On July 1, 2018 a new Element 2 Technician class question pool will take effect for examinations. VECs and VEs will have new test designs available for use at exam sessions effective that date.
The newly revised pool released in January 2018 (updated and re-released February 12, 2018) by the Question Pool Committee (QPC) of the National Conference of Volunteer Examiner Coordinators (NCVEC) must be in use starting July 1. There are three graphics required for this pool and 423 questions in this pool, down slightly from 426 in the previous pool.
ARRL VEC will be supplying all its (near 1,000) Field Stocked VE teams with new test booklets about the 3rd week in June. Do not destroy the 2014 versions of the Technician exams until June 30!
With the Technician class exam questions changing July 1, new test designs must be used effective that day. Previous ARRL VEC supplied Technician class exam booklet versions (2014 series) and computer-generated Technician class exams created from the 2014 question pool are only valid until midnight June 30, 2018. At that time VE Team leaders should destroy or throw away the old versions of the Technician exams (do not return them to VEC). To avoid a mix-up at the session, do not save old exam versions!
Field Stocked teams that no longer meet the field stock requirements or who have not conducted a session in the past year and non-field stocked teams that have been keeping supplies without qualifying through the VEC will not receive an updated package. Non-stocked VE Teams should be returning their exam packages and supplies to ARRL VEC after each session is completed. The officially stocked VE Teams receive their exam supplies in a large box which is a 6-month-to-1-year supply depending on the team’s activity levels. To see if your team qualifies to be field stocked with a bulk quantity of our test materials visit http://www.arrl.org/field-stocked-ve-teams.
The question pools review is part of a regular process and each question pool is reviewed and updated on a four year rotation. The General pool is scheduled for an update in 2019. All current question pools and useful information pertaining to the pools can be viewed on the ARRL Web atwww.arrl.org/question-pools. To view all three questions pools, visit the NCVEC web site at www.ncvec.org/.
–ARRL VE Newsletter, May 2018