Our radio club recently became a Laurel certified VE (Volunteer Examiner) team. I spoke with Diane Zimmerman, AA3OF [the Laurel VEC (Volunteer Examiner Coordinator) National Chairman and also the coordinator for call regions six and seven]. After discussing with her the advantages of choosing to become a Laurel VE team, I made the pitch at our next club meeting. Laurel is one of the top three VECs in the nation for the number of exams given. They are neck and neck between number two and three with the W5YI VEC. Laurel is an all volunteer organization. Unlike some of the VECs, they are a national VEC (versus a regional VEC which only covers certain parts of the nation). I raised these issues in comparing Laurel with ARRL. With the Laurel VEC, the exams are free. It means that the examinees do not have to pay to test. Nor do the VEs have to collect money only to send it to the VEC (less work for the VEs). This is a big advantage over the other VECs. My past experience with the ARRL VEC is that it takes several weeks for successful examinees to receive their new licenses or upgrades. Eight years ago, I helped a friend prepare for his license exam. He took his exam from an ARRL VE team. He passed it the first time. He advised me it took nearly a month before he received his technician class license. After speaking to a couple of ARRL team leaders in the area, one said almost a week. The other said ten to twelve days. Successful examinees with the Laurel VEC routinely have their licenses in a matter of just a few days. We recently tested and passed four technician class applicants. One took and passed his general as well. They took it on a Saturday. All four of them received their licenses on Tuesday (three days later). I am told that this is typical for applicants taking their exams through the Laurel VEC. If you are already certified as a VE with any of the other thirteen VECs, Laurel will certify you as a VE gratis. Every VE applicant [that was already certified with ARRL) I have submitted to Laurel was certified in less than twenty-four hours. Our club now has eighteen certified Laurel VEs on our team. ARRL typically takes weeks to process and approve an applicant for VE certification. These three major advantages alone were enough to sell me. And I had little difficulty pitching it to our club. It was easy to convince them. So [with Diane's help], we became certified as a Laurel VE team. One of the first issues was finding a place to give the exams. I called the Mesa Public Library and asked if we could arrange to use one of their rooms for VE testing once per month. One of the first questions I was asked was if any money changed hands. They had a strict policy of not allowing the exchange of funds during any activities conducted on the library premises. Since Laurel does not charge for exams, I was able to say that we do not. So we were given the green light. If we had gone with ARRL, they would have turned us down immediately. We recently gave our first exam on a Saturday. It was a very successful first session. We had five applicants. Four passed their technician exams. One of those also passed his general. I submitted the results of the exams electronically to the Laurel VEC on the same day as the exam. On Tuesday of the next week (a mere three days after the exam), the four successful examinees received their licenses. We were able to include their names and call signs in the next issue of our newsletter [which published about a week after the exam session was given]. If you already have a VE team or are considering becoming a VE team, you should seriously consider getting your team certified under the Laurel VEC. You can find out more information about the Laurel VEC on their Web site: https://larc-vec.org . You can also search up and find a scheduled Laurel exam near you on this site. Contact the Laurel coordinator for your call region (Arizona is in region seven) to discuss or arrange for your radio club to become a Laurel VE team. Select 'Officers, Contacts' in the menu on the left side of their home page to find contact information for your region. In my humble opinion, Laurel is the better choice.
The ARRL can do electronically submitted test results also. We have been doing it for a year or more. Licenses show up usually the next the Monday or Tuesday after a Saturday session. The fees are transferred from a bank card on file with them. We still have to collect the fees however. Don, NN8B
I received all of my tests and results through the Laurel VEC in the 1990s. Everything back then went smoothly, quickly, and was always free of charge. I heartily endorse them, and have performed as a VE for them a fair number of times in the last five or six years (I am also registered as a VE with W5YI and the National Association for Amateur Radio). I discovered that the Laurel VEC apparently has a different, less centralized (and low overhead) method of doing things that offers extremely quick turnaround with the FCC. They really seem to be true to their mission. I really wish that all the VE sessions around here were done the Laurel way, and without charge.
My General(in Alexandria, VA) and Extra(in Chambersburg, PA) class tests were via Laurel VEC. I'm still not sure how to throw some dough their way for the good work they do! When I passed the general exam, I figured that Laurel VEC was just a regional thing being that Laurel, Maryland isn't all that far away from Alexandria. I had no idea they were national. I wonder how Laurel VEC can manage to do it for no fee yet some other VECs insist on getting their maximum allowance from the FCC. I'm not judging the VECs who do charge a fee, but it does make you wonder.
Waiting weeks for the license to appear is on the local VE team, not ARRL. Ours usually show in the FCC database within 2 business days.
I took the tech and general thru ARRL. I gook the extra thru Laurel. Except for the ARRL fee, they both seemed to work the same.
I am a member of a Laurel team. A few years ago we did an exam session where three candidates took tests one evening. The exam session ended at 8 PM, local time. By 7 AM the next morning, all licenses were shown as being active on the ULS. That is under 11 hours from the end of testing to being able to operate. That's the fastest time I have seen, but has to do with the fact that the files were uploaded to the FCC by Diane at around 5 AM Arizona time, and FCC processed them about an hour later (which would have been around 9 AM eastern).
It's not the FCC that charges a fee to take the exam. It's the ARRL that charges the $15 fee (imagine that if you can). My club charges $15 to test and I believe it's $7.50 per examinee we have to remit to ARRL to fund their monopoly. We get to keep the balance. I'm not a Laurel VE, but I assume since Laurel doesn't charge a fee, there's no $15 fee to pass on to the examinee, so that's why it's "free" for Laurel VE's to test applicants. The FCC has began charging the $35 license fee, but our VE's don't have anything to do with that. The examinee pays that directly to the FCC. We get one every now and then that wants to know why he has to pay $15 then pay the FCC "again". We have to explain to him that the $15 is the ARRL money grab fee to "process" their license and has nothing to do with the $35 FCC license fee. When we test someone who is going to be an eComs operator, we have an eComs fund that pays the ARRL their fee so the examinee only has to pay the FCC's $35 fee. The clubs eComs fund pays the $7.50 to the ARRL on behalf of the examinee. ARRL could be fee-free like Laurel if they wanted to.
