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Welcome to Amtoc Live, call in, let's talk, Neil's
your go - Good evening, everyone. It's time for
HamTalk Live. It's episode number 236. Talking
about remote license testing. Recorded live on
Thursday, November 12th, 2020. I'm your host,
Neil Rapp, WB9VPG. Thanks for tuning in to this
episode of HamTalk Live tonight. We're joined
by Marcel Steiber, AI6MS. And we'll take your
calls live in a few minutes. Last week, here
on the show, Jay Adrick, K8CJY, and Lee Height,
K8CLI, we're here to talk about the new Drake
exhibit at the National Voice of America Museum
of Broadcasting. So if you missed that show,
you can listen anytime. at HamTalkLive .com or
on your favorite podcast app or YouTube. Or you
can always catch the rebroadcast of HamTalk Live
over on WTWW 5085 A .M. Saturday afternoons at
about 3 .30 p .m. Eastern Time. That's every
Saturday afternoon. Well, we had some technical
difficulties a couple of weeks ago. Windows Update
decided to run for three hours and I only gave
it two. So the phones were not working correctly
when Rob Sherwood was here. So he's actually
agreed to come back. So we're going to have him
back on next week. and we'll do our questions
and answers with him but in the meantime he's
had a chance to check out the IC 705. So we're
going to talk about his results from testing
the IC 705 as well. but we'll do that next week
so be ready to call in next week and ask those
questions I know the phone lines were jammed
up and I couldn't get it to answer so we'll take
care of that next week and I'll start the computer
up a day early or something well anyway get your
questions ready to go tonight for Marcel and
We'll talk about testing tonight if you're listening
to us live on Thursday night. Give us a call
and I'll give you the phone number here so you
can have it ready. It's 859 -982 -7373. Again
the number 859 -982 -7373. We'll give that out
a few more times. Before time to call in, we're
going to talk a little bit first and then in
the final segment we'll open up the phone line.
So we'll give you a chance to do that. You can
also tweet your questions whenever you want.
It's at HamTalk Live over on Twitter and I'll
be checking that throughout the evening as well.
So we'll get those questions in and if you're
logged in on Spreaker you can type a comment
there. well. So I'll be back with Marcel right
after this word from Tower Electronics right
here on HamTalk Live. I'm sorry to bother you
but I'm having an antenna party and I ran out
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-plated PL 259s from Tower Electronics be too
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you. You saved my life the other night. Oh, the
PL -259s from Tower Electronics? Yes, they were
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works like a charm. Then how can you ever thank
me? I'll try to think of something. Don't be
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anytime at PL -259 .com. or call 920 -435 -2973.
They have adapters, cables, antennas, soldering
supplies, and meters too. HamTalk Live. The longer
you listen, the later it gets. Welcome back to
HamTalk Live. Thanks to Scott and Jill at Tower
Electronics for sponsoring the show tonight.
They help bring HamTalk Live your way each and
every week. It's great to see them last weekend
over at Bedford, Indiana. And now they're down
in Florida. They're gonna be at Fort Walton Beach,
Florida this weekend, November 13th and 14th.
Then they'll be in Montgomery, Alabama, November
20th and 21st, Ocala, Florida, December 4th and
5th. Plant City, Florida December 11th and 12th
Jack Moyers tailgate in Orlando January 16th
Arcadia, Florida January 23rd in Dalton, Georgia
February 27th and of course, that's all kovat
permitting but you can find them anytime online
at PL -259 .com My guest tonight is Marcel Steber
AI6MS He's been an amateur radio operator since
2008 while attending the California Polytechnic
State University in San Luis Obispo and he was
the president of the Cal Poly Amateur Radio Club
W6BHZ and is currently the industry advisor to
the club He graduated with a master's degree
in electrical engineering, concentrating on RF
and communications, and writing his thesis on
radio direction finding network receiver design
for low cost public service applications. Marcel
currently serves as the chair of the Cal Poly
Electrical Engineering Industry Advisory Board.
He is an assistant emergency coordinator in the
city of Cupertino, serving as the trustee and
technical lead for the Cupertino ARIES UHF repeater.
W6 TDM and as the project lead for the Cupertino
Ares Arcnet project, which is building up a high
speed wireless intranet for the emergency responders
in Cupertino. Marcel regularly volunteers at
local repeater work days as an RF technician
and tower climber and enjoys providing communications
for local bike rides and triathlons. He also
volunteers as a technical advisor to several
event management companies. and local repeater
groups. He's an ARRL life member and has helped
license over 1 ,400 hams, we'll say, 1 ,384 is
what we have here, since 2009. Most recently
working to develop processes and train teams
using fully remote examination methods. And for
more information, check out AI6 Mike Sierra on
QRZ. So Marcel, welcome to the show. Thanks so
much for having me, Neil. Really glad to be here
today. And we were talking before the show, as
I normally do, and we didn't get a chance. I
actually think that we've talked, or at least
my students have talked to you, because W6BHZ
is a very familiar call sign from School Club
Roundup. Quite possible. We've we've actually
worked each other That's very very possible.
Yeah, the club just goes through its stages of
activity and always enjoys getting on school
club roundup It's always great to talk to other
students from around the the nation and sometimes
the world even which is great. So yeah or tying
together some of the the teacher stuff and Ham
radio tonight because we're talking about Testing
and and some of these things that we're talking
about tonight are are things that I am going
through constantly with trying to test Students
and in getting ways to electronically test students
with hybrid and and then now with the pandemic
remote And and so these are some of the things
that that I'm doing all the time, but now it's
It's coming over into the amateur radio world.
So there's been a lot of talk about this. There's
been some going on up in Alaska and there's been
some experimenting going on. The FCC commented
that, yeah, it's fine. Go ahead and try it out.
But the pandemic created a larger demand for
this service and there was some resistance. But
you were a part of a group that spearheaded the
effort to make it more available So tell us a
little bit about how this remote testing came
into the the state that it is right now Yeah,
thanks for the intro Neil. I think you you've
covered a lot of the key points I kind of want
to just start back at the beginning a little
bit the FCC uses what is known as a VEC or volunteer
exam coordinator since about 1984 it used to
be that you had to go to the FCC to get your
license Then in 1984, the FCC said, OK, we're
going to allow these volunteer organizations
to administer exams. And currently, there are
14 active VECs. And then like you said, yeah,
in 2014, the FCC actually amended part 97 and
said you can explicitly do remote exams. So they
changed some of the verbiage in the regulations
to say, hey, it's fine if your VEs are not all,
so if your volunteer examiners are not all co
-located with the applicants that are taking
the test. So that had been used for a number
of years, so since 2014, notably the Anchorage
Amateur Radio Club VEC up in Alaska. They obviously
have a lot of challenges with internet and availability,
just because it's a very spread out and widespread
state. And AWRL did a number of sessions in Antarctica
and in Hawaii that made the news. You can find
some articles on those online using remote exam
methods. So those all worked fine. And those
we called proctored remote exams. So the candidate
almost always had someone there. Usually they
had like one local volunteer examiner and then
the other volunteer examiners would be observing
remotely. So the big change, like you said, now
coming into 2020 with shelter in place, that
having that local proctor was a problem for a
lot. It has been a problem for some people for
a while with just access or their nearest exam
session was a 200 mile drive away. But with the
pandemic, it really emphasized the need for this.
So back in March, one or two dozen of us got
together initially on Twitter. And then we formed
a base camp, just an online collaboration tool
to kind of brainstorm what's going to make the
most sense here. How can we develop some tools
quickly to help support the amateur radio community
and continue giving exams? If you just look at
the statistics, once the pandemic hit, the number
of exam licenses that were granted minus the
backlog of some of the mailed in sessions from
just before the lockdown, it dropped very significantly.
So it estimated somewhere in the 80, 90 % drop
in number of exams. Some places were still able
to hold in person, but most couldn't. So yeah,
so we sat down and said, well, how can we do
this? And the obvious solution would be using
some form of video conferencing and then some
form of computer -based testing. So computer
-based testing is not new by any means. It's
been around for quite a while. exam tools actually
the software we're using now for most remote
exams has been used by a lot of VE teams for
many many years doing kind of hybrid in -person
exams where students will take or applicants
will take the exams on like laptop computers
or tablet computers in an exam room still with
the VEs and Anchorage of course they're using
computer -based exams as well they have their
you know one local proctor and then the VEs are
remote in their exam software so Those have been
around for a while and a lot of that applied
very directly to what we're doing in the remote
world. So back in March, March 26, I think, 2020
was the very first time that we know of that
a fully remote exam was administered for amateur
radio, which is pretty exciting. So we had W5YI
and a number of volunteer examiners hop on a
Zoom call and use the existing exam tool software,
which again was designed for in -person exams
to administer an exam. And since then, since
March, that group has really sat down and developed
and figured out how to improve this. So exam
tools is developed by Richard Bateman, KD7BBC.
For those that don't know, he's the same guy
that runs hamstudy .org and Signal Stuff, the
one that makes the super elastic signal stick
antennas for your HTs. He doesn't pay me, but
I actually recommend them. I've got looking at
a bunch of them here on my bench. And those actually
the proceeds of that go and help support these
efforts. So that's my little plug there for,
you know, support HEM study and support exam
tools by buying super elastic signal sticks from
signal stuff. So that's my one plug that I'll
give. We have since since March, we sat down
and said, OK, well, how do we improve the software?
Right. So, you know, with that software being
designed for in person. initially was really,
really cumbersome. You had to remote control
the candidate's computer and enter passwords
remotely, which wasn't good for anyone, for security
or for anything. But we were able to find a way
to at least unblock and start doing some examinations.
And this was pretty important for people that
had been studying for their extra exams that
were due to the pool's license pool changed in
July of this year, so the question pool. So a
lot of people that were studying for extra really
wanted to get that done. So that was one of the
big focuses. Plus, just keeping the new flow
of now all these people that are at home realized,
hey, amateur radio is a great thing, and I should
probably get licensed, especially in the pandemic.
So we started working on what we called tier
two, or kind of the version two of that software,
which involved Richard spending hundreds and
hundreds of hours coding and a bunch of us volunteers
helping write processes and procedures and best
practices and kind of I wouldn't call them rules
and regulations, but recommendations and guidelines
for how to run these sessions, what sort of requirements
on the candidate side, what sort of requirements
on the VE side, how to get teams onboarded, and
how to train people to do this. That new software
released in May, end of May, May 26, actually
exactly two months after that first exam, which
is pretty impressive turnaround. And that's really
been the game changer. So since then, we've run
several thousand exams now across dozens of different
VE teams and hundreds of volunteer examiners
that are helping at these sessions. Some of the
biggest sessions are over 100 candidates at once
and a whole bunch of sessions happening every
day with anywhere from, you know, one to 20 candidates
at a time coming through and taking their exams.
So that's kind of the high level overview and
happy to dive into any of those things in detail
as you like. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about
how a VE team can decide to do this and offer
this and then also how Can somebody take one
of these that you know can't do the the normal
thing or chooses not to? How do they know what
teams are doing this what teams aren't? Um, so
let's get into a little bit of that of the, you
know, how can teams do this and then how can
people take them? Yeah, that sounds good. So,
uh, for people that want to take the exam, uh,
it's pretty easy. You just go to ham study .org,
um, slash sessions, or you can click on the sessions
button. Um, and that has all the listings for
any exams offered using exam tools. It's important
to note that there are groups that are still
offering in -person exams. Some of these are
like drive -in exams where people are in their
cars, taking exams and the volunteer examiner
is watching them. But you can also click on the
online option and that'll show you all the remote
exams available. Read the instructions. Some
teams are very particular about still serving
their local areas, because that's traditionally
how the VE team model worked. But these days,
a lot of teams allow people to test from anywhere
as long as they meet the requirements for the
FCC with a U .S. mailing address and an FRN,
a federal registration number. So with those
prerequisites, you're pretty much good to sign
up for any of those exams. Currently, the VECs
that are actively doing fully remote exams include
GLARG, the Greater Los Angeles Area Image Radio
Group VEC, W5YI VEC, and AWRL VEC for fully remote
exams. There are small groups from Laurel VEC
and Anchorage VEC that are also starting to use
the system. Some are just trialing it for in
person. Some are starting to use it for fully
remote exams just to try it out. And there are,
of course, a number of other VECs that are interested.
But those are really the big three right now,
AWL, W5Y, and GLARG are really the three that
are running the majority of the fully remote
sessions. So that's kind of if you're looking
for sessions, that's where to start. It's worth
noting that GLARG actually offers free exams
for students, minors, military personnel, and
frontline. workers. So that's a really cool thing
that they just started offering this year to
support those in those groups. So that's been
really great. The others often often charge a
nominal fee just to help with administrative
costs. That's pretty normal. So that's on the
applicant side. For VE teams to get started,
it's pretty straightforward. We have some more
details at the Ham Study blogs, if you go to
blog .hamstudy .org. blog .hamstudy .org that
has a couple articles that kind of talk about
getting started. We have a Discord, which is
an online chat community where we offer support
and have all the teams that are using the system
chatting, sharing best practices, helping find
other teams to train with. And really that's
the main thing. So you'd need to be a volunteer
examiner with one of the big three VECs that's
currently supporting fully remote exams. So if
you're a VE team, and then you need to get explicit
permission from your VEC to allow you to do this.
And that's really the key one. As anyone who
is a VE team lead knows, if you're giving exams
and the VEC didn't authorize you to give exams,
those are going to be invalid. You're going to
be throwing away those exams. They're not going
to process them if they weren't done per their
policies. So some of those VECs have very particular
training policies. They want you to shadow some
other teams for a while. Most teams are very
open to have observers and just come and learn.
And it's definitely recommended to attend several
sessions. I would say at least a half dozen or
a dozen sessions with various different teams,
see different methods of doing things, write
up your own documentation, take the generic documentation
we provided, optimize it for yourself, or use
like AWRL has their own documentation page now
where they're sharing their instructions and
the VEC specific rules that they have. Because
those can vary, right? Some VECs might not require
a second camera or they have different ID requirements
or something like that. So it's important that
you're just familiar with your VEC's requirements.
And then once you've trained up, we have a sandbox
environment too, a training environment for the
software that you can just play around in and
run fake exams through it. And then once you're
trained up and ready to go, you get the approval
from the VEC and then you get the keys for the
production environment where you can start listing
real sessions and start licensing real people.
And the really cool thing about all this is those
sessions being fully digital now, all the VECs
as far as I know are accepting that digitally,
and they're also submitting digitally to the
FCC. So when everything's up and running with
the FCC's databases, we're having licenses, sometimes
even same day processing, usually by the next
business day, licenses are posted. And that's
been really exciting, especially for Newham's
getting their tickets. It's rare to hear the
Stroke Alpha Golf or Stroke Alpha Echo for upgrades
these days, which is kind of fun. So yeah, that's
kind of how you can get started. But definitely
the big one there to call out is just training
and observing. These are new systems, right?
And especially if you look at the timeline, we
just started doing this in March. So we're not
even eight months out from developing this. And
there are, of course, things that are changing
a lot. We're making improvements to the software
all the time. We're taking in feature requests.
We're fixing bugs. We're finding new corner cases.
And all these different teams are finding new
and better ways to use the various pieces of
software. So like how to use Zoom. If you're
running a one -person session, it's pretty straightforward.
But if you're running a 100 -person session and
you have 70 or 80 VEs logged into that session
helping you, and this is what we actually do
with Glarg. I've helped with a number of those
sessions. You'll have 20 breakout rooms with
15 of those being exam rooms. with three or four
VEs each, so in case a VE loses connection, plus
a candidate, you'll have a pre -check room to
help check the candidate's environment, run the
camera around the room, make sure that they can
share their ID properly and that all their questions
are answered before the exam. And sessions like
that, they take a lot of familiarity with the
tools. You need to make sure that people know
how to use Zoom properly, that people know how
to use exam tools properly, and that they're
comfortable navigating those systems. When a
candidate shares their screen, if they're sharing
a screen from a Windows machine versus a Apple
Mac machine or a Linux machine, it presents itself
differently to Zoom. In order for them to share
or in order for them to close the right programs,
you just have to be familiar with that. So you
really need VEs that are comfortable with technology.
or at least someone in the room that's comfortable
with the technology to make sure that you can
ensure the exam integrity and that everything's
set up properly. So my brief soapbox on that
topic as well. Right. Yeah, that's the next thing
is the process for offering this as far as software
and hardware and personnel. You know, you've
mentioned cameras and You know this is something
that we're fighting you know with with with teaching
high school and you know online right now and
some of the hybrid setups and and right now I've
got both in person and online that I'm doing
at the same time. And you know there are certain
security things that you can do to help ensure
that. You know the testing is valid so you know
you mentioned cameras that's one unfortunately
I'm not able to pull off but there are there
are ways to to make it more secure so talk a
little bit about some of the security things
and and the hardware that's involved and a little
bit about the exam tools as far as the integrity
goes and validity. Yeah, absolutely. We can kind
of start one by one there. So from a basic hardware
requirements perspective, the goal of course
here is to have your volunteer examiner. So the
FCC requires that three volunteer examiners are
observing the exam in progress. So our default
recommendation is that you have four volunteer
examiners in a session minimum. because often
someone's connection will drop as we all know
from our zoom calls these days so you know at
minimum of four VEs is usually a good idea in
case one drops out then the other three can sign
and you can always bring in another one just
to help cover it otherwise technically the exam
gets invalidated and the candidate would have
to restart so we want to try to avoid that so
that's kind of from a personnel requirement it's
kind of the three to one is the bare minimum
but four to one is really what's recommended
for just for improving your throughput and dealing
with situations. The candidate of course needs
to have a webcam. Your VEs need webcams as well
usually because they want to be able to see faces
to make sure they're paying attention. Everyone
needs that way to communicate with audio bidirectionally.
Candidates while they're taking the exam are
not allowed to wear headphones because they might
be piping answers in through their headphones
for example. Generally teams only allow like
one monitor and you want to be in an environment
that's not cluttered. So the best candidate setup
that we have is actually in like a restroom or
in a closet where there's nothing, where you
can empty it out and just make it an empty space.
You can lock the door, you can make sure no one
walks in during the exam because then again that
might invalidate it. You can make sure the candidates
not looking around at stuff, that there's not
a window that someone's standing behind and holding
up answers. You know these are the things we
have to think about that we haven't had most
of those happen and that environment is really
helpful. So for example if you have a candidate
in a restroom on a chair with a laptop and a
camera that's very good. Some teams will require
a second camera so they might take their cell
phone or a tablet device and hook it up to the
same zoom conference and then get like a side
angle so they can see to make sure that you know
the computer doesn't have any crib sheets on
it that there are no other things lying around
and it just gives them better situational awareness
really because you want to make sure that the
VEs know what's going on in that space. The VEs
themselves, there are some policies that vary
between different groups. Sometimes they're very
explicit about having VEs turn off their videos
and mute their microphones so they're not distracting
a candidate. Some VE teams want those on so they
can make sure all the VEs are still there and
didn't go to sleep or walk off and take a lunch
break while the candidate's taking their exam.
And that actually brings up an important point
around VE integrity, which is actually one of
the biggest concerns because you have... a whole
bunch of people that are running these exams,
and it's really easy to just stop paying attention,
right? It does take someone that's actively paying
attention and making sure they're doing the right
thing. So, I mean, the VE organizations, VEC
organizations have always been trust -based with
your VE team leads, you know, bringing in VEs
that they know and trust. And especially now
with the remote world, if you don't trust those
folks, if you've never met them in person, you
don't know who they are, that can be very difficult.
So the teams actually I'm working with the closest
now are the ones that I've been helping develop
these tools with. So we all know each other very
well, but I've never actually met any of them
in person. But I've spent hundreds of hours on
phone on calls with them over the last six months.
But typically what you'll have is you'll have
an existing VE team with established relationships
with their VEs that are all from one area, they
come together and form a team now that all gets
trained on the online systems to use exam tools
and then run those exams. So that's a little
aside on kind of VE integrity and team dynamics,
which I think is really interesting, right? Especially
in this day and age. We've run exams where our
VEs are spread across the U .S., including Guam,
and the candidates are around the world. They
can be. So it's pretty neat to see how we can
support. We've been testing a lot of servicemen
and women overseas at military bases that otherwise
wouldn't have been able to get their license
while they were overseas. So that's pretty fun.
Okay, so we addressed candidate requirements,
some of the cheating things. I think we'll talk
about that a little bit more actually. So exam
integrity is of course the utmost concern for
all of this, right? Immediately when we started
doing this. we had to be exceptionally careful
that we can't poke holes into it. So any weird
corner case that we could think of that anyone's
brought up to us for like, hey, this is a way
that someone could cheat the system. Great. Let's
take it. Let's address it. Let's seal that hole,
if you will. Let's fix that and make sure that
that's not a concern. And that's a lot of times
with processes, with a room suite beforehand,
making sure that they only have one monitor hooked
up. they're not wearing the headphones, that
shades are drawn and doors are locked so that
no one walks in on the room, that you can hear
the audio in the room, that you check. Some teams
take it to the extreme and they'll check under
keyboards. They'll have them move a camera around
and look under their seat and under their chair
and at the ceiling and the floor and the windows.
And there's always diminishing returns on some
of that, but the intent is valid, right? Is making
sure that the environment isn't feeding answers
to the candidate. But it's pretty obvious, honestly.
So what's really interesting, and we've got some
videos online, training videos, and a presentation
that I've given on the topic as well, when the
applicant's actually taking the exam, and you're
on a large monitor at home as a volunteer examiner,
you've got the candidate's screen share, and
you've got the candidate's video large on your
screen, you can full screen it, you can literally
see their eyes moving as they're reading each
question and answer. You can see, we had one
candidate that kept looking to the right, and
we're like, what are they looking at, what are
they? So we just asked them, hey, what are you
looking at to the right? And he's like, what
do you mean? And he's like, oh, right there.
What did you look at? And he's like, oh, I was
looking at the scroll bar on the right to scroll
down to the next question. A funny little thing,
but that level of detail is what you notice when
you're actually watching this candidate much,
much closer than in a typical exam session. In
-person sessions, you might have 10, 20, 50,
100 candidates in a room and a couple of VEs
in that room watching them. right, at least three.
But there's no way you know if any one of those
is slipping out a note sheet in their pocket
and kind of looking past their exam to pull out
a note sheet. So a lot of VEs have actually commented
that they feel the fully remote methods are actually
of higher integrity for any individual exam that's
given, which is very interesting. It was really
interesting to get that feedback when we started
running some exams. And that's honest feedback
from actual VEs and VECs that have been seeing
them. They feel very comfortable with it. as
long as the teams are trained and they know what
they're doing and they're following the processes
that have been put in place. So that's pretty
cool. And I definitely encourage you, feel free
to look at some of the documentation we have
online and just kind of get an idea for what
that looks like to actually run a session. And
by all means, if you're a VE, reach out and get
involved and sign up your teams, right? All good
stuff, good information, and so I'm sure this
has raised some questions. So we're going to
open up the phone lines here in just a moment.
So get ready to give us a call at 859 -982 -7373.
We'll give that number again here in a minute
or tweet us. Or again, if you're logged in to
Spreaker, you can type a comment and that'll
pop up here. And we'll come back and do that
and talk a little more with Marcel right after
this word from ICOM America right here on HamTalk
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radios. Join the conversation. Give us a call
at 859 -982 -7373. Again, the number to call
is 859 -982 -7373. Or, if you'd rather type than
talk, tweet us at HamTalk Live. Now, here's Neil
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Rapp takes the rig. He breaks through the pile
up. He's on 80, now 40, now 20, 15, 10, 2 meters,
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now. Again, the phone number is 859 -982 -7373.
Give us a call and we'll take your questions
here with Marcel Steber, AI6MS, about remote
testing. We'll talk a little bit about hybrid
testing here in a minute too, but first we have
the N9GSU Joke of the Week. Now it's time for
the HamTalk Live Ham Radio Joke of the Week,
the part of the show where Rick tells us a ham
radio joke. The HamTalk Live Ham Radio Joke of
the Week is brought to you by QRM Labs. Now here's
Rick Garrett, N9GSU, with today's HamTalk Live
Joke of the Week. Many years ago when I was taking
my general exam I thought sure I would pass the
13 word per minute Morse code requirement turns
out my hopes were dashed This has been the ham
talk live ham radio joke of the week with Rick
Garrett in nine GSU Tune in again next week for
another joke from Rick Well, there we go Rick's
hopes were dashed All right, well the phone number
again eight five nine nine eight two seventy
three seventy three or tweet us it's at ham talk
live And if you're listening to us on WTWW or
on the podcast edition of the show You won't
be able to reach us live since we're recording
this on Thursday night So give us call eight
five nine nine eight two seventy three seventy
three and we'll check for tweets and comments
here in just a moment. But let's talk a little
bit about the hybrid exams and how that works
and some of those tools that can be used for
electronically grading the exams. I know we've
talked about a couple of them. You're using a
thing called GradeCam. which my wife actually
uses at her school and I've got one called zip
grade that I've been using for many years and
I know that's been discussed in some of the Laurel
VEC discussions of electronic grading. So let's
talk a little bit about some of the hybrid stuff.
Yeah, I'm glad you brought it up Neil. Something
that a lot of people asked when we first started
developing the fully remote exam methods back
in March, they're like, oh, well, how long is
this going to work? How much effort are you going
to put in? There's no point. We'll be back in
person soon enough, right? Well, time will tell
when we actually can start doing more in -person
exams. Right now, it's obviously very limited
and varies quite a bit state to state. But one
of the big benefits of all this is that really
most of the work that Richard and other developers
have done in putting in for this version two,
for this fully remote exam version of exam tools,
it's completely applicable to in -person exams.
And that's what's really great. So we have some
teams that are currently exclusively only running
in -person exams still, but they're now using
the upgraded version of the system. And that's
been great. You're coming about a great tool,
a great cam. GradeCam is built into exam tools.
So GradeCam, for those not familiar with it,
is a piece of software that uses a cell phone
or a tablet camera or your webcam even, and will
instantly grade the answer sheets from the candidates
in your session. And that's a really cool thing.
So instead of having the typical, you know, hole
punched answer templates that you're using, which
also limits the number of randomizations you
can have, you can literally have individual exams
generated for each applicant. They're all different.
They're all randomized. They all have different
question order, whatever. And it's a pretty cool
way to then administer the exam. The applicant
fills out on their little bubble form that's
just printed on eight and a half by 11 paper,
their applicant pin number, which is given to
them when they register online, which we haven't
talked about at all, but they can register either
with a kiosk tablet, like on an in -person session.
or ahead of time on the website and put in all
their info so you don't have to fill out all
those 605 forms. And then all of the paperwork
is digitized, right? They fill out, sorry, I'm
bouncing back and forth a little bit. So on the
answer sheet, they put in their PIN number. They'll
put in the exam number as well, because it's
a randomized exam. And then they'll fill in all
their answers. And then once they're done, they
just walk to the front of the room. One of the
VEs takes a tablet, for example, or their laptop
webcam, or just their cell phone, and scans it.
And literally, instantaneously, it shows up on
their screen. Here's the score. Congratulations.
You passed or didn't. And that's really cool.
That updates in the system. And then with the
new version, everyone can sign digitally as well.
And digital signatures are completely valid in
all 50 states. So each of your VEs can log in
or just sign on the other computer with their
password and say, yes, I'm signing for this candidate.
And all the paperwork is digital. The CSCE or
certificate of successful completion of exam
gets emailed to the applicant right away once
you close out the session and stuff. And that's
really cool. So with all these improvements to
the system, really it's not just enabling fully
remote exams, but it also enhances the in -person
experience. So what we've seen start to happen
is we have some teams that are still running
fully in -person sessions. I mentioned the drive
-in. exam sessions before, those literally are
happening right now. So candidates will drive
up with a car, they'll roll down their window
just to crack and get the answer sheet and the
exam book slid in through the crack. The VE's
will look through the car, make sure it's all
set up and then they'll stand outside if the
windows rolled up and their masks on. Once they're
done, they can just hold up the exam sheet to
the window and they can scan it through the window.
So there's no contact of paperwork touching back
and forth after that initial pass. And then all
the paperwork can get signed digitally. The candidate
can do it on their cell phone. The VEs can do
it on their laptop or cell phone or tablet or
whatever. And then submit all the paperwork digitally.
So that's really powerful. For the hybrid exams,
you can do a mix. So in a classroom environment,
for example, or at your local club meeting room
where you're holding your exams, you could have
a choice. Candidates can come in. They can either
bring their own laptop or own tablet. Or you
could buy, a lot of our teams are buying like
low -cost tablets like the Amazon Fire tablets
or similar ones that when they go on sale they'll
pick up a couple of them and then they can hand
those out to candidates when they come into a
test session. Now if a candidate prefers to use
paper and take a paper exam, no problem. Give
them one of the printed paper randomized tests
that you have and give them a blank bubble form
answer sheet that they can fill out and they'll
still be in the session exactly the same. They're
graded, you know, one's graded through grade
cam, one's graded through the browser. They both
just work seamlessly and all go into the same
session paperwork and get submitted the same
way. So that's what's really powerful about the
whole system. And it's great. We should mention
that it's no cost right now. Donations are always
welcome. buying antenna signal sticks helps pay
for it. But teams are using it all the time,
and volunteers help support it. So that online
community, we've got a bunch of experienced support
volunteers, myself being one of them, that kind
of help out teams answer questions, debug, help
get people set up in the system, and just train
folks to use it. Because really, all of our goals
are the same, right? And whether that's one VEC
or the other VEC, whatever state you're in, we're
all trying to get more people licensed. Correctly
safely and in a way that we can continue growing
the hobby So it's been really fun to be part
of that and just help out all these different
teams Now and for those that aren't familiar
with like the grade cam and zip grade kinds of
things It's it's kind of like Scantron, but you
don't have to have a Scantron machine to decode
everything And the thing that I like about it
is, you know, for school anyway, is if I make
a mistake and I accidentally fill in the wrong
one, when you go in and change it, it automatically
regrades everything. So that way it, you know,
it fixes it all. And you don't have to go through
like on the old Scantrons and like try to white
out, you know, the... the print out on the Scantron
forum and everything. It updates everything and
it even gives you statistics so you can see which
questions people are missing and averages and
those kinds of things. And that's what the grade
cam and the zip grade kind of thing do. They're
either apps or software through a camera and
the camera is the optical scanner. And it looks
for the colored in circles in a particular place
and grades it with very, very high accuracy.
And I've been using it in the classroom for many
years and just absolutely love it. And it's another
tool. And every VE team has to decide what they're
comfortable with and every VEC has their own
regulation. So make sure you, you know, make
sure you check out, you know, and make sure your
VEC is on board with the technology that you're
using because there are some varied opinions
out there, Marcel. I don't know if you've heard
that, but... Oh, yeah. I want to quickly mention,
you mentioned the S word, the famous Scantron
word. The other thing to point out there is that
Scantrons are a proprietary piece of paper that
you have to buy from an organization. So you
need to have a stash of those available. You
need to order those ahead of time. or buy them,
find a store that stocks them, and purchase them.
With GradeCam, you can literally just print them
out. So we have, and actually, AWRL just recently
changed to using exam tools for their exam generation.
Starting end of this year, everyone's asked to
switch to that. That was a pretty big deal because
you can generate AWRL -formed exams now as well,
and either use GradeCam or use the AWRL templates,
depending on... what you wanted to do. So those
are all compatible now, which is pretty cool.
But those you can just print out on eight and
a half by 11. So the same printers that you're
using for your signage or your posters or just
at home, you can now print out answer sheets.
You can scale them and change the size too. If
you need to, a great chem doesn't care. Just
looks at it and scans it. You can print one out
the size of your wall if you wanted to and scan
it. So that's pretty fun. Yeah. And it just makes
things so much easier and the Scantron forms
are not cheap. No. I remember buying a lot of
those in college. You always get them from the
bookstore because it's the only spot that sold
them and 25 cents a piece or more and they definitely
add up. Oh yeah, they add up and when you're
teaching high school and you're the one... buying
them and send them out to all the kids and not
charging them. That's why the bookstore at the
universities sell those one by one because it
adds up quickly. So yeah, it's great. You can
just throw it on a printer and go with the grade
cam. Oh, are you there? Yes, I'm still here.
Sorry. Yeah, so yeah, I think great Kim That's
that's a big one to point out and I think you
know, just while we're on the topic still with
in person versus, you know hybrid exams It's
been really fun to see this sort of development
right in amateur radio One of the big things
we always talk about is, you know, how do we
innovate? How do we stay on the forefront of
technology and keep pushing things forward? I
mean, that's really what's been so fun about
you know, working with this team. And this team
has now grown from those couple dozen to, I think,
four or 500 VEs now that we have set up in exam
tools running exams literally every day. It's
pretty amazing to see how this has scaled up
over the last couple of months. You know, when
we started back in March and, you know, going
right into April, VECs were very supportive,
but of course skeptical, right? We had to prove
ourselves. We had to show that we had good, well
-established processes. It was very limited which
teams were allowed to operate. But right from
the beginning, AWRL, W5Y, and GLARG all had teams
starting to run exams, slowly but surely, and
just slowly ramping that up. Like I mentioned,
GLARG has really been fun. I'd never worked with
them before. I'm based in California as well,
but they've been really supportive of all these,
and really trying to break the system. literally
with, you know, how big of a session can we run?
And that's been really fun. Back when I was at
Cal Poly, we ran the freshman licensing initiative
where every freshman electrical engineer took
their technician exam as their second midterm
for the introductory electrical engineering class
in the fall. And we actually just did that remotely
now with GLARG's help and the free exams they
were able to offer for students. We ran almost
100 students through remote exams in the last
month here to get them all licensed for their
coursework and for their curriculum. So it's
been great just to see how we can kind of still
innovate and take advantage of these tools that
we've built and try out different things. Again,
with that same goal, just getting more people
licensed in the right way. So that's been really,
really fun to keep going. 859 -982 -7373 is phone
number. We're going to wrap things up here with
Marcel Very soon. So if you'd like to call now
is the time 859 -982 -7373 in the comments here
We have Troy W9KVR another teacher another science
teacher. Hello from the Flatlands of Illinois
and he says oh the Scantron. Yeah It's been a
long time since I've actually used a Scantron.
A lot of my colleagues are still using it, but
I just I like my my little iPad app a whole lot
better. Chris A4CB is listening from Florida,
so thank you Chris for being there as well. And
not too many questions, so I guess that means
we did a good job. Yeah, and actually I just
got a correction in on my chat coming in here
in the system We have over a thousand VE credentials
in the system now, so we've actually ramped up
even more I can't keep track if they come in
so quickly these days, but over 1100 different
VE credentials That's you know each each VE gets
a credential for the VEC They're accredited for
when they come into our system. They have to
of course show proof of accreditation so that
we can Authorize them in the system, but that's
pretty impressive to see Some of the VECs are
just creeping up on, you know, three or four
hundred VEs in their team or in their VEC that
are authorized on the system now. So that's been
really fun. That's cool. And I'm glad that you
were able to come on here and share about this.
And so people are a little more familiar and
maybe a little more at ease with it. And over
time that, you know. will become more and more
familiar i'm sure and uh... will mention to you
that uh... that you did a a whole presentation
on this over at the uh... uh... the virtual is
a little bit of an expert yes yes yes so today
i was blanked out on the name of of uh... eric
show for a second but uh... you did a whole thing
on that and and that's linked in on your q r
zed page so if people wanna watch that they can
they can watch that and and we've also sent out
some links tell everybody a little bit about
the links that uh... that we put in the uh...
show description here yeah so we've got some
links set out uh... those will include details
for where to sign up for exams that sam study
dot org slash sessions if you're looking to take
online exams We also have the links to the blog,
so blog .hamstudy .org. That's got some of the
articles there from a couple of months ago, but
they're still valid with kind of the release
process and how to get involved. So if you're
a VE team that wants to get involved and start
using the system, I've got links to all the training
videos that I've put together and documentation,
and then get you into our Discord. That's really
the... online chat community that's been super
active and really, really helpful to answer questions
and find other teams to shadow with and to get
involved. So those links, and then like you said,
the link to my QRZ, so qrz .com slash db slash
ai6ms. And that'll have all the links for other
presentations and specifically for the fully
remote exams as well. So hopefully those will
be useful and you're welcome to reach out to
me via Twitter or email, I'm good on QRZ, or
join the volunteer examiner discord and we'll
happily chat there and discuss anything. It's
always really good. We love having fresh blood
come in and new VEs come join the system because
they always bring a new perspective. Anytime
we have an observer, I always talk with them
afterwards. It's always great to see what people
notice, what they like, what they don't like,
what they're concerned about. and seeing that
we have an answer for everything. If someone
comes in and asks some question for some obscure
form of cheating that we haven't really thought
about before, that's great. We want to hear about
it. We want to know how we can make this better
and how we can continue improving it. The one
listener question that's probably out there is,
has cheating occurred? Yes, there have been isolated
incidents where exam integrity has been called
into question. It's not always clear if someone's
explicitly cheated. But when you have a poor
video connection, or it's a little bit dark,
or their audio or video drops out for seconds
to dozens of seconds or a minute at a time, you
have to validate the exam. And that's pretty
straightforward. And the nice thing is, in this
environment, it's not life or death. We're doing
amateur radio exams. We can simply ask the candidate,
hey, we have to validate your exam. It's really
not working with this test environment. How about
you come back next weekend or go to a coffee
shop with better internet and come back and we'll
re -administer the exam whenever you're ready
and have a better exam environment. So that's
what's great. None of this is time critical.
So we can just, if in doubt, invalidate the exam
or pass on that exam and then come back another
time when you can do it right. Very good. Well...
Troy W9KVR says hasn't touched the Scantron in
years, but they're scheduled to have an in -person
VE session in a couple of weeks and might have
to change with the guidelines for COVID being
changed around. So he's going to definitely take
a look at the links. We also got a call in on
the phone. So let's go to the phones. Hello,
good evening. Welcome to HamTalk Live. Hi, this
is Thomas, 86KW. I had a question about this
whole general VE approach to testing, and that
the multiple choice approach, it seems to be
less than really rigorous in terms of asking
someone, do you know how to do this? Because
giving them choices sort of lets them narrow
down to figure out what's the close enough answer,
as opposed to saying, here's a blank piece of
paper, tell us what the answer is. What's your
thought on that? Is it a rigorous way of testing,
or is it just a vocabulary test? Yeah, that's
a great question, Thomas. I'm glad you're asking
that. From the volunteer examiner side, we're
following the guidelines from the FCC and specifically
the NCVs. That's the National Conference of Volunteer
Examiner Coordinators. And they have the question
pool committee that actually runs the question
pool. So I know this is a little bit roundabout
answer to your question but with the way that
it's currently set up and that's where those
questions come from. Now the question pool committee
they meet I think weekly and are constantly working
to update the pools every two years you know
they rotate out or I think it's every one to
two years depending on the exact rotation one
of the question pools changes out and they're
absolutely looking at those sorts of things all
the time. I can't speak to it specifically because
I'm not part of that committee But I know the
number of the questions, especially with the
new technician pool that came out two years ago
now, I think, is quite different with a lot of
the questions being changed so that it's a little
bit more rigorous, if you will. But to your question,
multiple choice exams, they only test so much.
You're giving them the answers. It's also worth
pointing out that the FCC testing in the past
was also multiple choice. So obviously they had
the in -person. like the Morse code portion of
it, the element ones that they brought in. But
that's how it's running today. Now to ask me
personally the question, do I think that we should
do a different form of exam for amateur radio
licenses? I'm not sure. I think for the technician
exam, the intent is really you want them to understand
enough about the rules, the regulations, some
of the basic safety measures. and how to be a
good on -the -air operator. So when to ID, how
much to ID, what sort of power to use, et cetera.
And I think that's really the main part that
I would call out there for getting them started,
get them the basic info, and then make sure that
they learn on -the -air because 90 % of the job
learning is on the job. I agree with that. That
license is opening the door. just should make
sure you don't hurt yourself with something that
you buy. But when you get to higher levels and
you start doing new things or different things,
or you're trying to show confidence, I'd say
that the bar should be higher. Not just the technical
questions, but the way they're put to you should
be. should demand that. And that's all I wanted
to say. Thank you very much. It's been a very
interesting discussion. And as a California guy,
I've worked a lot, SLO guys, and learn by doing
is a really great way. Thank you very much. Thanks,
Thomas. Yeah, I know. Learn by doing, go Cal
Poly, go Mustangs, right? But yeah, no, I think
your point about the upper level exams, making
them more rigorous or how to do that, it's something
I've thought about for sure is I would love there
to be a practical portion to some of those exams.
But again, the hobby is so broad and so many
different aspects to the hobby for whether someone's
in microwave or an HF or they only do license
exams. These days, my primary amateur radio is
license exams and checking to an Aries net once
a week. and then a little bit of tower climbing.
But that's, you know, it's each their own. So
I think, you know, yeah, rigorous questions,
obviously, changing the question for me. I think
it's an interesting idea. I would recommend you
reach out to the question pool committee and
see what their thoughts are on that as well.
They always have an email there on their website,
ncvec .org. You can find that National Conference
of Volunteer Examiners, exam coordinators. So
yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate
you sharing that too. Yeah, I'll second that.
And 73 This is not a new discussion This has
been a discussion that's been going I've been
I am for like 43 years now and This is discussion
has gone on ever since then and there's we could
go on and do a whole show about it But yeah,
you know talk to the NCVC. They are the people
who come up with that and the original development
of topics, the FCC came up with those and then
they said, you know, how to test these certain
things and it's always been a controversy of,
you know, do we make it harder, do we make it
easier, how many licenses do we have, you know.
The discussion continues and so I think that's
something that's constantly changing and you
know, submit your comments to the NCVEC. They're
the ones doing that. I know we had a project
where we were looking at changing some of the
questions because some of them just, you know,
were just asking factual questions rather than
testing the intent. I had a big proposal already
to go and everything and then all of a sudden
the question committee all of a sudden had the
same idea. So it didn't go anywhere. But yeah,
that's nothing new. One other thing I would add,
Neil, is I often get the question when we're
talking about remote exams and you know, being
a no code ham and, you know, what are my thoughts
in that space and especially around ham crams
as well, you know, and the freshman licensing
initiative we do at Cal Poly where we're licensing
all these freshmen electrical engineering students.
You know, a lot of times I'll get asked the question
by the community is like, well, you know, but
we're like, why, why are we licensed them? Like
that's, that's not valuable. Like we should only
be licensing them if they're going to use it.
You know, most of them aren't going to use it.
It's a waste, et cetera, et cetera. And, and
I give a thought exercise, kind of my opinions
on this matter. I'm very strongly of the opinion
that the more people that know about amateur
radio in the world, the better off we're going
to be. So more people know that amateur radio
exists as a hobby, that the FCC exists as an
agency that regulates the radio frequencies and
has rules and regulations around that, that they
understand some basic electronics and some basic
safety measures around radios and interference.
I'd say that just that sharing of knowledge,
whether or not that person ever uses their amateur
radio license again in their life, that I think
is a really, really helpful thing for our community
as a whole and for society, right? A lot of these
people that get their licenses, a lot of these
students that get their amateur radio licenses,
they're going on to become the next manager at
some company, the next engineer at some medical
devices company that's working on the next pacemaker
or that's working on I don't know, the next tablet
or laptop computer or Kindle product or something.
And they will have this background knowledge
knowing that some of these skills and techniques
exist or that some of these regulations exist.
And I think that that's inherently valuable too.
the greater society from that sense, but definitely
to the amateur radio hobby. Um, cause how many
times do you have to explain to someone what
amateur radio is, right? So every person we license
is one fewer people, fewer person. And you left
out one important, uh, one important, um, thing
about people who need to know about ham radio.
And that's, you know, not only are there people
working on medical devices and all those kinds
of things, but there are people that are on homeowners
association boards. Yep. Oh absolutely need to
know about ham radio I'm in that boat myself
right now I'm looking at my j -pole that's inside
the building right because you can't put anything
on the outside So yeah, absolutely right and
that's exactly the point right the more people
that are familiar with it and understand it and
and recognize the value that it brings the better
off and regulatory is absolutely a factor in
that as well. It's been really fun. We've had
a number of professors at Cal Poly, including
the former department chair. They're all licensed
and they definitely set the example. And when
students see that and they see how that's helped
their hobby, you know, I actually, my amateur
radio license got me my job. So those are all
fun examples that I think are really relevant
and just, you know, go to show we should get
more people licensed. So keep up the good work
VEs. There we go. Yeah, Troy says my father -in
-law is one of them and people who get licensed
early on kind of put it on the shelf, but then
later on, you know, there they are. And that
happens a lot. Well, we have gone over time here
at Marcell, but it's been a good conversation.
I think we've learned a lot tonight about the
testing and different ways to do that and different
ways to help the security and validity of all
of this. So I thank you for coming on the show
and talking with us. and we'll see how all this
progresses as time marches on. So thanks so much.
Thanks so much for having me on the show, Neil.
It's really great to share it with more people
and just help more VEs and teams and hams understand
what we're doing and how they can contribute
and how we can keep making the hobby better.
So thanks very much for having me on the show,
Neil. Seven threes. Alright Marcel, 7 -3 to you.
And that's a wrap for this week's edition of
HamTalk Live. Thanks to my guest Marcel Steber,
AI6MS, and everybody out there in cyberspace
for listening, calling in, typing in. and invite
you back next Thursday night, 9 p .m. Eastern
Time, when again, Rob Sherwood, NC0B, will be
back to take your calls and talk a little bit
about the IC705. For a list of all of our upcoming
guests, visit HamTalkLive .com. And if you like
the show, please leave us a review. That's the
best thing you can do so other people can find
us faster. So for now, this is Neil Rapp, WB9VPG.
Sing 7375 and may the good DX be yours!