Licensing

If you are studying for your first amateur radio license, the test you take today is not the test your Elmer took a few years ago. On December 18, 2025, the NCVEC Question Pool Committee released the 2026-2030 Technician Class (Element 2) question pool, and it became mandatory for every exam session starting July 1, 2026. The old 2022-series exam booklets expired on June 30, so anyone testing this year is working from the new material.

Ask most GMRS users where their service came from and you will get a shrug. But the General Mobile Radio Service is one of the oldest radio services the FCC ever created — older than CB, older than FRS, and nearly as old as amateur radio licensing itself.