Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I had been wanting to get in to Ham Radio for a long time. A few years ago I took the leap and picked up the prior edition of this book, but I was taking classes again and ended up putting it on the back burner again for awhile. This recent July I picked up my book again with the intention of learning only to find that my volume was no longer current as of July 1st. So I tracked down a copy and went to work.
The book did a fairly efficient and straightforward job of presenting the information and properly cross-referencing between the pages and the question pool. Unlike in the prior version, the exact point in the text where a question in the question pool will reference it is now marked with the relevant question number. The previous book ended each segment with the questions you needed to study, and the question pool did list the relevant page for the question, but this edition goes a step forward by labeling the exact point in the text where that question is answered. This is useful when you are reviewing the questions for a section and miss one. Instead of rereading large chunks of a segment or just trying to memorize the answer without the facts behind it, you can now easily find and read that specific part of the section.
There were a few instances worth noting however in which the question and its answer were not in the text. The question pool will still refer you to a page for such questions but look all you want there is no section of text that details the answer. This is rare and most questions and answers are fleshed out, but there's a few occasions over the course of the book where this simply wasn't the case unfortunately.
The books organization works out pretty well with each chapter going in a sensible order and the content organized by subject. The chapters don't follow the exact order the question pool does, but I'm thankful for this since the pool tends to jump around between subjects a great deal and it'd be a tougher read if the books content had done the same. While the book is also rather large, a lot of it is taken up by pictures and charts, and only about 2/3rds of the book needs to be read. The other third of the book consists of intro chapters, a glossary, question pool, radio buying guide and a few pages of ads in the back; so it's not as bad as it may look.
The most telling piece of information is that my online test runs prior to reading the book ended in failure every time (I just wanted to see how well I could do without reading the book). After reading the book I took well over a dozen more online tests and passed every one. When the day came for me to take the test and actually earn my license I was able to breeze right through and passed the test easily on the first try. In preparation for the test I read several chapters a night over a weekend (Fri-Sun) and took my test the following Wednesday. I definitely owe my license to this book and highly recommend it for anyone interested in picking up the hobby. The information contained within will remain relevant as well, so it's a useful tool to hang on to even after you've completed the exam.
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