ISED basic amateur radio exam questions (July 2025) Anki deck
In my continuing education, I've noticed in myself a budding fascination with wireless telecommunication. I'm indulging this newfound curiosity by exploring the topic more seriously, and one of the more intriguing manifestations of the technology that I've come across is amateur radio.
In Canada, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) is the regulatory body that manages radio frequency spectrum and issues amateur radio operator certificates. ISED publishes a copy of the full set of questions and answers for their exams on their amateur radio exam generator web page.
Per said web page:
[t]he Basic amateur radio exam questions and answers have been revised and will replace the existing exam effective July 15, 2025. Starting on this date, all candidates writing the amateur radio basic exam must use the new version.
You can download an advance copy of the revised questions and answers in both PDF and—fortunately!—delimited text.
My humble contribution
I'm publishing ISED's basic amateur radio exam questions and answers (July 2025) in an Anki deck package, so that prospective hams have a convenient and up-to-date study resource.
Overview of my work
Essentially, I downloaded ISED's delimited text file and reformatted the data in a way that allowed me to import it into Anki, a popular and helpful flashcard software.
- I rearranged and reformatted ISED's delimited text file in Excel as follows:
- added a tags column that pulls info from the question_id column, and included the question category from the aforementioned ISED web page;
- added a deck column for Anki to create parent and child decks based on question categories; and
- added a questions and answers column that concatenates each question with a randomised listing of its correct and incorrect answers, separating question and possible answers using basic HTML.
- I exported relevant columns from the above Excel file as a tab-delimited text file.
- I prepended Anki file headers to the above text file to make importing into Anki faster and easier.
- I imported the resultant text file into Anki, mapping the Anki fields as appropriate; then, I exported the decks to an Anki deck package (.apkg) for easy distribution.
Excel spreadsheet logic
Below are the column headers and cell logic I used to generate the tab-delimited text file referred to in step (2) above.
| question_id | tag1 (HIDE) | tag2 (HIDE) | tag3 (HIDE) | tags | main_deck (HIDE) | deck | q_as | question_english (HIDE) | random_questions (HIDE) | answer | incorrect_answer_1_english (HIDE) | incorrect_answer_2_english (HIDE) | incorrect_answer_3_english (HIDE) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| B-000-000-000 | =LEFT(A2,0) |
=LEFT(B2,5) |
=SUBSTITUTE(TEXTAFTER(G2, "### ")," ","_") |
=TEXTJOIN(" ",TRUE,B2:D2) |
ISED basic amateur radio questions (July 2025) | =CONCAT(F2,"::",C2,"-SSS-### Subsection Name") |
=CONCAT(I2,"<br><ul><li>",J2,"</li></ul>") |
Question | =TEXTJOIN("</li><li>", TRUE, TRANSPOSE(SORTBY(TRANSPOSE(K2:N2), RANDARRAY(COLUMNS(K2:N2))))) |
Correct answer | Incorrect answer | Incorrect answer | Incorrect answer |
Anki file headers
After exporting the relevant columns as a tab-delimited text file, I prepended the following Anki file headers to the new text file.
#separator:Tab
#html:true
#notetype:basic
#columns:question_id tags deck q_as answer
#deck:ISED basic amateur radio questions (July 2025)
#guid column:1
#deck column:3
#tags column:2
ISED's non-commercial policy
My original hope was to publish all of my work into a GitHub repo so that people could comment, create/respond to issues, fork, etc. to build upon and improve my work; however, as noted above, I was told by ISED that I'm not permitted to do so.
ISED emailed me their approval of my creation of an Anki deck only, provided it adheres to ISED's non-commercial policy, namely:
The questions and answers must remain exactly as originally published, regardless of the format—whether on paper, digital platforms, or flashcards.
The publication of questions using Anki Deck (flashcards) is subject to the following conditions.
While ISED does not permit the reproduction of the amateur exam question and answer databank for commercial redistribution, you may reproduce the material for personal or public non-commercial purposes, or for cost-recovery purposes.
A reproduction means making a copy of information in the manner that it is originally published—the reproduction must remain as is and must not contain any alterations whatsoever.
The terms personal and public non-commercial purposes mean a distribution of the reproduced information either for your own purposes only, or for a distribution at large whereby no fees whatsoever will be charged.
The term cost-recovery means charging a fee for the purpose of recovering printing costs and other costs associated with the production of the reproduction.
In order to comply with ISED's requirements, I confirm:
- I've exercised due diligence in ensuring the accuracy of the materials reproduced;
- ISED's New Amateur basic questions advance copy (delimited TXT format) is available from their Amateur radio operator certificates services - Downloads web page; and
- my reproduction is a copy of an official work that is published by the Government of Canada, and my reproduction has not been produced in affiliation with, or with the endorsement of the Government of Canada.
Ideas for improvement
I can see a number of things that could improve my work; for example:
- add a references column that contains references to official ISED documents or study guides (e.g. Coax Publication's Canadian Amateur Radio Basic Qualification Study Guide);
- générer une version française du deck Anki pour mes amis francophones; and, last, but not least,
- create a Python script that automates all the manual work noted above.
I'll try to make headway on some of these improvements, and if I do, I will update this post to include any updates or new information.
Until then, happy studying and good luck on your exam!