Revision Date: May 17, 2026 by Joonho Jang
Amateur radio (ham radio) is a licensed hobby where you operate radio transmitters and receivers for personal communication, experimentation, and public service — no commercial use allowed. Canada has Basic and Advanced license levels (regulated by ISED), both requiring a written exam. Although there is a morse code licenses, we will ignore that because UTAT doesn’t use morse code.
To pass the Basic/Advanced License exams, it’s great to know the technical content but it is not necessary to pass the exams. Reason being is that all the questions that’ll be on the exam are posted online along with its answers (see the attachments below). So you could just memorize all of the answers…
amateur_basic_questions_en.pdf
amateur_advanced_questions_en.pdf
| Privilege / restriction | Basic | Advanced |
|---|---|---|
| Bands above 30 MHz | ✓ Full access | ✓ Full access |
| Bands below 30 MHz (HF) | Honours only | |
| Requires ≥80% exam score | ✓ Full access | |
| Max transmitter power (DC input) | 250 W | 1,000 W |
| Build / assemble transmitting equipment | Kits only | |
| Commercially available kits of professional design; no home-made transmitters | ✓ Unrestricted | |
| Full build-from-scratch permitted | ||
| Modify radio circuitry (physical) | ✗ Not permitted | ✓ Permitted |
| Re-program radio via computer | ✓ Permitted | |
| Software-only; no physical circuit changes | ✓ Permitted | |
| Operate cross-band repeaters | ✓ Permitted | ✓ Permitted |
| Operate through a repeater | Assisted | |
| Only with an amateur with the Advanced Qualification | ✓ Permitted | |
| Establish repeaters & club stations | ✗ Not permitted | ✓ Permitted |
| Remote control of fixed stations | ✗ Not permitted | |
| Regardless of medium used; repeater operation is not considered remote control | ✓ Permitted | |
| Including via radio links |