Foundation Topic Study

Study the Foundation amateur radio licence exam one syllabus section at a time. Choose the sections to practise and see your accuracy in each.

What's on the Paper

Licensing conditions and station identification: What the licence allows, call signs and locators, identifying your station, supervision, messages, EMF assessments, and the power and bands in Schedule 1.
Technical aspects: Conductors and insulators, current, voltage, resistance and power with simple Ohm's law sums, frequency and wavelength, digital signals and batteries.
Transmitters and receivers: AM, FM and SSB, transmitter and receiver block diagrams, over-modulation, demodulation and software-defined radio.
Feeders and antennas: Coax and twin feeder, baluns, dipoles and Yagis, polarisation, gain and ERP calculations, SWR, antenna matching units and connectors.
Propagation: How the ionosphere returns HF signals, line-of-sight range at VHF and UHF, sporadic E, ducting, and why antenna height matters.
Electromagnetic compatibility: How transmissions cause interference and how it gets in, ferrite chokes and filters, dummy loads, antenna siting, RF earths and handling complaints.
Good operating practices and procedures: Calling CQ, the phonetic alphabet, /P, /M and /A suffixes, logging in UTC, band plans, repeaters, RST reports, digital modes and satellites.
Safety: Mains plugs, fuses and RCBOs, batteries, tools and soldering, ladders, RF exposure, lightning, overhead power lines and portable operation.