Ham Radio
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99 free Ham Radio trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Ham radio started as an insult for telegraphers with clumsy fists and became a worldwide hobby of about two million licensed operators who bounce signals off the Moon, chat with astronauts and keep talking when the phones go down. Its amateurs discovered skywave propagation and helped found the quartz crystal industry. These 99 questions cover the practice and the rules: the ITU and IARU, the three US licence classes, vanity call signs, UK and Canadian prefixes, nets and Elmers, CW and the Q code, SSB versus FM, packet radio and FT8, EchoLink, amateur television, EME and ARISS, power limits from 25 W Foundation licences to 2.25 kW in Canada, and the two countries that still issue no licences at all. Every answer is cited to a page we checked. Play it solo or print it for a club night.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The 'ham' in ham radio began as an insult aimed at whom?
Telegraphers with poor Morse skills
Telegraphers with poor Morse skills were mocked as 'ham-fisted' by 19th-century professional wire operators; radio amateurs later adopted the jibe as a badge of pride.
Q 02Which body establishes the amateur radio service through its Radio Regulations?
International Telecommunication Union
International Telecommunication Union Radio Regulations define the amateur and amateur-satellite services and allocate their bands; each national government then licenses operators and issues call signs.
Q 03Under FCC rules, at least how often must a US amateur station give its call sign while on the air?
Every ten minutes
Every ten minutes, and again when an exchange ends, a US station must send its call sign; the rule's stated purpose is to make the origin of a transmission known to anyone receiving it.
Q 04Under the definition adopted in 1927, what makes a radio operator an amateur?
Personal aim, no pecuniary interest
Personal aim, no pecuniary interest: the 1927 wording lives on in today's rules, which is why hams may not be paid to operate or carry messages for hire.
Q 05What is the worldwide umbrella body for national ham societies?
IARU
IARU, the International Amateur Radio Union, was founded in Paris in 1925 so that radio amateurs of many countries could speak with one voice at international conferences, as it still does today.
Q 06Radio hams who practise 'EME' communication bounce their signals off what?
The Moon
The Moon is the reflector in Earth-Moon-Earth work, nicknamed moonbounce; professionals dropped the technique once satellites arrived in the 1960s, but amateurs kept it going as a challenge.
Q 07Radio amateurs are credited with discovering which propagation phenomenon?
Skywave
Skywave propagation — signals refracted back to Earth by the ionosphere — was demonstrated by amateurs in 1923, when transatlantic contacts on short waves showed bands dismissed as useless could span the world.
Q 08In a ham radio 'fox hunt', what are the competitors trying to track down?
A hidden transmitter
A hidden transmitter, the 'fox', is tucked away somewhere in town or out in the woods, and the hunters use direction-finding antennas to home in on its signal.
Q 09In amateur radio, what does the abbreviation 'DX' denote?
Long-distance contact
Long-distance contact is what 'DX' denotes, from telegraph shorthand for 'distance'; chasing it is a sport in itself, with expeditions travelling to remote, empty places just to put them on the air.
Q 10What are scheduled on-air meetings of operators called?
Nets
Nets are directed by a net control station that calls in participants in turn; some are emergency-preparedness drills, others weekly social round-tables or traffic-handling sessions.
Q 11Which of these is an amateur radio operating award?
Worked All States
Worked All States goes to hams who submit written proof of reaching all 50 US states, traditionally the QSL postcards that operators mail one another to confirm they really did talk.
Q 12Which voice mode is favoured on the shortwave bands because of its efficiency?
Single sideband
Single sideband drops the carrier and one of AM's two mirror-image sidebands, so all of the transmitter's output goes into the part that carries the voice, in about half the bandwidth.
Q 13Morse code transmission is also known by which two-letter abbreviation?
CW
CW stands for continuous wave: Morse is sent by switching a plain carrier on and off, a signal so simple and narrow that it can be copied by ear when a voice would be lost in the noise.
Q 21Through which programme do astronauts make amateur contacts from the International Space Station?
ARISS
ARISS — Amateur Radio on the International Space Station — schedules contacts between licensed crew members and schools; it succeeded the SAREX shuttle programme of the 1980s and 1990s.
Q 22In the United States, who gives newcomers the test for an amateur radio licence?
Volunteer examiners
Volunteer examiners, themselves licensed hams, run the test sessions in their own communities; the FCC never sees the candidate and simply issues the licence once they report a pass.
Q 23What is the entry-level amateur licence in both the UK and Australia called?
Foundation
Q 14Until what year did international rules require Morse proficiency for frequencies below 30 MHz?
2003
2003 was when the World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-03) made Morse testing optional for access below 30 MHz; the United States dropped its own requirement in February 2007.
Q 15Which internationally understood shorthand system is used in Morse contacts?
Q code
Q code began around 1909 as a British list of three-letter signals for ships and coast stations, and it spread because operators with no common language could still understand one another.
Q 16Which digital mode, popular since 2017, allows efficient weak-signal shortwave contacts?
FT8
FT8 squeezes each message into a short, tightly coded burst that software can decode even when the signal is too faint to hear; its co-designer Joe Taylor is a Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist.
Q 17Packet radio, developed in the 1970s, uses which protocol?
AX.25
AX.25 adapts the commercial X.25 protocol for the airwaves by using each station's call sign as its address, which keeps every packet identified in the way the licence rules demand.
Q 18EchoLink and IRLP connect distant ham stations over what?
The internet
The internet carries the audio using the same voice-over-IP methods as an app-based phone call, so a handheld radio in one country can talk through a station in another.
Q 19On which band does full-motion amateur television typically operate?
70 cm
70 cm is the lowest-frequency ham band wide enough for a full television picture, which needs megahertz of room that the narrow shortwave bands simply do not have.
Q 20What do hams commonly call the room or building housing their station?
The shack
The shack is what hams call the radio room, a name said to go back to the earliest days, when noisy spark transmitters were often banished to a separate shed or outbuilding.
Foundation is the first of three licence stages in both countries and is meant as a gateway: its course checks that a newcomer can operate a station safely and without interfering with other radio users.
Q 24Which US agency issues amateur radio licences?
Federal Communications Commission
Federal Communications Commission Part 97 rules govern US amateur radio; the FCC grants licences on the basis of exams run by volunteer examiner teams and assigns call signs from its database.
Q 25What is the highest US ham licence class?
Extra
Extra, formally Amateur Extra, conveys every US amateur privilege on all bands; the tempting 'Advanced' is a grandfathered class that existing holders keep but nobody new can earn.
Q 26What does a US ham need to keep a licence beyond its ten-year term?
Renewal form
Renewal form, not a retest: a ham who lets the licence lapse even gets a two-year grace period in which to file, though the station must stay off the air until the renewal is granted.
Q 27As of 2024, which of these countries bars its own citizens from holding an amateur radio licence?
North Korea
North Korea issues no amateur licences to its own citizens, which makes it one of the hardest places on Earth for award-chasing hams to reach.
Q 28In North America, what are experienced hams who mentor newcomers called?
Elmers
Elmers are the veterans who coach a newcomer through the exam and that first nervous time on the air; the nickname is credited to a fellow ham, Rodney Newkirk, W9BRD.
Q 29Which is the oldest national amateur radio society, formed in 1910?
Wireless Institute of Australia
Wireless Institute of Australia traces back to a Sydney hotel meeting in March 1910, where experimenters banded together to put their case to the government, three years before Britain's society formed.
Q 30What is a self-chosen call sign called?
Vanity
Vanity call signs let a ham pick a specific available call, and the rules even allow a close relative to claim the call sign of a ham who has died, keeping it in the family.