so ive been a tech for about 8 months now and honestly i kind of hit a wall with what i can do on VHF/UHF around here. repeaters are pretty dead except for the weekly net and i want to actually talk to people further away. a buddy of mine keeps telling me to just upgrade and get my general so i can get on HF but im not sure where to start with studying.

i used the hamstudy.org site for my tech exam and it worked pretty well but the general pool feels way bigger and more complicated? like theres stuff about propagation and feed line losses and i dunno, operating practices on HF that i really dont have any context for yet. is it worth just grinding through the question pool or should i actually try to understand the material. also how much of the HF stuff will i actually need to know vs just passing the test. im asking because i dont want to get on 40m and embarrass myself not knowing what im doing

hamstudy is fine for passing but honestly for general i'd recommend at least skimming the ARRL General Class book or even just some youtube videos on propagation because it actually makes a difference when you're trying to figure out why 20m is dead at midnight or whatever. the question pool isnt that bad, probably took me 3 weeks of maybe 20-30 minutes a day before i felt solid on it.

as for embarrassing yourself on HF, dont worry about it too much. just listen a lot before you transmit. like seriously just sit on 40m for a few evenings and get a feel for how people operate, when to call CQ, how contacts usually go. most people are pretty patient with newer operators and the ones who arent, well they're like that with everyone. the privileges open up a lot once you pass, you get most of 40m, a chunk of 20m, 15m, some others. definitely worth doing.

i just did this like two months ago, same situation, tech for almost a year and nothing going on locally. passed my general on the first try and yeah hamstudy worked fine. the electrical stuff tripped me up a little, like the formulas for calculating power and resistance but theres not that many of them and once you do the practice tests enough they kind of stick.

honestly the hardest part for me was after passing and actually getting on HF for the first time becuase the bands sound really different than I expected. like messier? more QRM and people talking over each other sometimes. but its way more interesting than sitting on an empty repeater waiting for someone to key up