Guide Candidate

What a candidate sees

Candidates never sign in to VE Ops. Everything they touch is an email or a public page. This page exists so that whoever is answering their questions knows exactly what they were sent.

It is written from the candidate's side. Point them at it if it helps.

Registering

You register for an exam session in ExamTools, not here. VE Ops picks your registration up shortly afterwards and takes over from there.

The confirmation email

Within an hour or so of registering you get a confirmation email with:

• The session's date and time, given in two time zones (Eastern and Pacific). Sessions are remote and the gap between those two is always three hours, so you can work out Central or Mountain from either.
• The join link for the online session, if the team uses one.
• A payment link for the exam fee.
• A second, youth-rate link where the team offers it.

If the team offers a youth rate and you qualify, use the youth link rather than the standard one. It asks you to confirm you are a youth and then sends you to checkout at the youth price. Paying the standard rate and asking for the difference afterwards is a manual fix for somebody.

Nothing arrived? Check junk first, then tell the team — most often the address is not what they think it is.

Paying

Pay before the session. No fee, no test — the VEs enforce that at the door, and it is not something the software will let slide on the night. If reminders keep arriving after you have paid, tell the team; a payment made from a different email address than the one you registered with does not match itself up automatically, and somebody has to attach it by hand.

After you pass

Two things happen, and the second one is yours.

1. The team files your session with the VEC — the organization that accredits volunteer examiners and sends exam results to the FCC. You do not do anything for this.
2. The FCC charges its own application fee, separately, through CORES. This is not the fee you already paid the team. ⚠️ You have ten days. If the FCC's fee is not paid in that window, your application expires and the exam you just passed does not turn into a license.

VE Ops watches the FCC on your behalf and emails you a reminder if that fee is still outstanding. If the FCC itself is having a bad week, the team can turn those reminders off and tell you directly what is going on instead.

Once the FCC grants it, your call sign appears in the FCC's own license search.

Your data

What the app stores, for how long, and what is deleted afterwards is on the deployment's own Privacy page — linked at the bottom of every page of the app.

Related

• Session Manager — the other side of all of this
• Glossary