SYALLABUS OF THE RADIO AMATEUR EXAMINATION: LICENCE B

The examination lasts for 3 hours and will be divided into 2 papers; paper 1 consisting of 35 multiple-choice questions takes 1 hour while paper 2, a 55 multiple-choice questions takes 1 hour 45 minutes.

PAPER 1
(a) Licencing Conditions
- Types of licence available and qualifications necessary.
- Conditions laid down in the Amateur Radio Licences, including of the notes appended and understanding of the schedule of frequency bands, power and types of transmission.

(b) Transmitter Inteference
- Frequency stability, consequence of poor stability risks of inteference, out of band radiatioon.
- Spurious emmisions; harmonics of radiated frequency, parasitic oscilators, excessive sidebands due to overmodulation. Key clicks, method of suppression.
- Frequency Checking.

(c) EMC
- understanding of EMC, EMC problems
- intefering signals paths
- methods of improving the immunity of affected equipments.
- improving station designs (grounding,screening,filtering,antenna locations, designs, cables,)
- method of approach and basic checks required when investigating EMC problems.


PAPER 2
(a) Operating Procedures.
- Calling procedures in telegraphy/telephony, general calls
- Log keeping, Use of Q codes and other abbreviations, phonetic alphabets
- Use of Satelites, repeaters
- Band Planning
- Safety in amateur station

(b) Electrical Theory
- basic electrical, Voltage, current, resistance, power
- The Sine wave- amplitude, frequency, peak to peak, rms value, phase angle etc.
- Inductance, capacitance, reactance, impedence; calculation of resonant frequency, amplification of current, voltage at resonance Q factor
- power and transfomers

(c) Solid State Devices.
- Characteristics of diodes, transistors - npn, pnp;
- use of solid devices ( amplifiers, oscillators, mixers, multipleir, demodulator, swicthes)

(d) Receivers
- principles of reception of morse, telephony (ssb ,fm); the superheterodyne principle of reception, demodulation, audio amplification
- advantages/disadvantages of high/low intermediate frequency;
- typical receivers; use of BFO, characteristic of SSB, AM, FM
- auto gain control

(e) Transmitters
- Use of oscillators, stability of variable frequency and crystal controlled oscillators, synthesizers.
- Transmitters stages, tuning
- Methods of modulation and types of emmision (ssb, fm)

(f) Propagation and Antennas.
- Ionsphere, troposphere, atmosphere, field strength, polarisation, maximum usable frequency, critical frequency, sunspot cycle, skip zone
- Electromagnetic fields
- Calculation of frequency and wavelength
- Types of Antenna, constructions (dipole, yagi, end fed, vertical)
- Transmission Lines, Standing Wave Ratio (SWR), matching

(g) Measurements
- Instruments used for measurement ac,dc and rf;
multimeters, oscilloscope, wavemeters. - Dummy Loads.