Made for ISED's Basic Qualification and the question bank in use since July 15, 2025, with Canadian rules. Bands, call signs, Ohm's law, antennas and propagation: each topic on one page, with the drawing and what you need to remember. 69 illustrated pages.
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One topic per page, the drawing that shows you how it works and the boxes with what you need to know:
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These are real pages from the book. The table of contents is the full one: 9 parts and 65 topics.
You've read the phonetic alphabet three times. You close the book...
...and you can't say your own call sign without stopping at every letter. It was just a column of 26 words.
Here the alphabet is one page, each word drawn as an icon: VA7KLM becomes Victor Alfa Seven Kilo Lima Mike.
And the pages around it do the same for station identification, repeaters, Q signals and RST reports.
First you understand why it's done that way. Then it comes back to you, in order.
The exam, regulations, operating, station and safety, components, electronics, antennas, propagation and interference: 69 pages, 65 topics, each one drawn
Picture this:
Instead of rereading half a page about the ionosphere without being able to see it...
...you open the page and find the D, E and F layers stacked over the Earth, each with what it does by day and by night.
And your bands, Ohm's law, the dipole, SWR and the superheterodyne receiver turn into drawings and tables you read at a glance.
You stop repeating and start understanding.
That's exactly what The Amateur Radio Basic Sketchbook does. It's not “just another manual.” It's 9 parts and 65 drawn topics, in the order of ISED's 8 question-bank sections. Because what your brain sees in order, it remembers.
Because what your brain sees organized, it remembers.
How the 100-question exam works, 70% and 80%, the 8 sections on one map, what each qualification unlocks and what to bring on exam day.
Your bands split at 30 MHz, who makes the rules, call signs and prefixes, station ID, what you can't send, power and bandwidth limits, interference, emergencies, third parties and antenna structures.
The ITU phonetic alphabet, repeater offset and tone, simplex and HF contacts, the dummy load, CW prosigns and Q signals, RST reports and keeping a log.
Electrical safety, a typical HF station block by block, FM, CW and SSB transmitters, the superheterodyne receiver, AM, SSB and FM, digital modes, power supplies, tower and lightning safety, and RF exposure.
Resistor colour codes, diodes, NPN and PNP transistors, FETs and the triode, and how an amplifier turns a small signal into a big one.
Ohm's law, metric prefixes, conductors and insulators, series and parallel, power, AC and frequency, decibels, reactance and impedance, transformers, resonance and meters.
The half-wave dipole with 142 / F, wavelength with 300 / F, coax and baluns, line loss, SWR, gain and patterns, the quarter-wave vertical, the Yagi and the quad.
Ground wave, sky wave and line of sight, the D, E and F layers, skip zone, sunspots and the MUF, and VHF openings like sporadic-E and ducting.
Front-end overload, audio rectification, harmonics and key clicks, and the four filters drawn side by side.
Every Canadian amateur band from RBR-4 Schedule I on one wall chart, marked Basic or Honours, with its maximum bandwidth, plus a pocket version for review.
Practise the vocabulary of the exam with printable cards: the term on the front, a one-line definition and a tiny sketch on the back (SWR, MUF, CTCSS, simplex, balun…).
📄 This is a digital PDF book sent to your email: nothing is printed or shipped.
PDF by email: The Amateur Radio Basic Sketchbook reaches your inbox as a PDF, and the two free books come by email too. One-time payment, no installments or hidden costs.
Every topic of the Basic exam on its own page, in the order of ISED's 8 sections, to review in short sessions between everything else.
A review of all 65 topics before you sit with the accredited examiner, plus the band chart and 250 term cards to drill the vocabulary. If you're aiming for 80% and HF, no section is left out.
A quick visual refresher on what you use on the air: repeater offset and tone, SWR, the dipole formula and the HF bands if you go back for Honours.
📄 This is a digital PDF book sent to your email: nothing is printed or shipped.
30-day guarantee: tell us what didn't work and we'll refund 100%.
You have 30 days to try The Amateur Radio Basic Sketchbook and the two bonus books. If it doesn't work for you, tell us what didn't work and we'll refund 100% of what you paid. One-time payment, no subscription.
After your purchase you get The Amateur Radio Basic Sketchbook as a high-resolution PDF, sent to the email you enter at checkout. Read it on your phone, tablet or computer, or print it. The two bonus books, Canadian Amateur Band Chart, Printable and 250 Basic Qualification Terms on Cards, come the same way, as PDFs by email.
A one-time payment in Canadian dollars (CAD). No installments, no subscription.
For anyone in Canada preparing for ISED's Basic Qualification exam: a first try, a retake after falling short of 70%, or aiming for 80% and Honours. No math or electronics background needed: every formula comes with a worked example in real numbers, step by step. It covers Canadian rules only. It follows ISED's Canadian question bank and the Canadian bands. It doesn't cover the Advanced or Morse code qualifications.
On ISED's RIC-3 (Issue 5), RBR-4 (Issue 3), the Basic Qualification question bank in use since July 15, 2025 (August 26, 2025 version) and the Basic Reference Material formula sheet (Version 1, May 2025), all on ised-isde.canada.ca. Every number on a drawing matches its text.
No. It's independent study material. It isn't published, endorsed or reviewed by ISED, RAC or RAQI, and it doesn't reproduce questions or diagrams from the official bank. Buying it doesn't give you a certificate or a call sign: those come from ISED once you pass the exam with an accredited examiner.
No. ISED's free exam generator tells you whether you got a question right; this book shows you why. Use them together: practice there, and when a topic doesn't make sense, open its page here. It doesn't replace a course, a radio club or ISED's documents.
No. The book contains no official questions. The optional Practice Tests add-on is written for this book: it helps you train, but none of its questions come from the official bank.
Yes. It's a high-resolution PDF: print the whole book, or just the band chart for the wall of your shack.
You have 30 days. Tell us what didn't work and we'll refund 100% of what you paid.
You don't have to reread the same page hoping it sticks this time.
You don't have to memorize formulas and band limits you can't picture.
And you definitely don't have to walk into the exam not knowing where to start.
One last thing before you decide: the Basic exam doesn't reward whoever rereads the bank the most. It rewards whoever sees each topic in order. 69 drawn pages, two bonus books, PDF by email, and 30 days to tell us if it didn't work for you.
One-time payment: CA$ 34.99 · Guarantee: 30 days · PDF by email
YES, I WANT THE AMATEUR RADIO BASIC SKETCHBOOK FOR CA$ 34.99📄 This is a digital PDF book sent to your email: nothing is printed or shipped.
