC rule, the explanation cites the specific rule section. Where a question tests a technical concept (Ohm's law, propagation, component identification), the explanation walks through the underlying reasoning, not just "the answer is C because the pool says so." Questions that reference a circuit diagram are checked directly against that diagram, component by component, before the explanation is written, not answered from a general assumption about what that kind of figure usually shows.

What we get wrong

We're not licensed instructors and this isn't a substitute for the ARRL license manual or a real study group if you want one. If you find an explanation that's technically wrong, unclear, or missing context that would help, that's a real bug, not a style disagreement, and we'd rather know about it than have it sit there. Use the Contact Us form to tell us. In the meantime, treat any NCVEC-sourced question text as authoritative over anything we say about it, and cross-check anything that matters against 47 CFR Part 97 directly.

Who runs this

73 Study is operated by a single independent person, not a company, and not affiliated with NCVEC, the FCC, ARRL, or any commercial test-prep vendor. We keep the operator anonymous on purpose, no personal name, address, or phone number is published anywhere on this site, so "73 Study" is the identity you'll see everywhere: in the footer, in the Privacy Policy, the Terms & Conditions, and on the Contact Us page, which is a form rather than a published email address for the same reason.

No account, no tracking you can't see

There's no login and no backend. Every practice attempt, exam score, and per-subelement accuracy stat lives in your browser's localStorage and nowhere else. Clear your browser data and it's gone; we never see it. Practice mode and per-subelement study are free with no catch. A future paid tier (full exam simulation history, spaced repetition, detailed analytics) is planned but not active yet, and won't change what's free today.