About Free Ham Radio Curriculum
What this is
Free Ham Radio Curriculum is a free, open curriculum of workshops and activities that take learners from no radio experience toward confident HF operation. Materials include slides, learner handouts, trainer guides, and promo copy — built so any experienced Ham can lead a session with minimal prep.
About the author
Dan Tennery-Spalding (K6XCX) created Free Ham Radio Curriculum. He spent ten years as an adult educator in Oakland — teaching ESL, developing curriculum for adult ed programs, and mentoring new teachers. He holds an MA in teaching adults and wrote How to Teach Adults (Jossey-Bass), a bestseller in the adult education field.
In 2015 he moved into software engineering and spent the next decade in cybersecurity. He got into amateur radio after a friend set up portable HF in an Oakland park; he earned Technician, General, and Extra licenses and began organizing local workshops. In 2024 he stepped away from engineering to focus on emergency preparedness organizing. He co-founded the Lefty Radio League in the San Francisco Bay Area, which hosts monthly radio workshops and activities.
Credentials include Amateur Extra, completed FEMA NIMS core training (IS-100/200/700/800), and ARRL Basic EmComm.
Why this matters
People want to learn radio — for emergency preparation, for fun, or just out of curiosity — and experienced Hams are usually happy to help. The bottleneck is not a lack of passion. It is curriculum: most existing material, in print or online, targets individuals studying for license exams, while guides for club events assume you already know how to organize a group session. What's needed is a planned path to take groups of radio-curious novices from no experience to confident HF operation, with materials any Ham can teach with minimal prep.
That is what this project provides. Workshops and activities are built so that one passionate operator can teach ten, twenty, or more learners — even someone who has never taught adults, even when the learners have never touched a radio. New Hams should not have to find their way into the hobby alone. This curriculum is how we bring many new people into radio, together.
What this is not
- Not license test prep — there's plenty of that material out there
- Not for individuals — it's for the (many) learners who learn best in community
- Not an online course — these materials are for live, in-person instruction
Independence
Free Ham Radio Curriculum is an independent project. It is non-partisan and not affiliated with any organization except a pending grant application to ARDC (Amateur Radio Digital Communications).
License
Curriculum materials and this website’s source are published under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0). Source files are on GitHub. You may use, adapt, and share materials with attribution; adaptations shared publicly must use the same license.
Contact
Email: dan.tending@gmail.com