so ive been a Tech for about 8 months now and honestly i mostly just mess around on 2m and 70cm but i keep hearing people talk about HF and it sounds like thats where the real fun is. been thinking about going for my General class but i dont really know what to expect from the exam. like is it a lot harder than the Tech test? i remember the Tech test being pretty manageable, studied for maybe two weeks using hamstudyorg and passed first try.

main things im confused about are like how much of the question pool overlaps and whether i actually need to understand the electrical theory stuff or if i can just memorize the answers. also i keep seeing people mention operating on 40m and 20m and im not sure what i can even do once i have the General ticket vs what i have now. any advice from people who went through this recently would be helpful, i feel like im overthinking it

honestly the General exam isnt that much worse than Tech, like maybe a step up in difficulty but nothing crazy. i did it about two years ago and i'd say the biggest difference is theres more actual theory stuff you need to at least kinda understand — propagation, some extra electrical formulas, operating procedures for HF. but hamstudy works just as well for General, just grind the question pool and youll be fine in a couple weeks.

as for what you can do after, its a pretty big jump. you get chunks of 40m, 20m, 15m, 10m and a few others. 20m is probably where you'll spend most of your time at first, its almost always open to somewhere and theres tons of activity. 40m gets good in the evenings especially for domestic stuff. honestly just get the ticket and then figure out the HF radio situation, thats its own rabbit hole

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been sitting on my Tech for almost a year and keep putting off studying. from what i understand the electrical theory part is the bit that trips people up, like calculating impedance or whatever. i found a youtube channel that walks through some of that stuff and it helped it click a little better than just memorizing. not sure which bands ill even use once i upgrade but 40m sounds fun for local-ish stuff at night from what ive read on here