so ive been a tech for about 8 months now and honestly i want to get on HF already. been listening to 40m on my rtlsdr and it sounds like so much fun. my buddy keeps telling me the General exam isnt that bad but then he also said the same thing about the tech exam and i actually had to study pretty hard for that one so i dont totally trust him lol

anyway im wondering what the hardest parts of the General pool are. like is it the electrical stuff or the regulations or what. i downloaded the question pool from the arrl website but theres like 400+ questions and i dont even know where to start. also do i need to memorize all the band plans or do they just ask you like general stuff about which frequencies you can use

i have maybe 2-3 weeks before there's a VE session near me. is that enough time or should i wait for the next one

2-3 weeks is plenty if you actually sit down and do it. honestly the General pool isnt dramatically harder than Tech, theres just more of it. the band privileges stuff you'll pick up pretty fast because it actually makes sense once you see why the bands are split up the way they are. the part that trips people up is usually the electrical theory, like the reactance and impedance stuff. if you glazed over that on the Tech exam it comes back with a vengeance on General lol

i used hamexam.org and just drilled practice tests every night for like two weeks. by the end i was consistently hitting 85-90% and i passed no problem. the real exam felt easier than the practice ones honestly. dont overthink the band plan stuff, they basically ask you things like what frequencies are phone privs on 40m for general class, and if you just use the bands a little before the test it kind of sticks naturally

just passed mine last month so this is pretty fresh for me. the propagation questions were the ones i wasn't expecting, like stuff about why 10m opens up or what greyline is. i kind of knew it vaguely from listening but seeing it in question form made me realize i didn't actually understand it. spent an extra day on that section and it was worth it

also fwiw the actual session went really fast, showed up nervous and was done in like 20 minutes. go for the next one, you got enough time