ARROW Communication Association

On Saturday, April 12, 2025, the ARROW VE Team conducted one of its biggest regularly-scheduled test sessions so far. We hosted 17 candidates, with 16 earning their Technician Class license or upgrading to General or Extra Class.

According to James, AE8JF, ARROW president, we are seeing more and more people choose ARROW to take their amateur radio license tests. As you can see by the map at right, the candidates came from all across Southeast Michigan and Northern Ohio, and six people drove at least an hour each way to attend the ARROW test session. This included 10 year old and 15 year old, who both passed the Tech test.

One remarkable result is that even with 17 candidates, the test session took less than one hour to complete. The team attributes this to our use of electronic test using ExamTools. Recently, the ARROW board approved the purchase of 10 additional tablets for use during test sessions. The additional capacity allowed the team complete the testing and grading by  by 9:50 am.

Well done, team! 

ARROW conducts amateur radio license test sessions every second Saturday of the month at 9 am. For more information, consult our event calendar.

Here are two photos from the test session:

On Tuesday, January 21, 2025, Dan, KB6NU spoke about the grant he received from ARDC and his experience over the course of 2024 teaching his one-day Tech class at hacker cons. He taught his class four times in all, and helped more than 100 “hackers” get their licenses. 

He found that hacker cons are very fertile ground for amateur radio, and that many attendees already had amateur radio licenses. In addition, he felt that hackers are just the kind of people that we want in amateur radio. They are generally younger than the current ham population, and they are interested in doing more than just yakking on the radio.

To view Dan’s slides, click here.

Dan, KB6NU, explaining why hacker cons are fertile ground for recruiting radio amateurs. Photo: Ralph Katz, AA8RK.