Getting or Advancing Your Amateur License

Within Sumter County, The Villages Amateur Radio Club offers and Technician Class and Test (k4vrc.com) beginning in September and a General Class and Test beginning in January.  Check their website and sign up for a class.  Monthly testing on the third Saturday of each month is provided by the Lake Amateur Radio Club (k4fc.org)  Check with each Club as to fulfilling your training and testing needs. 

It is recommend that you use www.hamtestonline.com for upgrading to General or Extra. It is also a great way to obtain your Technician (first) license.

Scheduled Radio Nets

The Nets enable one to apply some of the material that was contained in the Technician Class manual.  Items such as the ITU phonetic alphabet, some of the Q abbreviations, and other information.  Additional information can be found under Ecomm training on this website.   Other opportunities for polishing one's skills will be classroom training exercises and fairly frequent event exercises that will provide different tasks to perform utilizing communications.

Online Emergency Communications Training

FEMA Courses:

Not all courses are required.  See Membership for more information as it has the basis for each organizational position.  These courses require a FEMA Student Identification Number (SID).  If you do not have one, register for one at http://cdp.dhs.gov/feamsid.  You will provide the SID when you take the class test.  Shortly after taking the test, you will receive an email stating that you passed and a link to your certificate or that you failed and encouraging you to review and take the test again.  Find a safe place to keep your SID as you will need it to take additional courses and if you lose your certificate.

IS-100.b  Introduction to Incident Command System, ICS-100
IS-200.b  ICS for Single Resources and initial Action Incidents
IS-700.a  National Incident Management System (NIMS) An Introduction
IS-800.b  National Response Framework, An Introduction

Suggested FEMA Courses:

For those who are or might be in an Emergency Operations Center environment, this is a useful course.

IS-775  EOC Management and Operations

Optional FEMA Courses:

These courses will broaden your perspectives regarding disaster and how complicated they are.  There are also courses to build useful disaster skills.   These are also listed as pre-requisites for one or the other ARRL EmComm courses list below

IS-1       Emergency Manager: An Orientation to the Position
IS-22     Are You Ready? An In-depth Guide to Citizen Preparedness
IS-26     Guide to Points of Distribution (ESF-6 & 8)
IS-120.a An Introduction to Exercises
IS-230.b Fundamentals of Emergency Management
IS-235.b Emergency Planning  
IS-240.b Leadership & Influence
IS-241.b Decision Making & Problem Solving
IS-242.b Effective Communications
IS-244.b Developing and Managing Volunteers
IS-250.a ESF-15 A New Approach to Emergency Communications/Information Distribution
IS-806   ESP-6 Mass Care, Emergency Assistance, Housing, and Human Services>
IS-808   ESP-8 Public Health and Medical Services 

EC-001- Level I - Introduction to Amateur Radio Emergency Communications- $50/85
- Pre-requisites  ICS-100, 700

EC-016 Public Service and Emergency Communications Management for Radio Amateurs- $35
- Pre-requisites  EC-001, SKYWARN Basic Certification, IS-100, 200, 700, 800
- Courses that are referenced: IS-120, 230, 235, 240, 241, 242, 244
 -Courses that are recommended but not required: IS-1, 250

There is NO reimbursement toward money spent on ARRL courses.

Net Control Station (NCS) Training (Optional):

Becoming a Net Control Operator is a greatly needed skill that everyone should strive for.  Sooner or later, there will be a situation where you are the only one arround.

NCS Training

Questions every NCS should ask themselves

NCS Self Evaluation

Just In Time Disaster Training Videos

The videos found in this library cover disaster related mitigation, preparation, response and recovery training for a wide variety of areas.

Just In Time Disaster Training - Library