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Full Licence

UK Full Amateur Radio Licence — Tutorial

This is the top of the ladder. No sugar-coating it: Full is a genuine technical exam, entirely theory-based with no practical element, and it expects real understanding rather than memorised facts. But if Intermediate's electronics chapter didn't break you, you have what it takes.

The basics of the exam

  • Run by the RSGB. Entirely theory — no construction/practical assessment at this level (unlike Foundation/Intermediate courses).
  • 58 multiple-choice questions, four options each, 120 minutes.
  • Pass mark is 35/58 (60%) — lower than Foundation's 73%, reflecting the harder content rather than a lower bar.
  • At Full level, formulae are given to you in the exam — but not labelled or explained. You're expected to recognise which one applies and rearrange it as needed. That's a different skill from Intermediate, where you mostly just plug numbers in.
  • Pass and you get all UK amateur band allocations and up to 1000 watts PEP on primary bands.
  • Callsign moves to a G or M0 prefix (plus other legacy G-series prefixes depending on issue history) — the full range of "proper" UK callsigns you hear on HF.
  • As of April 2026, the RSGB has published the entire Full-level question bank publicly at rsgb.org/exam-questions, including a mock-exam generator — genuinely useful, since the real exam questions are drawn from this bank.

The syllabus, one more step up from Intermediate

1. Licence conditions

Same foundation as before, but expect more nuance — remote operation, club stations, log-keeping requirements, and the full detail of what different licence classes can and can't do (useful if you'll ever supervise a Foundation licensee).

2. Technical aspects (the big one)

This is where Full genuinely earns its reputation:

  • Real circuit analysis: transistor amplifier stages, biasing, gain calculations.
  • Decibels — converting between power ratios and dB, and dB-based calculations throughout the exam (this trips a lot of people up if not practiced).
  • Impedance matching in more depth — Smith charts aren't required, but you need to understand why matching networks work, not just that they exist.
  • Modulation and demodulation at a deeper technical level — filters, mixers, oscillators as actual circuits, not just named blocks.
  • Digital modes and signal processing — A-to-D conversion, basic DSP concepts, SDR principles.

3. Transmitters and receivers

  • Full receiver/transmitter block diagrams with an expectation you understand each stage's purpose and typical problems (e.g. image response, intermodulation).
  • Spurious emissions, harmonics, and how to suppress them — much more relevant at higher power.

4. Feeders, antennas and propagation

  • Antenna theory in more depth — gain, radiation patterns, more complex antenna types (Yagi elements, beams).
  • Full propagation picture across HF/VHF/UHF, including how solar activity affects the ionosphere.

5. EMC and safety

  • This gets real weight at Full level because 1000W has serious potential for interference and RF exposure issues. Expect proper EMF exposure calculations, not just awareness.

6. Operating practices

  • The full picture of band plans, digital mode etiquette, and the operating conventions expected of an experienced amateur.

How to study, coming from Intermediate

  1. Use the RSGB's own published question bank and mock-exam tool at rsgb.org/exam-questions — this is the single best resource now that it's freely available, and it's built directly from real exam questions.
  2. Get comfortable with decibels and formula rearrangement specifically. Several experienced amateurs report this — not the concepts themselves, but manipulating the given formulae under exam pressure — is the main stumbling block.
  3. The RSGB Full Licence Manual matches the syllabus directly if you want a structured book alongside the question bank.
  4. Don't assume Full "feels" as hard as it sounds. Several people who found Intermediate's electronics tough discover, once they actually sit mock exams, that they know more than they think — the pass mark is 60%, not 100%.
  5. Budget real study time. With 58 questions across a much deeper syllabus, this isn't a weekend crash course the way Foundation can be.

Exam technique

No negative marking — answer everything. Given formulae aren't explained, if you don't recognise which one to use, look for a "sanity check": does the number that comes out make physical sense (e.g. a wildly out-of-range voltage). That'll often catch a wrong formula choice.