Passing the Marine Radio Operator Exam

By Chris Eve

In Japan you need a license in order to use a VHF radio, a radar, or a transmitting AIS device. When I bought my boat second-hand it came fitted with a VHF radio and an AIS, and although I had been using my AIS (and liked seeing Eothen show up on vessel tracking websites such as Marine Traffic) I had resisted transmitting on the VHF because I had no real need to do so but also because I suspected that you needed to have a license. After doing some research I found out that you need to have at least a “second class special marine radio operators license” (第２級海上特殊無線技士) and I started to think about getting one. What really compelled me to get one was when Darren told me at a TSPS keelhaul that I risked being fined just for having a radio on my boat, even if I did not use it. Just another example of how joining TSPS and attending keelhauls can expand your knowledge about boating and potentially save you from costly mistakes! He urged me to completely disconnect the radio and hide it somewhere in the boat, otherwise I would be in trouble if the coastguard saw it during an inspection. Darren recommended getting my license with Royal Corporation (www.marine-license.com), which has a branch school in Kachidoki.

In order to prepare I bought a ‘teach yourself’ book for the exam but I was daunted at what I saw when I opened it. The exam consists of two parts, one on regulations and one on technical. The chapters in the book on regulations were heavy text, with a lot of Japanese that I had trouble reading. The technical chapters were equally heavy to read, but also filled with formulas for calculating resistance, capacitance, etc., and various circuit diagrams, etc. It seemed to me that the test was more about building a radio rather than using one!

Figure 1 The teach yourself book that I bought

However, having set my mind on it there was no escape from getting a license, so in the summer I booked a course and exam with Royal for the end of November. This was to give myself time to do some preparation and familiarize myself with all the necessary Japanese and technical formulae. Over the following weeks I spent hours and hours working my way through the book and ended up translating almost the entire text. The book included sample questions, and while I was able to answer the regulation questions, I really struggled with some of the technical questions and began to doubt that I would be able to pass the exam.

I downloaded some past exam papers from a website (https://jyukenkai.com/kakomon_tokushu/kai_g2/) and used them to test myself. As with the boat license exam, I quickly realized that most of the questions get repeated on a regular basis, so for the technical questions that I still had trouble passing I set about rote memorizing the questions and their answers. As the date of the exam grew closer, I was confident about passing the regulation part of the exam but sometimes I was not passing enough of the technical questions to pass.

Figure 2 Sample technical question that I rote-learned the answer to. We did not cover this at Royal and it was not in the exam

I discovered a YouTube channel that ran through past questions and answers, and I spent quite a few hours going through the technical questions but still not being able to answer some of them (https://youtu.be/0hPPZ7LVeRs?si=SIzhjfVTOlfvY73Z). I also found a smartphone app (過去問) with sample of past exams and used that to study during my commute to work. Finally, the day of the course arrived and I was still not confident of the passing the test, so success was going to be about how much I could learn during the course.

Figure 3 Text books

The course by Royal runs over two full days, with the exam taking place at the end of the second day. On arrival they issued us with two textbooks, one for regulations and one for technical. They also gave us summary sheets that highlighted various topics from each book. There are 7 hours of tuition on the first day and 6 on the second. The instructor told us that we could not arrive late or leave early, nor go out of the classroom during the tuition sessions except for the scheduled breaks, otherwise we could not take the exam. I listened intensely to the instructor every minute of the first day as I was determined to pass. It was exhausting. But I began to feel uneasy that although the instructor covered much of what I had previously studied, he seemed to omit some things that regularly came up as questions in the sample exams I had been studying, and focus on other topics that I had not seen before. Darren had told me that the instructor would highlight topics that would come up in the exam. Sure enough, at the end of each session our instructor referred to the summary sheets and told us to underline various things, saying that he did not know what questions would come up in the exam, but these topics often came up.

Day two was much the same as day one. After concluding the final tuition session the instructor once again ran through the summary sheets, again telling us to underline the same items he had stressed previously. Finally it was time for the exam, and I was dreading that some of the questions that I had failed to master in the sample exams I had been studying would come up. Turning over the exam paper I began reading through the questions. With much relief, I realized that the questions were all on topics that had been repeatedly highlighted and stressed by the instructor in the summary sheets. There are 24 questions in the exam, 12 each on regulation and on technical. The answers are multiple choice, with four possible answers for each question. The pass score is 60% for both sections. The time allowed for the exam is 1.5 hours, but after about 10 minutes some people had already finished and started leaving the classroom. It took me a bit longer as I took time to go through all the questions a second time to check that I had not made any silly mistakes, but I was finished in less than 30 minutes, and confident that I had passed.

After everyone had finished we were called back into the classroom and waited for our results. Within a few minutes, the examiner returned and distributed our result cards. We had all passed!

In summary, you pay the school ¥38,500 in order for them to ensure you pass the exam. So long as you listen carefully to what the instructor tells you to remember, you will pass the exam. In the event that you do not pass the exam, on the same day Royal hold a revision session and a re-sit of the exam.

Having done the course and passed the exam, I realized that I had wasted a whole lot of time and effort in doing all that pre-studying for the exam, but hey, a bit of intellectual exercise is never a bad thing.