ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area New Guy, and very glad to find this sight.

I am too. But a tool can save time and its something folks use in the field so why not use them in a test.

The thinking is they wanted to be sure you could find and use the tables in the book in case you had a dead battery in your calculator or left it in the truck. It also demonstrates that you understand the concepts. After you have looked at these things for a few years you can tell an overstuffed box or raceway within a wire or so with a glance but it is still good to run the numbers now and then, just for drill.
In the case of a box, a "neat" guy can make an overfilled box look OK and a sloppy job can make a box with plenty of room look stuffed.

I could not use that type of calculator either. But I was able to get through with my code book stuffed with "keyword index" and "reminders".
I also had the ohms law circle on the back of my calculator. These items were provided to me from Tom Henry's course.

I did get a backpack in to the test, but was to scared to pull anything else out. Code book and calculator was all that was allowed.
I got an extra 15 minutes as they started collecting the exams from the other end of the auditorium.
There were about 200 people of all different trades testing that day.
Now the test is only four hours long, computerized and is available every Saturday. When I took mine it was a 150 mile drive and 8 hours long.
The drive home seemed like it took forever as I was sure I failed.

The only test prep I had was in a very active internet NEC discussion group. (Harold Endean, Joe Tedesco and several others). We quizzed each other every night and by test time I knew a lot of the stuff by heart and was familiar enough with the book that I could find the rest quickly.
All together I took 5 exams (Iaei 2A,2B, 2C, SBCCI Comm and 1&2 fam)and I finished them all early. I was out of the SBCCI 1&2 family in 45 minutes. That was the last one I took. It seemed that by then I had already seen everything on the test. I just clicked them off.
I agree I was not very confident on the first one.
I came up with my own book tabs and I used a highlighter to mark the edges of pages on the most important sections. Make sure you have all the important tables tabbed. That is a huge time saver. Just deciding what to tab will help you learn the book.

I think for the most part in order to use the calculator correctly you have to understand the concepts. A dead battery happens in the real world, you best be prepared:)