so ive been wanting to get into ham radio for a while now and finally decided to just go for the technician exam. i downloaded some app and theres like 400+ questions in the pool and im kind of overwhelmed honestly. like do i need to actually understand all the electronics stuff or can i just memorize the answers? my brother said just memorize everything but that feels wrong somehow. also not sure if the hamstudy website is better than the gordon west book or what. any tips from people who actually went through this recently would be helpful, im not super technical but im not completely clueless either

hamstudy.org is honestly all you need, i barely touched a book. just do the practice exams over and over until youre consistently hitting like 85% or better and youll pass no problem. the real test pulls straight from that same question pool so nothing should surprise you. some of the electrical theory stuff is worth actually understanding though, like ohms law comes up enough that just memorizing which answer to pick can get confusing when they word it differently. took me maybe two weeks of casual studying, maybe 20-30 minutes a night. dont overthink it

I used the Gordon West book when I studied back in the day and it was fine but honestly the question pool has changed since then so I'd verify whatever book you get is for the current pool which I think runs through 2026 or somewhere around there. One thing I'll say is don't skip the band plan and operating procedure questions even if they seem boring, there are quite a few of them and people sometimes focus too much on the electronics bits and then get tripped up on the more procedural stuff. The rules and regs section is also worth paying attention to because a lot of it is just common sense once you read it carefully but if you just try to brute force memorize you might mix things up under pressure. Either way the test really isnt that hard, most people pass on the first try if they put in even a modest amount of study time.