so i've been wanting to get my technician license for a while now and i finally decided to just do it. problem is i dont really know where to start. i downloaded some pdf of the question pool from the arrl website i think? but it's just like 400 questions and i dont know if i'm supposed to just memorize all of them or what. my buddy who has his general said something about just doing practice tests over and over but that feels like cheating somehow, like i wont actually understand the material. is there a study guide that actually explains the why behind stuff or do most people just grind the question pool. also how long did it take you guys to feel ready

honestly the practice test method works better than you'd think. hamstudy.org is what most people use and it tracks which questions you keep getting wrong so you can focus on those. i was skeptical too but after like two weeks of doing maybe 20-30 minutes a day i was consistently passing the practice exams. the thing is a lot of the questions kinda explain themselves if you read the answers carefully, like the ones about electrical safety or band privileges start to make sense in context even if you're not sitting down with a textbook.

that said if you want actual explanations the arrl technician manual is decent but its like 30 bucks and some people find it overkill for just passing the test. gordon west makes a study book too that a lot of people swear by, its more stripped down. really depends on how much you actually want to learn vs just pass and figure out the rest on the air.

i just did mine like 3 months ago so pretty fresh. i used hamstudy pretty much exclusively and passed first try. took me maybe 3 weeks studying on my phone during lunch breaks and stuff. the electrical questions were the only part that tripped me up at first, like the ohms law stuff, but there's a handful of formulas and once you do enough practice questions you just remember which one goes where. dont overthink it