There are 3 classes of license, and each consecutive class gives you more privileges than the last. From least privileged to most: 1. Technician: Access to fre

There are 3 classes of license, and each consecutive class gives you more privileges than the last. From least privileged to most: 1. Technician: Access to frequencies that let you contact people in your city. 2. General: Access to frequencies that bounce off the ionosphere and let you contact people all around the world. 3. Amateur extra: Access to more frequencies yet, but none of these frequencies give you abilities past what General can do (worldwide contacts). I recommend going straight to general. It strikes a good test-difficulty to privileges-granted ratio. The easiest way to study is to just memorize the answers to all the questions. Yes, that's right: the licensing test question bank is published and it's not hard to memorize the entire thing. This site has flashcards and practice exams: https://hamstudy.org/ https://hamstudy.org/ If you practice for 15 to 30 minutes a day, you can be ready for your general test in less than a week. Once you're ready, find a testing site in your area and go: http://www.arrl.org/find-an-amateur-radio-license-exam-session http://www.arrl.org/find-an-amateur-radio-license-exam-sessi... Then buy (maybe even build) a radio and have fun! What can do you once you have your license? Off the top of my head: - Talk with people in distant countries. - Build radios and test them out. - Build antennas and test them out. - Make contacts through satellites that have ham radio repeaters. - Join an emergency communications org like ARES (http://www.arrl.org/ares http://www.arrl.org/ares). - Talk with people in different countries using digital modes (like a very early chat room i guess?) - Make your friends get licenses and use it for comms when backpacking, rafting, whatever. - Make contacts by bouncing signals off the moon (ok this one is hard).